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A review by jadejade
Batman: Ego by Darwyn Cooke
1.0
My comic book club pick this one-shot, as the new Batman movie was coming out. The following is adapted from the discussion I had with my comic book club members:
Watch out – incoming rant re: Batman EGO!
Trigger warning for domestic violence cos it clearly triggered me FARK.
I could have really liked this but literally one page made me so angry that I couldn't just sit back and enjoy it. The bit where the guy at the start says “I couldn't bear the thought of my wife and daughter in the hands of that maniac—so I killed them myself!” Batman makes Pikachu GASP face.
I'm sorry, are we supposed to feel sympathy for this arsehole? I don't want to be rude but geeze you can tell a man wrote this comic.
What he's describing is not a fridging per se (note the wife and child don't even have the dignity of being shown or named). What that guy tried to do (and succeeded in doing) is a murder-suicide. IRL the media spins stories of tragedy around actual murder-suicides but what I see is glorified domestic violence. Why are we being asked to feel sorry for a person who murdered multiple people?
To be clear, the loss of any life is tragic, and this comic is dancing around the topic of maybe taking a life might save others. BUT it did not even bother to try to deconstruct what a heinous act a murder-suicide is. Instead it treats the guy's situation as a tragedy – oh boo hoo he was so terrified of the Joker that he had no choice but to MURDER the women in his life, how noble and brave of him! You know, like a pharaoh being buried with his property.
And the worst thing of all was that this added absolutely nothing to the comic. Imagine the same scene playing out but the guy instead just 1) expresses distress that he has been rescued; 2) expresses despair that the Joker knows he was the leak; 3) expresses anger that the Batman has driven him to do this – then the guy shoots himself. The rest of the comic can play out exactly the same and you still get Pikachu-face. Comic just as good, right? Which tells me the writer threw in a line about the guy murdering his own wife and daughter for shock value only, never mind that it added zero to the story and the way murder-suicides are portrayed in the media is extremely problematic.
Don't forget, skilled writers/artists can effectively work with limited real estate. It comes across as callous here because I'd put money on the writer not even considering the DV angle, and the treatment of mental health in media is a whole thing as well ahhhh.
I think the writer here is focussed on the dialogue between the Batman vs Bruce Wayne, which tbh I liked in concept: it gave me Scrooge vs the ghost of Christmas past/present/future vibes. That is to say, the writer had a particular direction in mind and almost certainly didn't consider the implications of throw-away lines. In my limited experience, a lot of people of the writer's generation genuinely treat murder-suicide as though it is group-suicide, if it involves a family unit (i.e.: “oh how sad for that family” rather than “that arsehole murdered those innocent people”). The writer could have even chucked in a line about “I discussed this with my wife and we agreed this was the only way out” to emphasise the despair, to make it clearer that this wasn't just a person disposing of property he controlled. But the writer didn't, and that page really lands flat for people who have lived through DV.
Soz that I'm wearing my grumpypants. I really wasn't the right reader for this one.
Watch out – incoming rant re: Batman EGO!
Trigger warning for domestic violence cos it clearly triggered me FARK.
I could have really liked this but literally one page made me so angry that I couldn't just sit back and enjoy it. The bit where the guy at the start says “I couldn't bear the thought of my wife and daughter in the hands of that maniac—so I killed them myself!” Batman makes Pikachu GASP face.
I'm sorry, are we supposed to feel sympathy for this arsehole? I don't want to be rude but geeze you can tell a man wrote this comic.
What he's describing is not a fridging per se (note the wife and child don't even have the dignity of being shown or named). What that guy tried to do (and succeeded in doing) is a murder-suicide. IRL the media spins stories of tragedy around actual murder-suicides but what I see is glorified domestic violence. Why are we being asked to feel sorry for a person who murdered multiple people?
To be clear, the loss of any life is tragic, and this comic is dancing around the topic of maybe taking a life might save others. BUT it did not even bother to try to deconstruct what a heinous act a murder-suicide is. Instead it treats the guy's situation as a tragedy – oh boo hoo he was so terrified of the Joker that he had no choice but to MURDER the women in his life, how noble and brave of him! You know, like a pharaoh being buried with his property.
And the worst thing of all was that this added absolutely nothing to the comic. Imagine the same scene playing out but the guy instead just 1) expresses distress that he has been rescued; 2) expresses despair that the Joker knows he was the leak; 3) expresses anger that the Batman has driven him to do this – then the guy shoots himself. The rest of the comic can play out exactly the same and you still get Pikachu-face. Comic just as good, right? Which tells me the writer threw in a line about the guy murdering his own wife and daughter for shock value only, never mind that it added zero to the story and the way murder-suicides are portrayed in the media is extremely problematic.
Don't forget, skilled writers/artists can effectively work with limited real estate. It comes across as callous here because I'd put money on the writer not even considering the DV angle, and the treatment of mental health in media is a whole thing as well ahhhh.
I think the writer here is focussed on the dialogue between the Batman vs Bruce Wayne, which tbh I liked in concept: it gave me Scrooge vs the ghost of Christmas past/present/future vibes. That is to say, the writer had a particular direction in mind and almost certainly didn't consider the implications of throw-away lines. In my limited experience, a lot of people of the writer's generation genuinely treat murder-suicide as though it is group-suicide, if it involves a family unit (i.e.: “oh how sad for that family” rather than “that arsehole murdered those innocent people”). The writer could have even chucked in a line about “I discussed this with my wife and we agreed this was the only way out” to emphasise the despair, to make it clearer that this wasn't just a person disposing of property he controlled. But the writer didn't, and that page really lands flat for people who have lived through DV.
Soz that I'm wearing my grumpypants. I really wasn't the right reader for this one.