Absolute Batman #15 // Review
There’s this family of people called the Grimms. They’ve acquired a great fortune amusing people. Alfred is telling Bruce about the family. Alfred’s reluctant to tell Bruce WHY he’s telling him about the Grimms. Eventually, though...eventually hes’ going to have to get to the point in Absolute Batman #15. Writer Scott Snyder tells a story that’s illustrated by artist Jock. Color comes to the page courtesy of Frank Martin. The Joker makes his first appearance in the Absolute Universe as a Keyser Soze-like legend of a criminal monster.
The family goes back to the dawn of mass entertainment. Joseph Grimm I grew-up as an orphan on he street performing as a clown. He was quite successful as a street performer. Made enough money to bring his act to Vaudeville. He made enough money from THAT to buy his own theatre...then invest in some of the first silent movies. His son had expanded the business...eventually expanding to television. From there he got into digital media. Why all of the interest in telling all of this to Bruce? Well...legend has it that Joseph Grimm IV owns islands all over the world where it is said...that he hunts people.
It’s not a comic book so much as it is a really, really illustrated horror story. Snyder doesn't give the artist a whole lot to do other than illustrate the blocks of text that he's putting to the paper. And that's perfectly fine. It's just not necessarily something that feels all that much like a comic book. The art is in articulating deeply with the narrative in a way that feels all that compelling. The myth that Snyder is building seems to be a natural outgrowth of an amplification of the concept of The Joker, but that doesn't mean that it's terribly original.
Jock that's a really good job of illustrating the story. There's a lot of interesting visuals going on. It would've been nice to see those visuals put in the surface of something a little bit more dynamic than a whole lot of backstory. Not that the narrative isn't interesting. It's just not something that Jock is really all that challenged by. And it doesn't really dynamically interact with the script. The script doesn't allow it to. There are some pretty sharp moments. And they do deliver an appealing kind of horror. It's just not terribly engaging.
And so the Joker is physically a monster in the Absolute Universe. It is not exactly being subtle with it. One of the more dark and senator aspects of the original character was the fact that he was a human who was clearly human, but there was something deeply twisted about him. There's a kind of clever horror about that that works on a whole bunch of different levels that the Absolute Universe version of the character just doesn't have a chance to engage in. And that's really too bad. Because so much of this world is shown to be so amplified on so many levels that it would be nice to see something that would be at least a little bit more nuanced.
