Chapter Six: Dynamic Duos
Place: Offices of DC Comics, New York City
Year: 1986
O'Neil gathered his papers as he saw people nod or shake their heads. He was on a roll! Now to the next part… it was going to be so good! "Another thing that I've been keeping to myself is the idea that Batman should be an urban legend." He saw the confused glances people threw at him and nervously scratched the back of his head. But, but everyone up until then had agreed… They were supposed to be smiling… "I, um, want to do an urban legend Batman."
Screwing up his courage, he said, "My idea is that he is nobody even believes he exists. His Justice League career isn't on the books. In all the years he's been a superhero, nobody has managed to take his picture and there have never been any reliable eyewitnesses. And no, those lunatics over at Arkham don't count. It all adds a sense of mystery to what should be a mysterious character. If criminals are a cowardly, superstitious lot, then they are going to run when they see the boogeyman is real. What do you think?" a hopeful O'Neil asked.
He grew a little worried when he looked around and saw that the still silent staff of DC Comics were just twiddling their thumbs or shuffling papers. One guy coughed. "Guys?"
Frank Miller slowly turned in his seat to face his erstwhile boss. "Denny?"
"Yeah Frank?"
"Do you really want to know what I think of that?"
The editor smiled. "Of course."
Miller frowned. "I say it's stupid!
A shocked O'Neil's jaw just dropped. "Wha-what?! What are you talking about Frank?"
Batman's chief writer just face-palmed. What was he talking about…? "Denny, its bad enough you think of something that dumb, you go and blab about it in front of everybody else! Maybe everyone else is too 'nice' to point this out to you but I'm not. Good God, first you say that Batman went soft by doing public charity events, then you say that nobody believes he exists… You could've at least told me before all this and I could've saved you the humiliation!"
"Frank I…" He looked at the people there and saw that there were indeed looks of uncertainty and doubt. Uncertainty and dead silence… Great, someone might as well start playing the chirping cricket sound effect music. "All right, everyone maybe I didn't think this out so much."
Kahn looked at Miller. "You say it can't work. Would you care to explain why?"
Miller nodded and in a rare display of empathy placed his hand on O'Neil's shoulder. "It's like this boss lady. If Batman's mysterious and nobody knows anything about him, fine. He doesn't give interviews and he doesn't smile for the cameras, at least not anymore. Some people even ask if he has superpowers or if he's a robot or if there's more than one Batman and Commissioner Gordon has them like some kind of SWAT team. Hey… Hey you!" Miller snapped his fingers. "Didn't you write a story like this once?"
Frank Robbins sighed. Was it too much to ask Miller to know people's names? "Yeah," he muttered, "it was called 'The Batman nobody knows.' A bunch of street kids are trading their Batman stories and each story is completely different."
"Whatever," Miller said dismissively. "So yeah, people not knowing anything about Batman can work but not people believing he's not real. It could only work for his first year because in all the years since then somebody's got to have seen the Batmobile going down Gotham streets.
"And this is the DCU for crying out loud!" He reached for some drawings from the nearest stack before continuing. "Are we really going to believe that in a world where…" He paused and briefly examined the drawings. "…where the greatest hero is an alien, time lost knights of King Arthur's court ride flying horses, where Atlantis is a member of the UN, where talking gorillas say Planet of the Apes is racist, and where vigilantes run around in clown outfits, that people would think that Batman couldn't possibly exist? In the long run, Batman as urban legend could only work if the story was set in the first year or is he were the only superhero in the world and all the others are in comic books. That way people realistically could say, 'no way, it can't be true, it's just an urban legend.'
"In fact, even if we did that, the idea that he's just an urban legend still can't work and here's why. In Dark Knight, in my story, everyone knew it was Batman when he came back. Whether you were for Batman or against him, you couldn't ignore him. He was 'too big.' He was… the ubermensch." O'Neil just rolled his eyes at his grinning writer. "And that's the point! When asked about it, Commissioner Gordon said that there was at least a dozen other ways to get Batman's attention, all of them less obvious than the bat-signal. No, he said, the reason that he was lighting up half the sky was so that they would know, so that they would all know."
"So they'd all know…" DC's editor-in-chief said thoughtfully. Now she knew that Julie Schwartz was right to call this meeting. "Frank, you're a good man. Keep this up and I'll have you be the editor instead of O'Neil." When she saw the worried look on the (current) editor's face, however, she mischievously smiled. "Don't worry Denny, you still got your job… for know at least."
She changed gears. "Alright, we've talked about the heroes Frank, what about the villains? What new villains are you going to make or what old ones will you revitalize?"
Miller threw a disinterested look at his erstwhile boss. "No drastic alterations. As for, say, Penguin and Two-Face, I might retell their origins here and there but nothing major. Except maybe Mr. Freeze… lots of people know about him from the TV show but right now, he's a benchwarmer. Maybe a half dozen other villains have his cold gimmick. Somebody's going to have to give him a major overhaul like giving him a real tear jerker origin to make him work. I'm going to have Joker the same as in my stories, a crazy clown whose only purpose is fighting Batman. Remember how he was in a coma for years and only woke up after learning that Batman had returned? Same deal."
Jenette Kahn raised an eyebrow; O'Neil and Miller weren't joking when they said that Batman would have no major revamp.
"No origin, eh?" That's when they all turned and looked at the most… disturbing man in comics. Clad in ripped jeans and magical charms, Alan Moore grinned a puckish grin through a bearded face and started tapping the desk with a pen. "Miller you have no origin planned for Joker?"
The man looked blankly back at Moore. "No."
"Good." Moore continued tapping with the pen. "Very good," he gleefully said. "The clown has never had a real origin, has he? To the extent that anyone has ever given him an origin at all, it was just some fellow with in a hood falls into a vat of acid, pulls off his hood and he's turned into Joker. Isn't that so?" He saw Miller nod. "Excellent…"
Kahn was confused. "Alan," she said as she shifted in her chair, "I don't get it. Why shouldn't Joker get an origin story and stop being a blank slate?"
Moore grinned. He tapped the pen. "Because you ask yourself why has he been a blank slate for so long and no, because the earlier writers are too lazy to give a proper origin doesn't count. As it stands, he has no origin and for all we know he kills for no reason other than that it's Tuesday." He stopped tapping the pen. "And that's the reason why he can't have an origin!"
A knowing smile spread across O'Neil's face. He understood what Moore was saying. "Joker," said the writer, "is madness itself and so can have no origin. If he has a name he's a just a man but withhold the name he's a monster. Who says he can't have just popped out of thin air. Maybe he did! At most, I'll have Joker think about a failed comedian driven mad by the death of his wife and son but refuse to tell us if that's his past, saying instead that he prefers it to be multiple choice."
"Life's just one big joke to the clown then," stated O'Neil.
Moore smiled. "It's the killing joke." He looked at Schwartz and said, "Julie, this scheme of yours just might work. Just because I plan to murder you sometimes…"
The grand old man saw people staring at him and the writer and so he shrugged his shoulders. "When I had the idea to have my last Superman story written as if it really were the last Superman story," he sheepishly said, "Moore here said he'd kill me if I let anyone else do it."
"And I would have too!" said the eccentric Englishman. "Julie here had the right idea because you only fix things if they're broken and neither Batman nor any of our other characters are broken. Just look at what we can do with Joker! Don't change the past, build on it! If things had gone differently I'd be writing a Batman lookalike called Professor Night, a Wonder Woman lookalike called Glory and a Superman lookalike called Supreme just to show—"
"Alan!" snapped Jenette Kahn, "If you want to work with Denny and Frank, fine, but no more of this. Got it?" He seemingly acquiesced to her demands but she drew no comfort from the man's Guy Fawkes grin. Great Rao, she felt more like a babysitter than an editor sometimes… "Miller, Moore has some Joker ideas. Are there plans for Catwoman?"
He nodded. "They've tried taming Catwoman in recent years and have had her and Bruce go on dates. Batman even had Robin go on missions with her so that he could get to know 'mom.' Catwoman as mom of the bat-family…" Miller frowned—or in his case frowned some more. "Maybe she's no killer but that's going a bit too far.
"I'm planning Batman Year One which'll talk about his first year. Part of this will be Selina Kyle." Miller passed out drawings from Dark Knight and some other ones by the tentative Year One artist. One set of drawings showed an old, bloated Kyle with pink hair and makeup plastered over her face, the other set had a much younger Kyle wearing a black bra, a mini skirt, and little else as she loitered on a dirty street corner. "Selina will be a prostitute who heard of Batman and copied the idea of a costume and name; her friend will be a child whore named Holly. It foreshadows Dark Knight Returns where she runs—"
An outraged Schwartz slammed his fist on the table and shot up. "Wait! We can't do that! Selina should have too much dignity…" He clenched and unclenched his fist, letting his anger cool before speaking again. "You can do it if it's a one shot like in Dark Knight or Watchmen but not if it's going to be regular continuity story. After all, it's… it's for the kids!"
Miller's eyebrows arched up. "Says who?"
The grand old man of DC Comics shot him a withering glare at the man. "Says you. Says the child you once were when you bought that first comic book."
He sighed. "Alright Julie, fine. Maybe she just pretended to be a hooker to rob the Johns of their money. Does anyone have any other Catwoman ideas," he grumbled, "ones that won't be censored?"
The curmudgeon saw Denny O'Neil his hand. "Yeah, what is it?"
"Um, y'know I have some ideas about what we can do with Selina." He should, he was supposed to be the editor, wasn't he?
"What are they?" growled Miller.
"I remember Catwoman's Earth Two counterpart—don't worry Mr. Schwartz! I'm not bringing back any alternate dimensions!" O'Neil said a silent prayer when he saw the old man calm down. "Like I was saying, that version of Catwoman reformed, married her Batman, and gave birth to Huntress. Unlike the regular Catwoman she had an origin beyond the idea that she had amnesia and all she can remember her father's pet shop. She came from an abusive marriage to an unnamed man; she eventually snapped, put on a costume, and robbed him of everything he had."
O'Neil smiled when looked around and saw everyone intently listening. Being the editor means being the boss! "It can work. We can use that. So maybe… maybe Selina is a broken woman trapped in an abusive relationship with a sham husband. He only married her on paper as part of some money making scheme, but he'll beat her if he catches her looking at another man. Yes, he uses her as his secretary, his slave, maybe even his whore, living all the while in a mansion while his sham wife lives in the ghetto. And no, he doesn't pay her." He saw people shaking their heads at the sadness and he sighed. "Why would you pay your wife for helping in you in your joint business? Her only joy in life is her cats, chiefly her black cat Hecate.
"It's near Christmas when it finally happens. After Selina finds incriminating info on her man, he, not surprisingly, shoves her out of a thirty story window. However!" said O'Neil dramatically, "a snowdrift breaks her fall and she is seemingly resurrected by cats as Hecate watches. Thus revived, she becomes Catwoman. That's when she meets Batman/Bruce who begins falling in love with both her and Selina Kyle. She begins losing it since she wants to be good for Batman's sake but there's too much poison in her.
"For example we see Catwoman straddling Batman who is on his back while they are both underneath mistletoe. Mistletoe can be deadly if you eat it he says, but a kiss, Catwoman counters, can be even deadlier if you mean it. Later Selina and Bruce are dancing under the same plant and she muses that mistletoe can be deadly if you eat it. When Bruce says that a kiss can be even deadlier if you mean it and sees her gasp, they both realize the truth.
O'Neil could feel his pulse racing; the climax was going to be so great! "In the end she ultimately kidnaps her abusive husband and there we learn that, in stark contrast to everything we ever said, Catwoman never swore not to kill—she swore never to kill again.
"She confronts her tormentor and though he keeps shooting her, she keeps getting up. Two shots and she says 'Four five, still alive!' He shoots her again. She staggers like a drunk but manages to say, 'Six, seven all good girls go to heaven. Wow only two lives left, better save one for next Christmas, but for now, how about a kiss Sandy Claus?' She then blows the two of them up or sets them on fire or something. Batman rushes in but he only finds the broken body of the guy, no Selina. Later Alfred drives a despairing Bruce through Gotham streets when he is told to stop. Bruce thinks he might have seen Selina and gets out of the car only to find Hecate in the snow. Picking up the cat, he goes back and Alfred says 'Merry Christmas Mr. Wayne and goodwill towards men.' To which he responds 'goodwill towards men… and women.'"
With that many people there smiled and some even clapped. Frank Miller was one of them. "Not bad boss! It's almost as good as mine even!" O'Neil just smirked good naturedly at that. "Hey Denny, what do you say if after this is done we figure a way to merge our ideas?"
Jenette Kahn nodded her approval at this. "Looks like we're back on track. Miller, O'Neil, from the notes you gave me before all this, that looks like all you got, is that right. I mean yeah, you'll come with more but for now that's it, right?" The two men told Kahn that, yes was effectively correct. "Well then I guess that's that. Anyways, before I turn it over Wonder Woman and George Perez, I'd just like to thank all of you two for giving us your ideas.
"George, you're up!"
Author's Notes and Replies: Wonder Woman will hopefully be up very soon. (Today's date is 2/27/13) For now however, lets go through the lettercol, shall we?
Markmark: O'Neil does come off as cranky but as you see, he gets what's coming to him in the next chapter. As for Leslie Thompkins and Alice Chilton... well I I try to please everyone but you can't hit a homer every time... :(
Sir Thames: As always, thank you for your kind words good sir!
"Anonymous": Buddy, regardless of what we fans might want, DC's a business and that means that until more people want to see proper management than want to see Superman and Batman catch bank robbers we'll be stuck trying to figure these things out. Me, I go with the flow and enjoy it as "just a story" but if you want to good answer to this, I recommend Mark Miller's Superman: Red Son which has Lex Luthor save the world from a communist Superman. However, its not a simple morality is reversed mirror world story, no. Superman is evil because he is good; driven by his own compassion (and Marxist philosophy) he becomes leader of the Soviet Union after Stalin's death to make his country and the world a Utopia... and he does it at the cost of human freedom. Luthor is good because he is evil; he is driven only by his hatred of Superman but his very indifference to humanity means that if he inadvertently saves the world and raises living standards to boot he doesn't care.
In defense of her husband, First Lady Lois Lane says that it didn't matter if FDR cheated on his wife, all that mattered was that he saved the world from Hitler. has two relevant pages on this subject, "Reed Richards is useless" and "Alternate Reed Richards is awesome."
As to your other remarks, why don't you register so we can PM?