"THE MONSTER IN THE MIRROR"
Writers Gerry Conway & Paul Levitz
Artists: Gene Colan & Tony DeZuniga
Letterer: Annette Kawecki | Colorist: Adrienne Roy | Editor: Dick Giordano
The Plot: Batman, now a vampire, returns to Wayne Manor, where he swats Alfred aside, apologizes, and descends into the Batcave. A moment later, Father Green arrives at the Manor's door and Alfred, confused, lets him in. Alfred places a call to Christopher Chance, the Human Target, then listens to Green's story: more than one hundred years ago, a New Orleans plantation owner named Louis Dubois abused his servants (formerly his slaves), until one night, those servants took revenge by summoning him out to the bayou at night and getting him bitten by a snake. Dubois' sister followed him out to the swamp, where the snake's bite turned him into a vampire, and Dubois then bit and turned his sister as well. Father Green reveals that Dubois is the Monk, and that Batman is now a vampire.
At the home of Dala and her brother, Vicki realizes that Bruce vanished during the party. But Dick Grayson arrives to escort her home, while Dala and the Monk observe from hiding. Elswehere, in Gotham City, Batman comes upon a hood named Marley about to rob a jewelry store. The Caped Crusader stops Marley by biting his neck and draining his blood, then he retreats to a rooftop as dawn breaks.
Continuity Notes: At Gotham City's WGBS News affiliate station, former Commissioner Gordon and his new partner, Jason Bard, visit reporter Olivia Ortega and procure from her the faked Batman photos that Arthur Reeves revealed during his campaign. Meanwhile, Rupert Thorne receives Vicki Vale's Batman photos from Vicki's editor, Morton. Agreeing with Vicki's assessment that Bruce Wayne must be Batman, Thorne prepares to take action.
My Thoughts: Though it's as quick a read as the prior installment, this issue feels a bit more substantive than last time. Batman barely appears, but between the backstory of the Monk and Dala, and the ever sinister machinations of Rupert Thorne, there's just more here than last time. Plus we have Gordon and Bard up to something involving the fake photos, but we readers don't know what their plan is yet, which keeps things interesting as well.
So since the story itself is fine, I'll take this brief moment to register a general complaint: to date, I'm not a fan of Conway's handling of Rupert Thorne. I mean, don't get me wrong -- his schemes are entertaining; the double-feint with the faked photos during the election was clever, and now he seemingly knows Batman's secret identity. My issue, so far at least, is that Conway didn't need Rupert Thorne for any of this. He could've made up his own character to fill the role. This doesn't
feel like Thorne.
The weird thing is, I'm not even sure how to explain what I mean by this. But when you read Steve Englehart's original Thorne stories, even though he received relatively low pagetime overall, he felt... real, somehow. I mean, like a real, developed character. I would say the same about Thorne in BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, as well, though that is perhaps due in large part to the brilliant vocal performance of John Vernon. But regardless, Conway's Thorne doesn't have that sense of reality about him. He feels more like a plot device than a fully-formed character, I suppose. He's here to facilitate sub-plots -- the election, the fall of Gordon, and now the revelation of Batman's identity -- but he feels like he's doing it because Conway is writing him to do it, not because he, himself, is a character choosing to do it.
Does that make any sense? I'm not even certain it makes sense to me. I know how I feel, but it's really difficult to explain!
ReplyDeleteI can’t believe Vicki actually left that folder behind in her desk, locked or not — a dummy copy, lest her editor break in looking for it, sure, but keeping the real thing there is even riskier and flat-out dumber than her telling him about the story in the first place as long as she had any misgivings over sharing her work.
The fact that snakes figure into the Monk’s vampiric turn makes the Batgirl story concluded in this issue even stranger to have run in parallel, since as I’ve noted previously it revolves around a serpent woman called Lady Viper who bites her victims on the neck, leading early on to a newspaper headline speculating about vampires in Gotham, and Batgirl herself gets turned into a semi-ophidian creature. I wonder if editor Dick Giordano didn’t know where Conway and Batgirl writer Cary Burkett were going with their respective stories until it was too late, and just as a process junkie I’m curious about what led to Paul Levitz’s co-writer credit on this chapter of the Batman saga as well as Paul Kupperberg’s on the second part of “Academy of Crime”.
I do think I understand what you’re getting at re Boss Thorne, FWIW.
ReplyDeleteOh! I forgot to mention that I’ve been slowly making my way through a nicely cleaned-up run of the 1966 Marvel Super-Heroes cartoons on YouTube and, recalling your fondness for John Vernon’s work as Thorne on B:TAS, waiting for it to come up here so I could mention that he does an indescribably, um, period-specific job as Tony Stark / Iron Man, Namor, and Glenn Talbot, with the latter perhaps interesting in light of his role as Thunderbolt Ross on the 1996-1997 Incredible Hulk show that I’m not sure I ever watched.
Jeez, I don't know how I keep falling so far behind on responding to comments. I flag them with the intention of replying within a few days, and then before I know it, a month has passed!
DeleteAnyway, thank you for the info on John Vernon. I had no idea he was in the 1960s Marvel cartoons, and I had forgotten that he voiced General Ross in the 90s Hulk cartoon, though I did watch.
I do, however, recall that he voiced Doctor Doom in the 90s Fantastic Four series. Perhaps an odd choice, but my recollection (though I haven't seen the show since it originally aired) was that he did a decent job. I think they gave him sort of a metallic "echo" effect to his voice, which seems odd for Doom, but in the context of that series, I thought it worked.
And now I just learned something... I went to look up that 90s FF show to read a bit about it, and found that Vernon was mistakenly credited as Doctor Doom, when it was actually veteran voiceover actor Neil Ross in the role! (And then Ross was replaced in the second season by Simon Templeman.)
Delete
DeleteI find out lots of neat stuff that way — maybe too much, in the sense of how time flies when going down online rabbit holes.
FWIW, Doctor Doom having a metallic voice makes sense to me, along the lines of how Iron Man sounds in the MCU or via Comicraft word balloons; his suit having a voice processor that disguises Tony’s or Rhodey’s own voice was established well before that, although obviously Doom has no need for subterfuge in that regard.