Embedded Files
BATMAN INCORPORATED #7
Medicine Soldiers
DC Comics, July 2011, Color, 32pgs, $2.99
Written by GRANT MORRISON ; Art by CHRIS BURNHAM; Cover by CHRIS BURNHAM with NATHAN FAIRBURN; 1:25 Variant cover by FRAZER IRVING
Man-of-Bats and his protégé, Red Raven, continue to aid the Dark Knight in tracking down a shadowy, sophisticated killer. Will these two members of The Club of Heroes become the newest additions to Batman Incorporated? Or will they die before they can even be offered the chance?
Commentary
Commentary
The first issue of Batman Incorporated released post-hiatus announcement, issue seven was originally solicited as the second of a two-part team-up with Man-of-Bats and Raven Red. Given that there was only one cover solicited for both parts, and that the series has already slipped down the schedule so much, it seems unlikely that a double header was ever on the cards beyond the plotting stage and that the solicits, as they have all the way through the series so far, are only the barest bones guide to what a given issue might contain.
Taking a leaf from Jason Aaron's Scalped, Morrison tackles the political hot-potato of deprived Native American communities through the lens of no-frills Batman and Robin of the Reservation, Man-of-Bats and his son, Raven Red. Being British and shamefully ignorant of these matters, I now know how our American cousins felt attempting to come to grips with the Falklands War in their annotations. Needless to say, I now know much more about it than I did three days ago and that can only be a good thing...
Annotations
Annotations
Cover - Both covers this time around are amazing, with Burnham's horse/motorcycle/buffalo Suicide Race just about edging it over Frazer Irving's sunburnt desert action-noir.
Page 1 - Morrison starts early with setting up Man-of Bats as a man of his people, knocking on doors and delivering food parcels. Man-of-Bats isn't just a superhero, he's a super-policeman (with all the good and bad that entails), super-social worker and super-doctor too (as we'll see later in the issue). The POV perspective draws us in to a community, indeed a whole world, that the large proportion of the readership probably don't know as much about as they should.
Man-of-Bats (originally Chief Man-of-the-Bats) and Raven Red (originally Little Raven) were introduced in 1954's Batman #86, in a story entitled simply 'Batman-- Indian Chief!' by France Herron and Sheldon Moldoff. Its a mildly racist tale, as was the fashion at the time, of Red Indians who live exactly as they do in the Western movies, smoke signals and all, and a Batman who won't use the Batplane to track the bad guys because he wants to "handle it like Indians!" Man-of-Bats and Little Raven are Sioux crime-fighters who pretend to be Batman and Robin in order to frighten criminals. Man-of-Bats is put out of action by the villain of the piece, Black Elk, who's referenced later on in this issue, and summons Batman with a smoke-Bat Signal to take his place and bring the bad guys to justice.
Man-of-Bats and Little Raven made their second appearance 53 (!) years later in 2007's 'Island of Mister Mayhew' arc from Batman #667-669. Morrison retconned them into members of the International Club of Heroes and, with the help of J H Williams' Steve Rude-isms, suggested a whole rich history for the characters that had occured off panel since we last saw them. Little Raven, following the character arc of both Dick Grayson and Tim Drake, is now Raven Red, a young adult attempting to assert his own identity and move out from the shadow of his own Batmanesque father-figure.
Following 'The Island of Mister Mayhew', Man-of-Bats made a cameo appearance in Final Crisis, tending the wounded, and both he and Raven Red appeared in 'Batman RIP' along with the rest of the Club of Heroes. Following the Batman of Japan and Gaucho, its now Man-of-Bats time to shine in the Batman Incorporated spotlight...
The Republic of Lakota is a political movement that seeks to (and actually already has, though no other nation recognises them) secede (or reassert sovreignty over) 77,000 square miles of traditional Lakota Indian territory from the United States, effectively becoming their own self-governing country spanning large parts of North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana. Man-of-Bats, like Batman, seems to prefer to concentrate his efforts on the people and community itself rather than the 'bigger picture' politics, though as we see later in the issue, the young mother's suicide finally politicises him, even as parts of his own communtity are closing in in an attempt to destroy him.
Page 2 - The 'Medicine Soldiers' of the title are presumably Man-of-Bats and Little Raven, acting the roles of both Shaman (as a doctor and community leader) and Brave (as a superhero).
Page 3 - Some hard hitting stuff here. Is that Hong Kong Neo-Heroin from last issue, or just the common or garden type?
The t-shirt the poor baby is wearing has Sugar and Spike on it, from the eponymous long-running and critically lauded series by Sheldon Mayer. Mayer died in 1991. You have to wonder what the hell he would have made of Sugar and Spike's appearance here...
"Better send a Bat-Signal." In Man-of-Bats first appearance, he summons Batman using a smoke Bat-Signal. Why he sends a 'signal' of some sort to Batman to summon him to the Reservation this time around isn't very clear, as there's nothing about this grim opening that suggests Batman needs to get involved (unless it is Neo-Heroin). And yet he turns up later this issue, seemingly already well-versed in the local Leviathan situation. Morrison has already shown us Bruce knows much more than he is letting on (to the readers anyway), maybe his foreknowledge of Leviathan's presence here ties in to that.
Page 4 - Bill Great Eagle (aka Man-of-Bats) status as a doctor was established in the 'Island of Mister Mayhew' arc, where he treated The Knight's injuries after The Balck Glove implanted a bomb in his stomach.
The Prairie Gazette doesn't seem to be a reference to any of the real life newspapers that share its name, as most of them are Canadian. Presumably Man-of-Bats headline grabbing antics were inspired by the sad loss of Lucy we saw on the previous page. Of course alcoholism, fueled by a liquor trade concerned only with profits, is sadly a real-life endemic amongst actual Reservation communities.
Bill's boss seems to be based on noted character actor Miguel Sandoval, who played similarly irate D.A. Manuel Devalos in the Medium TV show and, coincedentally, also played Treviranus in Alex Cox's film adaptation of Jose Luis Borges' Death and the Compass, which we mentioned in the annotations for issue three. He's the first in a long line of newcomers to Bill's community and his warning in the last panel takes on a more ominous meaning as the issue progresses.
"...twenty officers to patrol an area larger than Rhode Island." Most Reservation police forces are independently organised collectives 'supervised' by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, an agency of the US federal government.
The Redz gang probably take their name from the out-dated term 'Red Indian', once pretty widespread and now widely considered offensive. An echo of hip-hop culture's reclamation of previously offensive slurs?
Page 5 - "In less than a year I'll be too old for the Teen Titans, Dad", Raven Red mirrors Dick Grayson's disatisfaction in his latter-day Robin years.
As Man-of-Bats patrols town in his Bat-pickup he arrives at that other leech on Native American culture, the casino. Sam Black Elk, a teenage drug dealer in the employ of Leviathan and son of the Black Elk that stood against Batman and Man-of-Bats in his 1954 debut, makes his first appearance here. Cruel to animals in a comic written by Grant Morrison, he's clearly irredeemably evil...
Page 7 - ... and gets his just desserts for kicking the dog and, more importantly, mocking supeheroes.
Page 8 - .Of course the police arrive to break up the fracas, though their real reason for intervening is decidedly more sinister than it first appears.
Black Elk's 'spearmint wafers' seem an oddly old-fashioned choice of sweet treat to disguise his mindbending Leviathan drugs....
Page 9 - "What happened to Joe?" As Batman enlightens us later this issue, Leviathan is targeting vulnerable communities 'off the grid'. Clearly its insidious influence is far reaching, taking in everyone from the expected local youths right through to the local police force.
Page 10 - Man-of-Bats and Raven Red's low rent 'Bat's Cave' is a tourist attraction based out of their garage. Its advertised attractions are of course mostly also features of the 'real' Batcave.
The World Famous Suicide Race is a real event held in Omak, Washington involving a horse ride at full speed down a steep (62 degree) slope before crossing a river and a sprint finish. While popular with Native American riders who view it as harkening back to their traditions as horse warriors, it is frowned upon by animal rights activists as extremely dangerous for the animals involved. The real life version doesn't have any connection to the anniversary of the Battle of Little Big Horn, a great victory for the Sioux over General Custer's Cavalry forces, nor does it really have any real basis in Native American rites of passage. It does, however, have a cool name.
Page 11 - In the tradition of Mr. Unknown, Gaucho and Bruce Wayne's own efforts in the Wayne Foundation lobby last issue, we get to see inside Man-of Bats and Raven Red's own Batcave, complete with culturally specific versions of the 'classic' trophies. For Batman's giant robot T-Rex we have a stuffed electric blue ghost-bear; in place of the Giant Penny, a Giant Wooden Nickel. There's also a portrait of the Club of Heroes (also seen on Gaucho's desk in his 'Batcave' back in issue three); archery trophies; a makeshift Crime Lab; what appear to be child-sized dolls of Man-of-Bats, Raven Red and Super Chief, another Native American superhero who appered in a Grant Morrison-penned plot-thread of 52; a genuine (?) Black Glove and the obligatory costumes in glass display cases.
The costumes on display here are a Batman cape, cowl and Batarang, presumably from Bruce's 1954 visit; what appears to be a Confederate soldier's uniform and, in the middle, the Bulletproof Ghost Shirt. Ghost Shirts are real Native American artifacts, once believed to protect their wearer from gunfire through their spiritual power. In 1999 a Ghost Shirt that had been bought from a member of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and displayed in the collection of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow since 1891 was given back to the Sioux people after being 'discovered' by American John Earl in 1991. According to this BBC news story, the Glasgow councillor who took part in the repatriation ceremony said the whole process had created a strong bond between the people of Glasgow and the Lakota. "You're part of our history now,"
The Bat-symbol shield on the wall was wielded by Batman in the original 'Batman-- Indian Chief!' story. Batman's wry smile and note of genuine admiration for Man-of-Bats 'Batman on a budget' setup is a strangely affecting character moment for Bruce, whom we've become used to seeing as pretty unemotional and distant.
Page 12 - Looks like the elder Black Elk succeeded in exposing Man-of-Bats' secret identity if nothing else.
Page 13 - 'The Red Ripper' was one of the names given to Soviet serial-killer Andrei Chikatilo, who murdered at least 52 women and children between 1978 and 1990.
"We are the pointmen of tomorrow" Black Elk is positioning himself and the Redz at the spearhead of a new future; a future dominated by Leviathan.
Clearly Man-of-Bats is not a man to be trifled with. Hell yeah!
Page 14 - Are all of these Redz members kids wearing big jackets?
Page 15 - Interesting that even the seemingly lower level Leviathan lieutenants like Sam Black Elk are fully aware that this is, in the end, all about taking down Batman.
Chief Man-of-Bats' "I'll put the first five of you in full body casts for eighteen months" is amazing. DC - when the new Batwing title is inevitably cancelled, can we have a Chief Man-of-Bats and Raven Red one instead?
Page 16 - Burnham totally nails it yet again. The future of this title could not be in better hands. Batman on horseback calls to mind this classic splash from Miller's Dark Knight Returns.
Page 18 - A nice wrinkle to the character in a bit of 'throwaway' dialogue; little touches like making Man-of-Bats an Iraqi war veteran and an overbearing single dad keep adding to the idea that these characters have a history, indeed an ongoing story, running in the 'background' that's every bit as vital and alive as the characters we see every month in the published books.
And the community come to the rescue; everyone who Man-of-Bats has helped though the course of the book, from the door-to-doors of page one, through the old lady in the hospital on page four and the bouncer from the casino all pile in to take down Sam Black Elk
Page 19 - "Bury my heart at Iron Knee" is a rubbish joke combining Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown's history of Native American's in the Old West, and a bad pun on the 'irony' of Raven Red ending up giving his dad a blood transfusion on the day he decided he'd had enough of living under his superheroic shadow. "Iron Knee" = "irony", geddit?
Nice to see that the Ghost Shirts in the DC Universe really do repel bullets, unlike their real-life counterparts...
Page 20 - Good to see also that Raven Red's got it covered and essentially turns down Batman's offer, while agreeing to help in his own way. As Morrison has pointed out so many times in interviews and goes to great lengths explaining in Supergods, the best interactions between superheroes and 'real world' problems like the plight of the Native American people aren't the ones where we're left asking why Batman doesn't wave his wallet and sort all this stuff out, but the one's that leave us with strong role models demonstrating the principles of how to better the world ourselves, an inspiration that we can take away into our humdrum 'real' lives to make the world a better place...
Anyway, next time: Batman meets Tron in 'Nightmares in Numberland'. Get in!
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