Some Thoughts on Batman: Reptilian
My goal for this blog is still to make a space where I can write about the work that excites me that most critics overlook, so it feels silly writing about a DC book - but Garth Ennis and Liam Sharp’s Batman: Reptilian is so fucking strange, and I need to talk about it with someone - so you, my dearest hypothetical reader, will have to do.
Alright, first and foremost, it needs to be mentioned that Liam Sharp does some of his best work in this series. I’m a big fan of he and Grant Morrison’s run on Green Lantern, but his paintings in this series are absolutely stunning. There are definitely shades of Dave McKean and Bill Sienkiewicz in Sharp’s gloomy, expressionistic pages, but his page compositions make these pages absolutely singular. He combines a bold, graphic style that uses heavy black silhouettes with an obsessive attention to detail that really suits the mania of the story.
Ennis originally wrote this story for his longtime collaborator the late, great Steve Dillon. And, Dillon might’ve helped to smooth out some of the script’s many rough edges, but it’s hard to imagine these pages in his more traditional style. Sharp’s Gotham is a rainy, menacing fog of violence that is genuinely unsettling. To be totally honest, I wouldn’t have finished this series if anyone other than Sharp had drawn it.
It isn’t that Ennis did a bad job with the script. But, it’s an inherently bizarre story, and I wonder if anyone at DC ever edited this at all. Sharp’s cover for issue #5 seems to indicate that this entire series was totally ignored by editors. Or maybe, the bizarre shift in tone will feel less abrupt once the series is collected into a trade. Serialization definitely didn’t do the story any favors, as the last issue does little more than reach the foregone conclusion established by issue #5. Not, that it’s a bad ending - just that it is a disappointing grand finale after waiting a month. Maybe it will seem like a stronger ending to reader’s who finish the book in one or two sittings.
The first three issues are excellent. Ennis and Sharp present a mystery/horror story that really highlights the versatility of the Batman character, and works as a page-turning whodunit. Some sort of unstoppable “Reptilian” monster is wandering around Gotham brutalizing Batman’s enemies. Sometimes killing them, sometimes just maiming them. Sharp has a lot of fun with the gore. And Ennis does a a great job of comparing the cold, calculated Bruce Wayne, to the monster he’s hunting. It’s fun and scary and gorgeous: exactly what I want the DC Black Label books to be - A little more mainstream than Vertigo was, but totally untethered to traditional DC sensibilities. I really can’t recommend the first half of the series enough.
But things get strange and disappointing in issue #4. It’s like Ennis made the conscious decision to abandon everything that made the story interesting in favor of making the goofiest possible book. SPOILERS AHEAD, but the book is called Batman: Reptilian - so when Killer Croc’s involvement with the horrible monster is framed as some sort of big twist, I found myself, once again, wondering where the editor was. But things get absurd when Ennis reveals that Killer Croc is actually an alien who just gave birth to the creature that is stalking Gotham looking to either nurse or fuck, and killing the various bad guys it comes in contact with in search of its mother Killer Croc. Batman breaks the news to his longtime enemy by ruthlessly making fun of him until the monster arrives.
Meanwhile, Batman has some poor Russian henchman that he is using as bait trapped in the Batmobile which is driving around Gotham aimlessly trying to attract Croc’s alien progeny. Who knows why the Russian is more appealing than Croc, but somehow Batman’s kidnapping habit saves the day, but not before almost killing a crowd of exotic bird watchers who have gathered on the gross Gotham beach in the middle of the night, but a few explosions later - Batman wraps everything up, says something mean to Killer Croc and wanders off into the sunset.
Each of the last three issues seems to devolve further and further into a parody of itself, which given Ennis’s well-documented disdain for superheroes, could very well be the point. And, if he’d been this silly from the beginning, it could have been delightful, but as it is it’s just bizarre. The first three issues are a slow, fascinating build that leads up to an absurd, cheap climax that feels at once obvious and arbitrary. I love it! It’s fun and over the top and beautifully painted. But, by the end, it is also pretty damn stupid.
I can’t tell whether or not Ennis is swinging for the fences or phoning it in on this one. Sharp’s art adds an air of ambition to the proceedings, and at times it feels like Ennis is trying to craft a new sort of story for the Dark Knight. But he doesn’t seem to have any control over/interest in the overall tone or pace of the story. Even Batman’s voice is inconsistent. Then again, he does conjure the sort of fever-dream mania/dream logic that defines a lot of the movies I love. Hell, that’s basically the Giallo aesthetic in a nutshell. It’s hard not to tell people about this series without giggling a little, which is maybe the best you can hope for from any sort of mainstream American entertainment in 2021.
And the thing is, I think cape and cowl comics should be campy and ridiculous. I think there’s something perfect about the way Ennis is throwing all sorts of ideas at the wall here, and even if none of it really sticks, it’s a really fun ride, but it’s also a mess, and at times it feels like he’s using his irreverence as an excuse for lazy writing.
They can’t all be winners, right? But, at the very least this one is wild.