Batman: Odyssey by
Neal Adams
My rating:
3 of 5 stars
Batman: Odyssey is apparently the magnum opus of Neal "easily in the top ten greatest Batman artists who ever lived" Adams. Find me a list of the best or most influential Batman artists that
doesn't include Neal Adams, and I'll show you a list made by someone who doesn't know what they're talking about. Adams helped define the character in a way that few other artists can claim, and his work is still amazing to see.
His writing, on the other hand... well...
Batman: Odyssey has, in a way, very similar aims to Grant Morrison's run on the Dark Knight. It's an attempt to reconnect with Batman's roots and tell a story grounded in the ways that Batman has changed over the years. Where Morrison tried to find a way to reconcile decades of continuity, though, Adams is looking at thematic slices. We see Batman as he was at the beginning of his career, before he had Robin by his side, and we see Batman as he is now, much later. Adams is interested in exploring some of the quirkier aspects of the character, and he wants to tell a story,
I think, about what makes Batman, Batman.
Whether he's successful is... a matter of some dispute.
Let me just say, up front, that artist Adams is still at the top of his game. Mostly. There are certainly a few panels that stand out as being perhaps a little bit overdone and border on parody. If nothing else, you can't accuse his version of Bruce Wayne of being understated.
That aside, you can definitely see why Adams is listed among the greats. His depictions of Batman in action have an amazing amount of energy and motion, and he has a tremendous imagination. There is an incredible sequence wherein Batman is flying a giant bat, avoiding shotgun fire from an oil prospector riding a dinosaur. Which is probably something you wouldn't expect to see in a modern Batman book, but there it is, looking not ridiculous, but ridiculously
awesome.
I particularly like the subtle touches he uses to show how Batman has evolved over time. In the scenes of his early adventures, you always see his eyes, but in the later years, he has protective shields that create the "white out" effect modern readers are used to. The early costume's "horns" wrinkle and bend when he climbs atop the train, as well. These little touches are a visual treat.
The problem is that Adams just doesn't write this particularly well. The plot, to put it mildly, is a mess. At the start of
Batman: Odyssey, Bruce Wayne is telling an unseen audience the story about the time he told Robin the story of the time he stopped a train robbery but got shot in the process. Adams makes liberal use of flashbacks and time jumps throughout the story, but never to a particularly clear purpose. The use of the frame story seems mostly there to help drive home that Batman underwent an Odyssey (which is also drive home by Adams repeatedly having the character explicitly
say that he went on an Odyssey) and to provide the opportunity for Batman to infodump.
Comics are a visual medium. While there are obviously times that you need to infodump for plot purposes, if you find yourself doing large infodumps at the beginning of every issue (or, in some cases, several times throughout an issue) you're probably doing something wrong. Despite his capable skills as an artist, Writer Adams does a
lot of telling instead of (sometimes in addition to) showing, and it's painful.
Sadly, his command of dialog isn't any better. Characters repeat themselves, repeat text from the narrative boxes, or repeat each other with alarming frequency. They pause or stop mid-sentence more often than the complete full thoughts. On one page, I counted 14 ellipses in eight dialog bubbles. I doubt there's a page in the book with fewer than six sets of ellipses per page.
I don't want to spend too much time beating up on Writer Adams, though, because the fact is, despite, or perhaps
because of the writing, this is actually a pretty fun book. It's not a
good book, but it's a lot of fun to read, and it's a visual treat. When is the last time you got to see Batman throw a tank like a bowling ball or straight-up punch an Egyptian god in the jaw? How often does Batman fight dinosaurs these days? Have you
ever seen Batman shoot an old man in the back or threaten to murder innocent people?
The wild mood shifts (one minute, Batman is welcoming a character like an old friend, literally the next panel he's screaming at him like a maniac), horrible dialog, amazing visuals, and incomprehensible story make this fun to read in the same way that a lot of the classic B movies are to watch. There's heart, here, even if it doesn't seem like Writer Adams quite managed to pull off the story in the way he wanted to. If you can laugh off bad writing and appreciate the roller coaster ride for what it is, this might be worth a read.
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