Customer Reviews

Batman: Dead White

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I really did not like this book very much. I think it suffered from too much what I call 'Bat god' syndrome.


I am very much a fan of the 70's version of Batman which combined the 'world's greatest detective' along with the fact that Batman is a tremedous athelte. I think that this story had the potential to be great if Mr. Shirley had couched it in reality and made Batman more fleshed out.

Mr. Shirley's Batman has too many gadgets, and they seemed to be simply in the story to simply be 'cool'. and It bothered me the way in which the good cops bowed and scrapped to him. Some of the older Batman stories imply that Batman does what he does because Gordon allows him to. Batman is a vigilante who likes to do things his way. But at the same time he knows how not to overstep his bounds not unessarily antagonize the cops. The best Batman stories are the one where he works with the police yet manages to stay in the shadows.

I also was not too crazy about his interpretation of Batman/Bruce Wayne. He seemed to be more reminiscent of 'Punnisher lite'. As opposed to the master tactician and strategist that he was. He was way too hardcore. Whereas the 70's Batman wasn't so uptight. It was even demonstrated in the film 'Batman Begins'.


I also found the writing too choppy and uneaven. And it really became tiresome to read. I really found this book very disapointing.

I picked up this novel because, well, it's Batman. I've read dozens of graphic novels and was going through other non-graphic novels like Fear Itself and No Man's Land. After finishing this I have to wonder, did John Shirley ever pick up a Batman book and/or movie before? Did he even know who the character was? Perhaps he only knew of the Adam West television series and thought he was doing a more serious version of that? I don't know how else to explain not only the blatant disregard for the character but also the poor quality of the story.

First of all, this is not like any other version of Batman. I could understand if they were trying to put a different spin on the character we know and love (Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth has a terrific version of Bats that is vastly different than usual) but they have to keep it true to the spirit. This is not true nor is it who we Batfans know and love. He doubts himself, openly chats and jokes with everyone including villains, has problems defeating a single steroid-pumped thug, lets people die without even attempting to save them, serious considers quitting for a woman (who has no other history with him outside this book and has no personality whatsoever in it), and forgets why he fights crime occasionally. My jaw literally dropped when Batman did something in the finale that, in the real world, would have killed or seriously injured the person. And it went lower when they did the lousy Saturday morning cartoon show thing of having the guy come out of it perfectly okay. In the hands of someone like Jeph Loeb or Frank Miller such changes could have been incredibly compelling. But there should have been no more than just one of these aspects here since Shirley doesn't get Batman like they do. Worst of all, Batman often acts as open as Clooney's version. He walks around in broad daylight surrounded by police and FBI. At one point he even takes the Batmobile to drop someone off at the airport for no reason other than to basically say "I got your back." I was dumbfounded at the audacity to do something so out of character like that. I pity the poor fool who uses this book as his introduction to the Batmythos.

Shirley also seems confused as to which part in Bathistory this takes place. On the one hand, characters bluntly state that he's just emerged. On the other, pretty much everyone has seen him and he doesn't bother to hide, the police no longer bother trying to capture him except for the racist double agents, and he has super advance technology for every occasion. All of which point to later career Bats. What kind of character progression can there possibly be when after his first few months when the President wants to deputize him, he's got a holographic cloaking device on his car, and when Homeland Security is following the Batwing?

There's really only two other Batcharacters in the book: Gordon and Alfred. Gordon is fine, mostly because he's in such a minimal role. But Alfred also got the shaft. He's portrayed as this annoying know-it-all who goes off on rants over the littlest things (think Cliff Clavin from Cheers). He too has little to do, but what he does is quite memorable for the wrong reasons. The rest are all original characters, and all lack interesting personalities. Cormac Sullivan and his son Gary are the biggest characters who don't have their names in the title. But they seem to have a greater number of pages dedicated to them than The Dark Knight does. If anything, of the three main stories, Bats is given the least amount of time. Anyways, Cormac and Gary have somewhat of an interesting story, except that it really has nothing to do with the main story. Cormac starts off involved in the whole White Supremacist thing, but detracts from the story for the whole middle half (meaning Shirley keeps going back to him even though nothing he does has anything to do with anything else and could be cut out without any problem), and comes back for the finale pathetically trying to tie it all back together. Seriously, the reason they come back into the main story is flimsy at best.

There's also little to no Gotham City. Again, if it was done well it would interesting but it isn't. I like the idea that Batman has to go out of his element and into the woods. It opens up possibilities that just aren't taken advantage of. Gotham has become a character in itself, like Star Trek and the Enterprise. Sure there have been good Batstories without much of Gotham, but the corrupted society aspect of the story lent itself to the corrupted Gotham. Instead we get boring Pennsylvanian woods.

A poor adaptation of the characters could be forgiven if they had a decent story regardless, which brings us to the next biggest problem: racists simply are not interesting. The story revolves around Bats uncovering a terrorist group of white supremacists who intend to overthrow the government and advance their own Neo-Nazi/KKK ideals. Okay, that's not such a bad idea in itself. If Bats can stop Evil President Luthor he can stop the modern Hitler. Here's the problem, the book literally spends the majority of its time focusing on any one of the many racists, more than Batman and Cormac combined. And all they do is be angry. There's absolutely no other character aspects to them, but hate, and that's not interesting. Not one of them has any backstory. They're not dynamic, just one dimensional annoyances. Perhaps if racism was just one side quirk to an actual personality this could have been an interesting examination of how racism perpetuates itself in society. But it's not. It's one note played over and over and over again overwhelming everything else, and I got sick of it by the end of the first third. The bigger problem with this is that it makes it seem as though these white men (there's only one woman in the group who turns out to be the only good, wholesome person there) are just inherently evil. As a white man myself, I take great offense to that. I've known quite a few racists and I know that there are deeper issues to it, like upbringing and economic times, and not simply being born to hate others. It also didn't help me personally that their homicidal leader shares my first name.

One thing that really took me out of the universe was the amount of product placement. Seriously, every other chapter had some brand name pop up, usually towards the end so you remembered it was in there before taking a break. There is something to be said for including some products for realism, but I don't need to unnecessarily read about Geico or Home Depot. These names were thrown in for the heck of it, without any other need. One chapter features Bruce and Alfred talking about the racists while watching the news, and ends with a quick paragraph going to a commercial for Geico. No reason at all other than to throw the name in.

The novel is certainly darker than it needs to be, and not in a "Batman is a brooding character" kind of way. In fact, Bats seems like jolly ol' Santa Claus compared to the rest of the book. There's a lot of swearing and many, many derogatory terms for black, gay, and Jewish people thrown in every paragraph in the racists' sections. Many sections deal with heavy drug usage. It's also very violent. The racists' sections are full of death, grimly described. One character reappears with a facial feature missing. Tarantino might be proud of it all, but Bob Kane would be horrified. And so am I since all of it really had little to no place in story other than to be gratuitous. Considering that the racists make up the majority of the book, that's a lot of swearing and death in addition to their less-than-charming demeanor. It's mentally exhausting to have to put up with so much of this Batcrap.

Now, I almost gave it two stars when I was reading this. It was poor but not awful. What lost that one star was the final twenty pages, the wrap up of the three storylines. Each one of these are horribly written, relying on the most overused cliches, revealing character aspects that appear literally out of no where with no basis in the story before it, and so painfully forced that I could not have been more glad to have finished it. It's like Shirley got to the end and forgot to actually finish the story so he forced these endings on us.

In the end, this book in no way seems like a Batman story. It's almost like Shirley had this whole white supremacist takeover story and then shoehorned Batman into it. Cause when the title character, especially one with an seventy-year history, is a almost a minor character in his own book you know there's problems. Who at DC Comics actually approved this, I'll never know and hope I never do. Apparently someone there fell asleep at the Batwheel.

I don't know that John Shirley has ever picked up a single comic book or graphic novel detailing the mythos of Batman, the Dark Knight, in his life, but, if I base my opinion on the "facts" he presents in BATMAN: DEAD WHITE, I'd have to say loudly that he hasn't. As a matter of fact, I'm honestly surprised that the good folks at DC Comics would have allowed this "interpretation" of the Dark Knight -- if that's what it is -- to see the light of day.

Now, don't get me wrong: the first one hundred pages of DEAD WHITE are very impressive. A new villain has come to Gotham City in the form of Aaron Bunch, aka White Eyes. He's a bit of an old school thinker -- death and destruction are good for business -- with a heavy whiff of New Wave crime thinking -- African-Americans and Jews are the source of all things wrong with the world -- and he hopes to bring an end to the 'Zionist rule' with high tech weaponry and a launch of the Ebola Virus on U.S. soil ... all of this starting with the destruction of Washington D.C. It's a surprising inventive, fresh, and mature idea for a Batman novel, especially given the fact that Batman is a superhero largely brushed off from topics of political relevance with stories of costumed madmen and wild fisticuffs. There's a tremendous amount of thought that goes into the set-up of the characters and the events in this tale set in Bruce Wayne's early forays as the Batman, and author Shirley involves a young Captain James Gordon and a disgraced Gotham City cop Cormac Sullivan.

However, once you get beyond those first hundred pages or so, DEAD WHITE begins to feel less and less like a Batman story and more like an adventurous yarn that was force-fed into the Batman universe. White Eyes becomes less interested in action and far more interested in making grand sermons against the Zionist Conspiracy. A love interest inserted into Bruce Wayne's life feels much like a bad afterthought thrown in for the sole purpose of lightening up the darkness, giving the readers a chance to see, 'Hey, the world ain't all bad,' and it might be more believable if it all didn't feel so Hollywood. Add to the mix the fact that Shirley appears to have no grasp at all for one of the Batman's prime directives -- "thou shalt not kill" -- and you're quickly concerned about the novels rising body count; once Batman savagely kills five men with a rocket-fired missile from his new Batplane in the ultimate showdown, I realized I wasn't reading 'Batman' any more but quite possibly the draft for the next Arnold Schwarzenegger movie ... once Arnold decides to quit politics. Also -- it's a minor quibble -- but one of the inherent strengths of the Batman universe is the subtle work of tying in the darker, subversive Gotham City as a character within the tale, but, sadly, much of this book takes place with other characters, leaving the reliably dark and sinister Gotham City little more than a passing reference. There's a part of me convinced that this just WASN'T a Batman story at one point in its history, but somehow -- be it crafty editing or some heavy "search/replace" Microsoft Word revision -- it became one.

What Shirley does very well in these pages is capture a sense of darkness -- of dread, of doom and gloom -- associated with these elements of crime. I'm not entirely convinced that white supremecists are as dumb as the author would have you believe, but they're quite probably from a mental track as twisted. It's easy to dismiss some relatively off-the-mark character moments in the last one hundred pages because the action is whizzing by with comic book frenzy -- there's guns, explosions, fights, etc. -- but once the villainous White Eyes descends into glorified speeches and cheap grandstanding, the novel just spirals out of control. There are WAY too many events depicted in the last couple of chapters, including some pretty laughable sequences of what's supposed to be heartfelt understanding between a reunited father and son finally making peace between themselves with the help of ruthless violence, and the book feels rushed together in order to make a publication date.

Other reviewers have also noted: the book is not for the young. I'd have to heartily agree.

I noticed the top review on this page claims this book has "Bat-god Syndrome," and I felt I needed to chime in...

I couldn't disagree more about Batman being too capable. In the end, yes, Batman is an over-the-top fighter, but the whole book was about Bruce getting into that zone. For the bulk of the book, Batman's actually "off his game," and had to be saved by one of Gordon's Detectives! Now Gordon's Biracial Detective is actually an amazing character, whose journey really makes this book worth reading. Him being Biracial is significant because he, Batman, and Gordon spend the book dealing with a White Supremacist gang.

In general, the book is over-the-top. I mean, it's Batman, the Detective, and an ATF agent versus a gang of hundreds, but it's also very humanized for the most part. I highly recommend the GraphicAudio version, which is more a play than AudioBook as they utilize a cast of a dozen professional actors, and pro sound effects with amazing results.

And compared to fine literature, this book wouldn't warrant the 5-star rating, but it was far better than I expected, and as good as this kind of book can be. Also, this book may be marketed as tying into the "Batman Begins" movie, but it really doesn't.

A book set early in Batman's career, when Gordon is still a Captain. However, given the fluid superhero timelines and the gear Batman is using, it is set close to the modern day, with hints of anti terrorist combat air patrols being problems for Batman to sneak Batplanes past, and that sort of thing.

He uses body armor a lot at this point in Shirley's version, and actually gets hit by more than one bullet.

The antagonists are a group of crazy drug dealing white supremacists, led by a nut, and a nutty technological wizard. An ex-Gotham cop, a couple of Federal agents, and the cops son also get mixed up in this. Cormac, the police guy and bounty hunter is a pretty good character.

The supremacists have developed some nasty automatic weapons, in particular a hybrid machine gun/shotgun, and man portable missiles. They do have a final plan, which involves political destabilisation of the USA via the expedient method of blowing the crap out of a large percentage of the current leadership.

Batman is stretched physically, technologically and mentally to cover this, as an old training partner he had a thing for has come to town, and he most definitely gets physical with her.

During one cute discourse on the actual flying mammals that hang around his cave, it is discovered that he and Alfred have a particular bat as a pet, one with a hole in its wing that they looked after.

One funny quote by a old-timer bounty hunter acquaintance of Cormac's : "I mean, jeez, how can you take a guy like that seriously, wears tights, leaps about on the roofs, wears a mask, thinks he's the Phantom or something."

A tossup on this one, 3.75 might be just about right.

Batman: Dead White
By: John Shirley

A pretty good story, sets off early in Batman's career as he's just really getting into the crime fighting game. Honestly, this is an interesting story albeit one that could 'cause a ton of offense to some people. Unlike the normal wack-jobs that Batman faces (Two-Face, Joker, Riddler, Scarecrow, and the likes) the villian in this book is a steroid-filled, white supremacist. So I'm sure that with history textbooks and movies now-a-days, many people have an idea of the attitudes and personalities that follow those two words and I absolutely refuse to repeat anything in there (hence the offensive part of the book). Anyway, this "steroid junkie" has plans to overthrow the country and him and his band of fanatics to take over the country and eventually the world. This book is laden with some violent and gorish acts. But overall, ignoring the profanity and the racial slurs, I thought that it was a pretty good book and I would recommend it to any fans of Batman, action stories, or even anyone who's just looking for something to read.

I give this book an 9.0/10 even though there is the excessive profanity and racial slurs, I love how some of the fight scenes are described.

Felt like more of a political agenda than an actual Batman story - I was disgusted with this book after it started out promising in the beginning. It's not just because of topics it deals with but because of how it was written and came across. You cant honestly say this book wasn't written with a specific point of view in mind - its far from neutral. The writing was on par with bad fan-fiction.

What other reviewers call realism in this book I call unwelcome to my own personal interpretation of the Batman mythos.

The "death/appearances/haunting in the Batcave" whole subplot is so forced and counter productive I felt nauseas each it came up - it's like walking through a kindergarten class and a kid hands you the most horrible painting you've ever seen and because you accept it he keeps giving you more and more and more. In this case, it's the first time I've ever wanted to stop reading a Batman book - I was like well I'll let this one go but felt I had to finish it to see where the abomination ended.

Cormac and son subplot - completely unmoving - in fact I think they get more "page time" than Batman does.

This book is too politically correct for its own good - its hits just about all the issues except abortion - the whole thing is into itself a heck of a lot more than its into Batman and that's a big problem in my opinion.

Ask yourself this question - what are 5-10 references to Timothy McVeigh doing in a Batman book? Why not follow up this gem of a book with one of Batman vs. Rah's Al Ghul who just teamed up with Osama Bin Laden? Joker & Jeffery Dahmer? Roman Sionis teams up with or idolizes Tony Soprano. Oh no wait I got it - Amanda Waller teams up with Hillary Clinton. I mean really folks....tie-ins to real world people and events are shakey at best and don't belong here.

The only thing missing from this book is a free i-pod and political party donation form.

Keep politics out of Batman

I'm a big fan of John Shirley's other work, especially "Crawlers" and "Demons" -- though rarely have I been struck, in reading a writer's efforts, with quite so palpable a feeling that I am being informed of that writer's personal details. In Shirley's case, though I know nothing about him except what I have read in the aforementioned novels and his collection, "Black Butterflies," I am quite positive that Shirley is quite politically liberal and almost certainly gay. Neither of these facts of his personal life make any difference to me when reading his books, except insofar as they break the illusion created by the story. I should not have to leave the narrative in order to ponder the narrator, yet I find myself doing so.

"Batman: Dead White" is a competent and compelling story, with some interesting takes on a young and still less-than-completely-confident Batman learning to put himself mentally "in the pocket," achieving a sort of bat-mind-of-no-mind in order to defeat his foes. Batman is, after all, simply a man, whose only advantages are his training, his equipment, and his will. The shades of obsession Shirley weaves into Batman's inner dialogue are perfectly in keeping with the character as most readers will see it. The action is well-paced, the stakes high enough to give Batman a challenge, and the running struggle between the personae of Bruce Wayne and the Dark Knight worthy of the character's legacy.

That said, the novel suffers greatly from Shirley's left-wing hand-wringing. The man cannot resist editorializing as the story progresses. The result is a host of two-dimensional, unrealistic villains -- from the quintessential redneck, racist Sheriff, to the "militia nuts" who form the key villain's white supremacist followers, to the villain White Eyes (aka "Big White") himself. The steroid-abusing "tan-challenged" leader of the Great Big Evil White Supremacist group against whom Batman is pitted is more a caricature than a character.

When Shirley isn't treating us to trigger-happy senior citizens with Rush Limbaugh and NRA bumper-stickers on their RVs, he's preaching to us that there is no difference between fascists and "neoconservatives." Shirley's political and emotional perspectives also hinder him in his attempts to get into the mind of the Batman, for this detective -- for all his hatred of firearms -- is by no means a liberal. He is a vigilante, a mindset to which most liberals cannot relate. Thus when Shirley writes sentences like, "Batman was ready to rock," the reader cringes.

Fans of the Batman genre will enjoy this book. Despite its flaws, I did. It's worth a read, though I'm a little disappointed in John Shirley.

John Shirley is a puzzle.

On one hand, he can easily take a character like Batman and play it safe - while on the other, he can throw Batman into a world unlike any seen before in both previous BATMAN novels and comics. DEAD WHITE is a book always struggling between the powers of copyright protection and original invention. The book is smothered with foul language.

And not just your usual, and expected, dirty words but racial epitaphs, slurs and outright insults to anyone and everyone - if you're anything other than male, white and American - be prepared to raise an eyebrow or two at what you read here.

Which won't come as so much a surprise since the main plot here involves Batman getting to the heart of a mystery dealing with WHITE POWER, AYRN BROTHERHOOD and racist groups and ideologies. Shirley is not playing by the comic book ground rules laid down by DC Comics here - instead Shirley has taken a bold step in putting Batman in the thick of racial tension, hatred and "home soil" terrorisim. He's also moved Batman's early years to either starting just before 9/11 or to starting just after. Because here Batman has been on the Gotham scene for a little over a year and a half and 9/11 is mentioned in past tense. This adds a real feel of gravity to the book. It helps to weigh Batman down with a more intense sense of purpose and drive. More than just living up the promise he made to his dead parents, he's living up to the promise of America as well.

And while that may sound a bit too political for some tastes - never fear, because Shirley never reaches too deep or too far into these topics - instead he spends his mandate on a story and villains so cardboard and so "black and white" that you cant help but be reminded your really reading nothing more than a Batman story. All the tricks are here. The miracle utility belt, the Batmobile (with full transformation powers - turning into the Batboat early on in the novel), the ultra high tech armor, and the Batcave itself - all of which reads very smoothly on the page but adds nothing to the story. A former flame from his early "training days" enters stage left and and brings with her a touch of the supernatural to ease Batman/Bruce through a troubling "spirit" moment - a good idea, but just a sub-plot.

A lot happens in this book - and it all happens in a straight line. Despite all the action, violence and death - the story moves from A to B to Coda quickly, and before you know it - it's over. Like Shirley's previous foray into the VERTIGO Universe with WAR LORD - BATMAN: DEAD WHITE is packed with novel ideas but routine plots and action.

For the casual fan and the die-hard alike, Batman stories are generally thought to involve at least one member of the rogue's gallery, even in a background role. For me, part of the constant allure is not only seeing which villain is involved in the Caped Crusader's current dilemma, but how the conflict might be either unique or relevant to contemporary history, if at all. No such element exists in "Dead White". Instead, author John Shirley takes Batman's persona as detective and utilizes it in a somewhat more real-world crime story involving a gang of white supremacist drug and weapons merchants. Essentially, it takes the ying of Batman's extreme personality and butts it up against a more realistic extreme of racist militia groups. If this concept seems to be on the mature side of the spectrum, that would be a correct assumption. Unlike even the more adult-oriented Batman stories available, the language and situations are adults only, making both an interesting new take on the Dark Knight and a great crime drama.