Return to Tim Burton’s Gotham

Sam Hamm and Joe Quinones, Batman ’89

Gotham reels with the Penguin’s recent death and Max Schreck’s disappearance, and a gang of Batmen are ready to step into the gap. But Batman himself doesn’t want the civilian help, especially when the Joker gang uses the crowd to create chaos after an armored car heist. Fortunately, the hero the city really needs emerges: District Attorney Harvey Dent. Sure, Batman offers the city blunt-fisted justice, but Dent offers what the city really needs: justice.

Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman movie and its 1992 sequel were commercial successes, but their downmarket approach divided comics purists. Warner Brothers especially tarnished the movies’ legacy by replacing Burton with the more pliable Joel Schumacher, turning the franchise into a merchandise factory. Probably the greatest loss was Billy Dee Williams as Harvey Dent, whose story began in the first movie before vanishing. So DC brought original screenwriter Sam Hamm aboard to complete the unfinished arc.

This version of Harvey Dent is ambitious, hoping to apprehend both Batman and Commissioner Gordon. (Notwithstanding that he’s engaged to Gordon’s daughter Barbara.) He’s also proudly, assertively Black, having worked his way out of Gotham’s chronically impoverished Burnside neighborhood. But Dent isn’t Burnside’s only Black hero. A young martial artist, clad in black and yellow, has begun defending the neighborhood’s streets by night. Just in time, too, because the city has mobilized the National Guard.

Movie and comics fans alike already know Dent is doomed to become Two-Face, a criminal whose morality relies on a literal coin flip. Hamm’s interpretation resembles Aaron Eckhart’s performance from The Dark Knight, in that it’s driven not merely by crime, but by a belief in absolute binary justice. Importantly, in this story, Two-Face isn’t his name; he never stops being Harvey Dent, a local hero who believes in bringing justice to Gotham’s unrepresented side.

Hamm’s story owes a visible debt to Frank Miller’s 1986 revisionist classic The Dark Knight Returns. Not only the Joker and Batman gangs, or a city that requires intervention while resenting those who intervene. Hamm also pilfers Miller’s theme of Batman getting older, questioning his ability to save anyone. Unlike Miller’s Batman, Hamm’s version is introspective enough to question whether he might be making circumstances worse. Especially when his brute-force justice gets poor Gothamites killed.

A splash panel depicting some of artist
Joe Quinones’ preliminary sketches

Hamm’s pacing straddles the difference between movies and comics. His cinematic swoop carries him from talky exposition scenes, straight into choreographed action, never hammocking in just one style. But he also recognizes the importance of maintaining the momentum not only within the story, but between issues. This story originally ran as a six-issue limited series, and Hamm inserts cliffhangers that would’ve carried the story between issues, but which vanish seamlessly in the collected single volume.

Movies differ from comics for one important reason: actors get older. Recent comics-based movies have required Hugh Jackman to have the same body at age 55 that he had at thirty. In movies, characters can’t recur forever; story arcs, once complete, must end. Artist Joe Quinones draws Michael Keaton’s Bruce Wayne getting grey around the temples, wheezing with exertion, and planning for his legacy as a hero. Time, in this notably timely comic, clearly passes.

Quinones doesn’t just draw Batman as Michael Keaton. He also includes remarkable depictions of franchise actors like Billy Dee Williams, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Michael Gough as they appeared in the middle 1990s. Marlon Wayans and Winona Ryder, who reportedly had handshake deals to appear in further Batman sequels, also appear. Quinones’ attention to detail emphasizes not only who the actors are, but what unique traits they could’ve brought to this story, had it been filmed.

Between them, Hamm and Quinones recapture Tim Burton’s rococo style. They depict Burton’s comedically tall buildings and close-packed streets, the kind of art-deco frippery that gives his earliest work its distinctive style. Hamm’s dialog captures Burton’s trademark lilt, while Quinones draws scenes from Dutch angles that give still images a high-speed dynamic. I can’t quite determine who involve Burton was in creating this story, but it really looks like something he might’ve shot around 1995.

Not that it’s a lifeless time capsule. It addresses politics, economics, and racial dynamics that were implicit in the original movies, but went largely unaddressed. In that regard, it looks like a hybrid of two different stories which might’ve been written twenty-five years apart. I realize not all comics fans like Burton’s movies, or the coarsening effect they had on the comics market. But for his fans, this is the sequel Joel Schumacher should’ve made.