Review: Batman: The Cult: The Deluxe Edition hardcover (DC Comics)

In putting together my DC Universe Trade Paperback Timeline, one era of books that have caught my attention are those surrounding Batman: Death in the Family. More, perhaps, than worlds living and dying in Crisis on Infinite Earths, the death of Jason Todd in writer Jim Starlin’s Death in the Family has become so much a fabric of the being of modern DC Universe readers. For twenty years, the name of the second Robin became synonymous with his death and the controversy that surrounded it, drowning out any of the character’s other accomplishments, if there were any; it took no small amount of time for Jason to step out of that shadow post-resurrection.

To be sure, Batman: The Cult, by Starlin and artist Bernie Wrightson and newly rereleased in Deluxe format, is considerably more than a Jason Todd story. It’s a solid Batman story, despite considerable controversy that I agree the story warrants and even invites. It’s a harangue against 1980s social conservatism that saw individual desire set before the needs of society, and indeed it’s not hard to find reflections even of today’s politics still within the story. And, The Cult is an important touchstone in the ongoing Batman saga, hearkening back to The Dark Knight Returns before it and inspiring, the reader realizes, a number of stories that followed.

But it’s also an interesting Jason Todd story.

[Review contains spoilers]

Cult is a ready condemnation of modern man, and a cautionary tale along the adage that if we don’t speak up for others, no one will speak up for us. The common citizens of Gotham — portrayed mainly throughout the story in Dark Knight-esque impersonal television soundbites – are slow to rise up against cult leader Deacon Blackfire because at first he targets only criminals, and second goes after the politicians; that he disappears the city’s homeless, even for murderous purposes, only helps his appeal. In the late 1980s when Cult came out, and with echoes even now, there were popular ideas that the government is too much in people’s lives and we’d be better off left to self-rule; but Starlin suggests – when Blackfire begins conscripting ordinary citizens as slave labor – that the consequence of too much self-interest is no aid around when you’re the one who needs aiding.

[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]

Into this, Starlin introduces Batman, the most self-sacrificing man in Gothan, and portrays him as already broken, brainwashed, and damaged by Blackfire; indeed it takes most of this long four-chapter story before Batman comes close to recovering. Wrightson’s Batman is a gangly scarecrow, dwarfed at times by Jason Todd in both bulk and personality; late in the story, Batman tries to reclaim his menace by strapping on a gun, with the effect of appearing like a child carrying a too-big toy. This interpretation of Batman is likely surprising to anyone who mainly comes to Batman through modern portrayals; this is not a Batman who always has a plan, or who has a second personality ready in case his first one is corrupted – this is Batman really broken, long before Knightfall, and likely that took guts on Starlin’s end to present.

And to be sure, Starlin’s broken Batman is just the beginning of the book’s startling aspects. There’s the book’s violence, a little more than what you’d expect in a Batman book but – sign of the times – not far beyond what you might see in a horror story today. There’s Batman’s use of a gun, which Starlin handles maybe a bit too lightly (but at least Batman never fires that gun). The biggest headline, however, is that Batman potentially kills a police officer, though what we see is Batman’s hallucination and then a dead officer at his feet, and not the actual murder.

I’m inclined to grant that Batman committed said murder, though in terms of continuity he probably did not. For Starlin’s broken Batman to truly be absolute, and for Batman’s battle back to sanity to be as monumental as the story requires, then Batman’s total corruption is a necessity – and how can Batman be more corrupted than being forced to kill? (Contrast this with Batman’s rather mild insanity in stories like Batman RIP or Batman Vol. 1: Failsafe, and these begin to look like less of a challenge for the Dark Knight). At the same time, the complete lack of follow-up regarding this supposed murder – when you know today’s DC Comics would draw one miniseries if not three out of it – suggests a general idea that Batman’s conscience is clean about the murder and someone else did the deed while he hallucinated.

Ultimately, it’s not until Batman rids himself of all of his crutches – the Batmobile, Robin, the gun – that he’s able to defeat Blackfire in hand-to-hand combat. After all the violent fight scenes in the book, Batman dispatches Blackfire with relative ease; ultimately it’s not Blackfire that Batman has to defeat to win the day, but the fear he’s carried since the beginning of the book, and likely since his parents were killed.

In contrast to Batman, Jason Todd in Starlin’s story is an active and often unflappable force. We meet Jason first of all in Commissioner Gordon’s office, raising the flag about the missing Batman; he rescues Batman, and later leads their fight against the cult members to freedom. Jason is in line here with his well-known persona, bloodthirsty and sarcastic, but in a situation that calls for it, especially with a weakened Batman. In considering Cult as the inspiration for future stories, there’s some similarity here between Bruce and Jason here and Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne in Grant Morrison’s later Batman and Robin, with Robin taking the role of the Dark Knight.

In death, Jason had a reputation as a “whiner,” but it’s hard to see evidence of that in Cult; rather, it’s perhaps surprising that readers of the time didn’t take better to a Robin that reflected the grim and grittiness of the era. Jason is a “tough” Robin who stands toe-to-toe with Batman in this story, and I find that appealing – many times in comics the characters are segregated into the roles of Superman-as-hero and Lois Lane-as-perennial-victim, and a tougher Robin suggests less formulaic, Batman-saves-Robin stories. Maybe the difficulty is that that’s not Robin per se; maybe the appeal of a sidekick is someone who reflects the reader’s role as being less than the hero but aspiring, rather than someone who acts as the hero’s equal partner.

For modern Batman fans like me, familiar with a large swath of Batman aside from Cult, the book will feel nostalgic throughout. It literally drips with shout-outs to Dark Knight Returns, as if trying (not unfairly) to bring that book into the day’s continuity, from the television talking heads to the climactic tank Batmobile rolling past the cult members (and yet, in Starlin’s story, Batman fails to unite the cult behind him). The Batmobile sequence also brought to mind the “tumbler” Batmobile from Batman Begins. And I was astounded to see Gotham City placed under martial law nearly ten years before No Man’s Land; I have a real soft spot for No Man’s Land, but it’s impossible to see the bridges to Gotham blown up and its citizens abandoned in Cult and not note how the earlier story must have inspired the latter.

In short, if Batman: The Cult passed you by the first time, I think you’ll find it eye-opening today. The politics within still hold up, but moreover the story fills in holes in terms of the evolution of the Batman mythos that I didn’t even necessarily know were there. Most of all, it suggests some of the lesser elements of Jason Todd’s historic reputation as Robin might be just talk after all.