Good stuff, Ted! Much better than the sonnet I once wrote about mowing the lawn.

Have you ever tried to write a sonnet? It’s no fun.

What great nonsense spouted by Greg, our friend,
to disparage that most noble of forms,
the sonnet, which I will try to defend,
and then to those poems I hope he warms.

You say they’re no fun, but that is not true.
Why, nothing could be further from the case.
Writing a sonnet is easy to do,
just put every word in the proper place.

Ten syllables a line, fourteen all-up,
it’s just three quatrains and then a couplet.
Some might mention some ‘iambic’ getup,
but prosody is real hard, isn’t it?

Wait, you weren’t talking about good sonnets
we’re you? As they may be past my limits.

As problematic as Philip Tan’s art can be, it’s 1000 times better to look at than Kelly Jones’ steroid disfigurement Batman.

Jones work is highly stylized, so I can see how that might push it beyond some people’s tastes, personally I think it doesn’t work as many times as it does – however, it’s consistent. His Batman may look like he’s had too many steroids and be over sized, but everything in his art is like that, Batman works that way in the world he’s drawn.
Tan’s art work is just poorly laid out, and the line work just isn’t up to scratch to carry it through.
He really does have to be the artist C.B Beluski twittered about having been put on a high level job that far exceeded his talent.

I’m in the same boat with Greek Street. I like Milligan a lot, but it seems too meandering so far. Maybe a reread of the first storyline will sort that out. I recently reread an issue of Shade (#41) in which Shade somehow incarnates the spirit of the original Pandora. What follows is a bawdy and amusing take on the origins of that story, how events get changed in publication and – of particular interest, given the clear intent behind Greek Street – why some stories resonate because of their universal human element. Throw in some nods to ongoing subplots about Shade’s return from the dead, his war against angels and Kathy’s pregnancy (none of which you need to have been following to understand) and you’ve got a whole lot more crammed into one issue than any of his current work.

Again, glad you liked them. Peter and I will soon be working together again so you can look forward to more.

Julian: I don’t know about my “insecurities,” but you’re right of course, because we all view things through our own personal prism, and what works for you might not work for me (especially in comedy). I know that Rugg was playing Brother Voodoo straight, and maybe that was the problem – it was dull. I like the Tony Millionaire story but was glad it didn’t go any longer, as it’s hard to be that surreal for very long. Hickman’s stuff was good, too. I disagree with you about the M.O.D.O.K. story, but that’s cool. I just thought the first issue had more wildly excellent stories, while in this issue, the good ones weren’t so brilliant that they overshadowed the bad stories.

T.: Oh, you’re so wrong. So very, very wrong!!!!!!

I’m just saying.

I don’t know that I entirely buy into Jason’s motivation being overcompensation here; I think another moment of your analysis, where you emphasize the superficiality of his efforts, is the key. Morrison’s Batman has been almost entirely about trauma, right down to having a master villain named “Hurt,” and this arc seems to be about the way trauma plays out. You have Jason’s refracted version of a repetition compulsion — he wears the mask that once belonged to his killer, he’s doing the exact same things that once got him killed — and using the superficiality to distance himself from and project onto others the lethal consequences he once suffered.

Dick has lost a fatehr figure and mentor, and is trying to carry on in his way…but it’s a threat to his own identity, still, and he’s deliberately letting the “Batman act” slip wherever and whenever he can. Sasha’s arguably the most recognizably “human” take on it, despite the outrageous circumstances of her trauma, and seems to be lashing out sincerely (unlike Jason) but blindly (unlike Dick).

Damien, interestingly, is the wild card here. He seems almost immune to what should be very damaging experiences — his grandfather trying to kill him, his father dying, his loss of self-image when he repeatedly turns out not to be the supercompetent genius he thinks he is — but his solution is worryingly like Jason’s, that is, he just keeps trying to realize the image or illusion he wants to inhabit. Perversely, you get the sense that Sasha might be saved by Dick, and Damien might have preferred to be “Scarlet” if the chance had been there.

Considering your shadowplay between Dick and Jason, the added inverse shadowing of Damien and Sasha seems to make a kind of Bat-chiasmus out of the narrative.

Quite so; that’s really the kicker: the historic legacy. I ask hypothetically “was there a reason to wait for Cassaday,” but I realize that even if the only reason is consistency, and even if that’s considered a minor reason, in the long run the delay is nothing. Planetary, as a work, should last and last. Ten years from now, what’s a three year delay?

It should also be noted in the favor of the book that Jason is an excellent conceptual foil for Dick; both are former Robins obsessed with getting out the Shadow of the Bat, and both are trying to fill the void their fallen mentor left in Gotham. Jason’s life turned out much worse than Dick’s, leaving him the psychopathic vigilante while Dick is the respected heir to the cowl, but they’re dealing with many of the same issues; Dick is just as self-conscious as the new Batman as Jason is as the replacement Bat ( as opposed to his earlier Red Hood costume, which was just him putting on a mask in addition to his biker gear ), and as Omar noted, both characters are less effective than their junior partners.

Still, I don’t think it’s a matter of Dick and Jason being downplayed in favor of Morrison’s creations, so much as the fact that both young men are in positions far out of their normal league. And Jason is Dick’s shadow self, whose over-compensation for perceived inadequacy is acted out with a killing spree.