The Four Color Media Monitor

In another interview with the LA Times, he's told what kind of emphasis they've used for Batman: Zero Year. First, what is the plot of this particular story:

Batman is defeated, presumed dead. And the Riddler has the run of a transformed Gotham City.

Welcome to “Savage City,” the final arc of “Zero Year,” which writer Scott Snyder says is “where the biggest, most fun and craziest elements of the story begin.” Where the “Secret City” and “Dark City” segments re-envisioned the classic elements of Batman’s origin story, the third part is what the Eisner Award winner says is the reward for readers letting the “Batman” team tread on “sacred” ground — an “out-and-out battle with the Riddler for [the city] in a post-apocalyptic Gotham.”

Haven't we gone this route before? Oh yes, we have, nearly 6 years ago in Grant Morrison's "Batman RIP" storyline. Why should we have to do it again? Certainly not under such a dreary, pretentious writer as Snyder or Morrison. Now, here's the part about their emphasis on failure:

HC: Major ideas of guilt and failure that have been building in this part of “Zero Year” reach a fever pitch for both Bruce and Jim Gordon – with not just present failures but long-ago deaths weighing on them: the Wayne murders for both of them, and Bruce learning that Dr. Death’s son and others perished searching for him in his wandering years. How do you see the importance of guilt in this part of the story, and how do you see it affecting them going forward?

SS: We tried to make this section heavy with the idea of failure. The important thing here was to show Batman losing. It was difficult too. I went back and forth with Greg and with a couple of my friends, saying, “Do you think it’s too terrible to have him go down so epically and lose here and have the city flooded and have all of these terrible things happen?” What I decided was that it wasn’t at all too much. Instead I felt it was key to show him fail. But to make that redemptive, at least for me, was for the lesson to be that he fails because he does something wrong that he can correct in our third section…. In the first section he realizes he needs to mean something, he can’t just be a ghost. In the second section he realizes that he needs to be something inspiring … he can’t be an angel of vengeance, he can’t be someone that’s out to punish the city for taking away his parents. … He locked Jim Gordon out for so long because he blamed him so deeply for being part of what happened on that night with his parents’ deaths, for not being there and for nobody being there, that he moves too late in terms of trying to stop Dr. Death and ultimately the Riddler.

So that’s something he’ll certainly correct in the third part. The third part is sort of about how he needs to mean this thing forever, in some ways.

But that’s really what this second part was about for me was learning he can’t be ruled by the demons of the past; he can’t be someone who operates out of anger and vengeance. Instead he has to be someone who also inspires hope and camaraderie and a movement of rebellion and a movement of defiance.

What idiocy. The city did not take away Bruce's parents. It was the hoodlum Joe Chill who did. It's tiring how they repeatedly go out of their way to make Bruce sound like such a narrow mind who puts blame in all the wrong places.

Even more disappointing is how they put so much more emphasis on Batman failing than on what successes he could have. Cases where he could save lives and come away feeling glad he did a good deed. Despite what Snyder says, I don't think they're going to change the angle so easily, and even if they're depicting Batman as bizarrely vindictive, that doesn't mean they can't show him succeeding. If they still insist on making him a control freak, that's not bound to change in the forseeable future either. Nor are they likely to turn him into somebody who can be more inspiring, at least not in a way that'll be readable or interesting. And nor are Snyder's "elements" in this story likely to be fun by any stretch.

Labels: Batman, dc comics, dreadful writers, msm propaganda