DC superstars Grant Morrison and Klaus Janson team up for this dark look into Batman's past and even more disturbing present.
The seemingly unkillable "Mr. Whisper" is prowling the streets of Gotham City and ruthlessly murdering mob bosses. Although he would never admit it, this doesn't seem like it should be a problem for the Dark Knight Detective -- someone is doing his dirty work for him!
But a little digging into the true identity of the elusive Mr. Whisper takes the Caped Crusader somewhere he could never have expected this mystery to lead him: his past! In a cruel twist of fate -- Grant Morrison's specialty -- Mr. Whisper is revealed to be none other than Bruce Wayne's exceedingly cruel headmaster from boarding school. But knowing Morrison, the story can't merely be that simple.
And true to form, it isn't. Mr. Whisper is further revealed to be an occultist who converted a monastery of God fearing men to evil hundreds of years ago, making a deal with the dark lord in exchange for immortality. Although this aspect of the story is truly amazing and a wild adventure into the past and the world of mysticism, it is actually Whisper's seemingly benign headmaster days that raise the most interesting questions about this story.
In a flashback sequence, it would seem as though Morrison implies that while young Bruce Wayne is enrolled in Whisper's boarding school, he is in fact sodomized by Mr. Whisper. This allegation, highly plausible given the context and Whisper's tendency toward extreme perversion, is an anomaly. Never before in all the comics that I have read have I ever read something this controversial. The closest DC has come to something like this is the rape of Sue Dibny in Identity Crisis. Regardless, it added a powerful and unique element to the story that brought a new level of intensity to the usually super intense character of Batman.
The seemingly unkillable "Mr. Whisper" is prowling the streets of Gotham City and ruthlessly murdering mob bosses. Although he would never admit it, this doesn't seem like it should be a problem for the Dark Knight Detective -- someone is doing his dirty work for him!
But a little digging into the true identity of the elusive Mr. Whisper takes the Caped Crusader somewhere he could never have expected this mystery to lead him: his past! In a cruel twist of fate -- Grant Morrison's specialty -- Mr. Whisper is revealed to be none other than Bruce Wayne's exceedingly cruel headmaster from boarding school. But knowing Morrison, the story can't merely be that simple.
And true to form, it isn't. Mr. Whisper is further revealed to be an occultist who converted a monastery of God fearing men to evil hundreds of years ago, making a deal with the dark lord in exchange for immortality. Although this aspect of the story is truly amazing and a wild adventure into the past and the world of mysticism, it is actually Whisper's seemingly benign headmaster days that raise the most interesting questions about this story.
In a flashback sequence, it would seem as though Morrison implies that while young Bruce Wayne is enrolled in Whisper's boarding school, he is in fact sodomized by Mr. Whisper. This allegation, highly plausible given the context and Whisper's tendency toward extreme perversion, is an anomaly. Never before in all the comics that I have read have I ever read something this controversial. The closest DC has come to something like this is the rape of Sue Dibny in Identity Crisis. Regardless, it added a powerful and unique element to the story that brought a new level of intensity to the usually super intense character of Batman.
No comments:
Post a Comment