Coldly Efficient

The weather in Houston this year has been really bizarre.  We’ll jump between really nice t-shirt weather and really cold the next day.  It’s been really hard to keep track of whether it’s supposed to be warm enough to turn the air conditioner on or cold enough to turn the heater on.  Of course, there’s always a simple solution to this problem.

We’re now two months into Bruce Wayne’s Batman Incorporated initiative.  So far, in the main Batman Inc book we’ve recruited the Batman of Japan and in the Batman/Detective Comics Annual we’ve recruited the Batman of France. Both of the two book arcs were very well written and quite enjoyable.  It was pretty enjoyable to see Batman doing his Batman-thing in exotic locales other than the dank and dreary streets of Gotham.

Both BoJ and BoF are new characters that were introduced just for these arcs.  BoJ was essentially the understudy for Mr. Unknown, another Japanese super hero. BoF was a French Muslim parkour enthusiast who happened to put on a mask at the same time that Batman was looking for Le Batman.  In the real world, there’s currently tensions between Muslim immigrants in France and the French upper class.  The comic did a good job addressing this and even openly discussed BoF needing to overcome people’s objections to his heritage so he can become a symbol of a greater good for all of France.  Of course, some people are claiming that the book is disrespectful to the French people for making Le Batman Muslim and there by completely missing the point.

My biggest concern of the Batman Inc concept is that DC will create this great cast of foreign superheroes and then never use them.  The two Annuals created a very compelling character out of Nightrunner/BoF, but will we ever see him again?  I’m also concerned that the Batman franchising will destroy what is unique about these characters.  At the end of the Annuals when Nightrunner became BoF, his costume was basically the same as his Nightrunner costume, but with the Batman logo on it.  On the other hand, BoJ was last seen wearing your basic Batman outfit, making him fairly nondescript and generic.  The cultural emphasis on him being the Japanese Batman was completely lost.  Granted, we are working with two brand new characters.  The next Batman Inc arc has Bruce in Argentina working with El Gaucho, a more established superhero from the International Club of Heroes.  It will be interesting to see if the arc ends with the Batmanification of El Gaucho or if the character will stay unique, but start to work in closer affiliation to Batman’s crime fighting empire.