Thoughts on a few of this week's "Villain's Month" issues
So I broke down and bought the Scarecrow, Penguin, and Clayface issues. I also bought the Cheetah issue because it's written by John Ostrander, who has consistently been one of the most rock-solid DC writers for about twenty-five years, but I haven't read it yet. I also declined to brave the Ra's al Ghul issue because 1.) I don't think anybody's take on Ra's' origin will ever surpass Birth of the Demon, which is one of the best Batman comics I've ever read, and 2.) because I want as little acknowledgement of Grant Morrison's hatchet job on Talia as possible. As for trio of books I did read, here are my thoughts:
THE SCARECROW: Not as bad as it could have been. Bear in mind, this is New 52 Scarecrow we're talking about here. I actually just read the actual new origin storyline from Hurwitz and Finch's Batman: The Dark Knight, and I must admit, I actually enjoyed a couple parts, though purely on a trainwreck level. Tomasi's Scarecrow one-shot today was less periodically, stupidly, unintentionally fun than Hurwitz, mainly due to the fact that these two Scarecrows look and act nothing alike. Yes, they both look like bad ripoffs of Marvel's Scarecrow, but under the stiff and murky photo-realistic art of Szymon Kurdanski (whose grasp of proportions is even worse than Finch's), he looks uncannily like a cross between Jason Voorhees and Cobra Commander.
As for the writing, I like that this Crane spends most of the issue just talking with his fellow rogues and psychoanalyzing them between meetings. If Tomasi's dialogue were a bit more in character for Professor Crane, this might have been a relatively strong issue. As it is, again, this is a completely different Scarecrow from the one who appeared in B:TDK, and while that's a good thing on its own merits, I'm not sure why we should give a damn about this new take. Well, it looks like he'll continue to have a prominent role in Forever Evil, especially as Tomasi will be writing the upcoming Arkham War storyline, where the Scarecrow's true goal (for which he has no given motivation other than standard evil supervillainly desires for indiscriminate power) will probably be a major plot point. For good or ill, Scarecrow fans, you should probably keep an eye on Arkham War.
THE PENGUIN: I feel dirty having read this. What an ugly, nasty, pointless story. What's really disappointing about this story is that it came from Frank Tieri, a writer I don't like but who (in the otherwise-lousy Gotham Underground) proved that he could write an excellent, complex Penguin. Unfortunately, this Penguin is influenced by the one from Hurwitz's (ugh, him again) Penguin: Pain and Prejudice, which painted him as a nasty, pointlessly cruel little monster.
Funny thing, both Penguin stories feel influenced by Jason Aaron's excellent Joker's Asylum issue, which also depicted him as a ruthless monster, but it worked well as it added a tragic, self-defeating tone to Oswald. This issue today felt much like a retread of that Penguin, only without any of the tragedy, and given what the Penguin does in this story, that's an incredible waste. If the tragedy had been explored here, this could have been a powerful issue.
Instead, Tieri just wasted twenty pages on a pointless portrait of a vicious monster who has no other motivation than simply to be cruel. And the worst part is, this is only add fuel to the many fans and writers who already hate the Penguin for being this kind of character. What a waste.
CLAYFACE: Welp, Basil Karlo is now officially indistinct from TAS Matt Hagen in terms of personality. Actually, he's even more crude than thuggish than the Perlman-voiced Hagen ever was. As depicted here, Karlo is now pretty much the Sandman (Flint Marko, the Spider-Man villain) in terms of personality and powers, only with shapeshifting added to the mix.
Why did they do this? If they just wanted this to be Matt Hagen, why didn't they do that? Hagen in the comics has always been a thug and an asshole, so why are they instead doing a watered-down, less-tragic (again, what does DC have against tragedy and sympathy in their Bat-villain origins now?) version that simultaneiously misses the point of what makes Basil Karlo great? The guy is a living tribute to classic horror, right down to his name being derived from Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff. A Basil Karlo Clayface should never be a crude thug. He should be grand, theatrical, hammy, and articulate, like Vincent Price in Theater of Blood with powers. Again, if they wanted the crude thug Clayface, then why not just go ahead and use Matt Hagen? He's the one everyone remembers, and again, he's an asshole and jerk in canon. Sigh, whatever.
So how was the issue itself? Okay. Nothing too stellar, quick to read in five minutes, and not much happens. Here, I'll sum up the whole plot: Clayface is annoyed that he didn't get invited to the Secret Society of Super-Villains, so he kills a bunch of people, but the Crime Syndicate still won't let him into their clubhouse, so he throws a hissy fit and then decides to rob a bank. The end. Again, there didn't seem to be any point to this, but I suppose that could be said of far too many of these one-shots.
What did you folks make of these stories? Has anyone read any other good issues from Villain's Month so far? What about the other Bat-villains books I haven't read, like The Ventriloquist, Mister Freeze, Harley Quinn, or Ra's al Ghul? Is there anything to recommend about any of those? I doubt it in the case of Harley, as from what I've seen, she's now depicted as being so cold and empty inside that the only way she can feel pleasure at all is to do things like murder dozens of children with exploding game consoles. Ugh, who honestly wants to read things like that?
