Birth of the Bat by Josh Simmons

[grubcubman]

I'd like to discuss Josh Simmons's newest book, Birth of the Bat, which I really recommend. It's the third "chapter" in his Bat stories; you can find Mark of the Bat here (and in Furry Trap) and Twilight of the Bat here (and in Flayed Corpse). If you haven't read Birth of the Bat yet, you can buy it a bunch of places.

When Twilight of the Bat, the prior chapter of Josh Simmons's bootleg Batman series came out in the fall of 2017, Ken Parille had just written a pretty pulverizing piece on the foundation of comic superheroes as commercial properties for The Comics Journal, aptly titled "Everything Sells Everything"). Taking comic book “events” as his starting point, Parille argued that a comprehensive interpretation of superheroes takes adequate account of their role as moneymakers for the major publishers. He reminded us that superheroes are not gods, not the product of myth, and not really even literary characters. Viewed as vehicles for selling books and ads, superheroes—with their impossible narrative contradictions over time—are easier to understand.

He wrote, “It’s a perfect world, this corporate superhero universe: publishers and creators sell the value of superheroes who sell candy in an ad about events that appears in an event comic that sells other comics/other events that sell the value of superheroes and their (i.e., our) stories.”

I remember thinking Joe McCulloch's review of Twilight of the Bat seemed to build on that by looking for an interpretation of Twilight of the Bat that was something other than subversion—in his view, even the most subversive stories about these big comic properties made them more profitable, if anything: "Watchmen didn't end superhero comics—it only ensured that superhero publishers would make more Watchmen."  In other words, not only are superhero comics moneymaking machines, but even the most biting satire contributes to that tendency.

I thought a lot about that view when reading the latest issue, Birth of the Bat. I think I agree with McCulloch's point—and I definitely agree with Parille's—but it seems to me that the capacity for commercialization reaches a distinct limit when a work crosses certain boundaries, and Simmons's stories cross those boundaries. In the unrelenting disgust of both stories—at least somewhat alleviated by how funny they are—I think Simmons makes it impossible to build on his type of stories in a way that would make serious money for a company like DC or Marvel. Maybe it's the gross shit that makes subversion possible.

So what did you all think of the book?

[timbecile]

I've only read the first Simmons' Batman story and liked it. He generally transcends being dark to walk the knife's edge of queasy, and I didn't get the sense he was angling for employment, just following his general compulsions.
I remember being asked to be in Strange Tales, the Marvel version of Bizarro World, and being told by the editor I could do anything I wanted, but I couldn't, for example, make Peter Parker a drug dealer. That immediately sounded like a pretty good idea. The idea I had was to make Matt Murdock a Marvel copyright lawyer, but I turned the job down, thinking I'd be asking for trouble.
This recent news of Disney lawyers proactively suing potential litigants is a recent example.
I kind of think Marvel movies are not popular in spite of their punitive approach to creators' rights, but because of that very inclination. 

[mikesheawright]

just ordered this the other day from Wigshop, loved the last two.

do we know how he's getting away with doing this legally? does it fall under "parody" or something?

[grubcubman]

Oct 5, 2021 0:36:43 GMT mikesheawright said:

just ordered this the other day from Wigshop, loved the last two.

do we know how he's getting away with doing this legally? does it fall under "parody" or something?

It's great!  Let me know what you think of it.

Yes, that's the theory.  Here's a lil explanation of how parody falls under the "fair use" exception of the Copyright Act: copyrightalliance.org/is-my-parody-fair-use/.

DC could probably decide to sue him anyway just for the hassle and cost of it, because (as you can tell from that post), it's not always easy to see what constitutes fair use and what doesn't. So it's a risk!

[mikesheawright]

Nailed it, 5 stars, A+. Laughed out loud several times, almost threw up at the end. It's pretty easy to make fun of superheroes but really difficult to do it in a way that cuts them down this hard. Like if Batman was a real dude he could probably laugh most things off but not this, too real. Like when someone recognizes something about yourself that you thought only you knew and then keeps hounding you about it. I'm not sure what the point of these are other than just a visceral tone exercise but I hope there's more of it coming.