The Night's Getting Complicated

(Delusional) men want to be him, (delusional) women want to be with him.

Batman '89 is set maybe a year after Batman Returns. Batman is still at it, but seems to have settled back into "urban legend" status among some people, as there is surprise when a man in a costume breaks up an attempt to steal armored cars with a heavy duty Soviet helicopter. Batman and Commissioner Gordon still work together (though they've abandoned the Bat-signal for communication), but there are forces against it. Bullock is leading a push from within the police, and Gordon's daughter Barbara, now a sergeant, is trying to help D.A. Harvey Dent oust Gordon and expose the gang of Batmen (Dent's convinced it can't be one guy.)

Sam Hamm throws a lot of stuff in here. Harvey Dent, caught between what's right and his own aspirations, between his upbringing in Burnside and the expectations the elite (white) circles have for how a black guy acts and behaves. Batman encounters a young man wearing a cloak and covering his face, who protects the historically black neighborhood of Burnside (and kicks Batman in the face when he pursues a guy who ultimately stole diapers and baby formula for his sister.) Catwoman pops up, having been busy with her own business over the last year, but eager to pick things up with Batsy where they left off. Batman's eager for that, too, but always the reservations about some moral issue or another.

Quinones' Bruce Wayne is bigger and definitely fitter than Michael Keaton, but you can see some similarities, especially in the facial expressions. Hamm writes a Batman who is really morally inconsistent. He admits he chased the diaper thief because he was bored, and has no comeback when Selina points out he never investigates the guys Bruce Wayne has lunch with (there's a whole subplot about the armored car heist really being about some subpoenaed documents, not the $31 million.) Which is strange, because Bruce clearly did research on Max Schreck in Batman Returns when they were possibly going to work on that deal for the power plant.

But this Bruce Wayne doesn't seem to do any philanthropy work, no employment programs for ex-cons or encouraging education in economically depressed until he feels guilty about the thief being killed because the National Guard tried killing Batman. It's the young man, Drake Winston, who points out he needs to give people something inspiring. Also, Bruce takes the moral high ground with Selina, that he's not a killer, but the very first issue says one of the guards of the armored car died when the cars were dropped because Batman caused the helicopter to crash. Is he just ignoring that, or blaming it on the guys who were pulling the heist?

The story revolves around choices about who you are. What do you believe in, and whether you stick to that or abandon it in favor of expediency or, well, whatever. You can always find an excuse. Gordon feels he failed because at the end of the day, he relied on a vigilante to try and preserve law and order. It cost him his daughter, and ultimately his job (although Police Commissioner feels like being a professional sports coach: You're there to be fired, eventually.) Drake believes in trying to protect his neighborhood, that cops and other people of authority can't be trusted, but ultimately is willing to work with Batman, at least temporarily, to try and save lives.

Dent? Dent talks a good game. Talks about how giving a speech back in his old neighborhood acknowledging inequality felt good, or right, while in the next breath commenting on how many doors it seems to have opened for him. He does rush into a burning building intending to save Drake, but his fever dreams are everyone praising him for it. Drake admitting he was wrong about Dent being a cop, Dent becoming Governor, Bruce Wayne admitting he funded the Batmen. It's not enough to do the right thing, he has to benefit from it. So when he doesn't, it's easy to blame everything on chance and abdicate responsibility for his actions, even when he goes against what the coin says.

Hamm uses the classic bit of Two-Face liberally interpreting the outcome of the coin flip, where he's talking to the crime bosses and when Falcone mouths out, Two-Face decides the good head means a nice thing for Gotham, and shoots Falcone. Quinones uses a lot of split panel layouts as Harvey becomes Two-Face, showing different outcomes on either side. Or he'll start a row of panels with a profile shot of the scarred side as Harvey threatens a crooked politician, and end the row with a profile shot of the unscarred side as Falcone reminds him of all the times he failed to stop the mob through the courts.

I don't know about Bruce. Like I said above, there's a lot of hypocrisy in him, a sense that sometimes this isn't even about any vow to his parents, but just him enjoying being Batman. He mentions to Alfred that he's always told himself if he was doing more harm than good, he'd stop. Is he the right person to measure that? Maybe, ultimately, it's being Batman that matters most and everything else is sacrificed on that altar.

Selina's probably the one most at peace in her own skin. She's apparently formed a one-woman company that deals with computer security, although a lot of the issues appear to be things she started that let her bug the cops' files. But she uses it to dig into the rot in Gotham, which is something that matters to her, destroying the Schrecks who grind people under their heels. She helps Batman, makes her interests clear, but she isn't willing to compromise who she is to fit into the moral framework he tries to impose. And the mini-series ends with her offering Barbara some explosive evidence, anonymously, as "Oracle", and offering the possibility of a team-up.

So I guess the next mini-series will reveal which way Barbara went, although he willingness to meet with Two-Face and try to arrest him sends a pretty clear signal what matters to her.