Not Going Silently in the Night
About a week ago I did a post about, where I expressed some opinions about the general evolution of fight scenes in comic books and the difficulties in having two established characters face off in a fight. I also posted some scenes which I intended to exemplify different ways to fail in writing a good fight scene, but I promised to later do a post in which I would focus on fights where a character is essentially squashed by a superior opponent and still managing to come off relatively strong. I doubt that it will come to a huge surprise to anyone that the character squashed in these scenes will be Batman, but I'm certain you all also understand that we all have our dangerous obsessions, which limit our ability to enjoy normal. Anyway, to the scans themselves.
I chose three fights to illustrate my points, in a way, in this post. As a good fight often takes more place than a bad one, these scans will be more extensive than in my previous post, especially for the last scene. Since in the first post I took all my examples from Loeb's run on Superman/Batman, I thought out of fairness I would also include one scene from the said run. As some of you be aware, one of the most significant changes in canon caused by it was the return of the kryptonian Supergirl we have in comics today. I could spend quite a lot of time on that decision, how it was handled and what it signified considering the editorial direction of DC, but this isn't the post for that. Anyway, after Kara arrived on Earth, she was abducted by Darkseid and undervent the easiest brainwash ever so that she became evil. Clark, Bruce and Diana thus went to Apokalips to save that virtous maiden of Krypton and Clark is surprised when Kara attacks him, finally taking him out with the kryptonite ring. Loeb had a really weird take on the kryptonite-as-a-weakness issue. That lead to this scene.
I know that Michael Turner's art has always divided people, but I have to admit to really liking it, especially during action sequences. He had a way of combining dynamic movement with great detail.
As I said, Batman is beaten to a pulp here, but he went in to the fight knowing that, instead approaching it on a mental level. Thus he is able to receive the upper hand by actions taken before the fight and by being willing to absorb to punishment. Even the enragement of Darkseid works, because that causes him to just beat Batman horribly instead of just instantly killing him. At the same time Darkseid comes of strong as well, as it is made clear how much more powerful he is than Batman and the only way out of the situation is for Batman to find leverage against him. What I have always really weird is that people argue this scene to be somehow representative of the Batgod and how Darkseid comes off so weak here. Not only do I disagree with that, but those same people rarely mention the later scenes of Diana blocking the Omega Beams with her bracers and Clark pretty much bitchslapping Darkseid to the Source wall. Personal opinion, but as said, this is one of the few scenes that works for me in anyway in Loeb's post-Public Enemies run on S/B.
So, Batman got squashed, but still came out looking good. However, it could be argued that Batman in the end is victorious here, so of course he comes looking good, which leads to the next scene. One of the lead-in stories to the Infinite Crisis was Sacrifice, which was a storyline that spanned the main Super-titles and Wonder Woman, leading to an epic smackdown between Superman and Wonder Woman, which had both coming off really strong and capable, thus being an excellent example of how to do a fight between to established powerhouses. In the story it is revealed that through years of subtle efforts Maxwell Lord has managed to take control of Superman perception of the world, basically able to have him do what Lord wants him to do, such as taking out Batman by making Superman think he's fighting Darkseid.
So what happened?
That last line is a bit weird, because in the issue previous to this one the fight was between Clark and Darkseid. Aynway, as can be seen, Clark pretty much annihilates Bruce there, as it should be considering that he did take Bruce by complete surprise. However, Bruce isn't just curling up to a ball there and praying it to end, he puts up a fight the best he can and, most importantly, by using whatever means he has. Even in that situation he manages to realize everything around him and activate the system despite the fact that Clark is a nanosecond from breaking him like a twig. So even if Batman is brutally beaten there, he still came out looking capable, at least in my opinion.
The last scene I chose if from Gail Simone's awesome JLA Classified storyline The Hypothetical Woman. It is a somewhat complicated storyline, but the main gist is that an ex-dictator overthrown by the JLA has set up a meta-human program in China with the goverment's support. A bunch of mercenaries try to assault the said dictator in order to see that he pays for his crimes, but are captured and turned in to immensily powerful metahumans in service of the dicator. Let's meet them, shall we?
I have to say that I consider the counter-League here possibly of Simone's greatest creations and it's almost sad that while they had a prominent role in this story, it wasn't as prominent as it could have been. And can you guess who Batman is going to face of them? Anyway, long story short, the League decides to take out the ex-dictator through tactics and politics, which at one point requires Diana engaging the Chinese military. Yeah, anyway, during the battle the counter-League here arrives to the scene.
Pretty badass there.
As you can see, the counter-League is pretty brainwashed.
Looks pretty bad, doesn't it?
That "No reason to shirk my duties" part is such a Hell Yeah moment to me, so that week post is also fulfilled here.
With the exception of J'Onn, and the possible exception of Diana, I think Batman is the last member of the JLA you start telling about the face of war, but I let us continue anyway.
I was tempted to post how the League took care of things and especially the five last pages, where I was reminded why I love Wally so much and where Batman gives a brilliant speech about how he is simply filled with hope, but it would kind of go against the point of the post. I would however like to say here how Simone brought up here one of the reasons I thought the League of Gods was so awesome and why I think the latter incarnations have kind of failed. The Morrison League wasn't about incredibly powerful individiduals forming a League, at least to me, it was about the most powerful heroes on Earth uniting in to something that was even more powerful than the sum it's of it's parts.
Now to the beat-down of the Bat. To me, Batman actually is more badass there than he would have been if he had beaten Jin. To me there's a limit where the action stops being badass and becomes actually stupid, because in order for the protagonist to be able to do that requires the other party to suddenly become incredibly weak. Jin over there is supposed to be the spirit of martial arts, her whole existance is to be unbeatable in hand-to-hand combat, so if Batman had done that, Jin wouldn't have been all that and Batman would have been something else than the mortal man that makes him so awesome. However in this version, even though Batman is going down, at least he manages to put up a decent fight and take a lot of punishment, which is pretty cool considering he's facing the very spirit of martial arts. Also the way he behaves, his dialogue, how he keeps going over the plan, even while being pounded to the ground, just make him come of as extremely strong here, at least to me, despite the fact that he is losing, as he again should be against an opponent like that.
So these were my examples of brutal beatdowns done right, just as the previous examples were about how they were wrong. They are just my opinions, though, and I expect there to be a lot of disagreements with them. Kind of the awesome thing about this medium, as it allows discussion on matters. With that I sign off with this post as I prepare for my book club post next friday.