"Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader" by Neil Gaiman

It seems so long ago that I really liked the work of Neil Gaiman. Like many, I was enthralled by "Sandman" and roundly entertained by "Good Omens." Then came "Neverwhere" and "American Gods," reusing many of the tricks and tropes from his earlier work and I began to doubt his powers. "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader" has done little to dispel my doubts.

Gaiman writes the story of many deaths of Batman, described by those who knew him best: the villains and allies in his 70-year fight against crime. Two ghostly presences (one of whom is, no surprise, Bruce Wayne) watch and comment on the proceedings. Bruce protests at the beginning that these things didn't happen, but the other presence counsels him to listen.

This is the problem. The other presence might as well have been Death of the Endless, or Dream. One can almost hear Dream telling Queen Mab that a story need not have happened for it to be true. Get a new trick, Neil.

Since this story marks a transition to a new Batman (Bruce Wayne died, or not, in the pages of "Final Crisis") the logical comparison, one which Gaiman alludes to in his introduction, is Alan Moore's wonderful "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow," which provided a breaking point between the god-like Superman of the 70s and early 80s and John Byrne's re-imagining of the Man of Steel's origins. I re-read the earlier work for this review, and it holds up well, though Moore is a better writer today than he was then.

Moore understands Superman better, I think, than Gaiman understands Batman (I also think Moore gets Batman, but that's not for now). Superman and Clark Kent are coterminous in a way that Bruce Wayne and Batman are not, a point borne out by the fact that Batman endures after the death of Bruce Wayne. Other writers, less talented than Gaiman, have understood this as well.

I have been dwelling so long on the failings of Gaiman that I have said not a word about Andy Kubert's art. The word is WOW! The art is amazing, evocative of the decades of legendary Batman artists like Bob Kane, Neal Adams and Brian Bolland. It makes the book worth reading.

This book has garnered a great deal of acclaim for both Gaiman and Kubert, not least from the New York Times, and one suspects it is a lock for Eisner awards next year. Gaiman will get the same free pass given to writers like Grant Morrison. Doubtless I am on the losing side of this argument, but someone has to speak up. "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader" is a serviceable story, but one that is not up to his talents and one not suited to the task.