Delayed Reaction: As The Crow Flies

Batman: As The Crow Flies (DC Comics), by Judd Winick, Dustin Nguyen and Richard Friend

Why’d I Wait?: It’s a Judd Winick DC Comic.

Why now?: Because the Columbus Public Library has absolutely everything in trade these days. After reading the first volume of Under The Hood, I wanted to check out Winick’s first Batman story to see if he wrote better stories when he wasn’t resurrecting long (and unequivocally) dead supporting characters.

Well?: When I originally read the solicits for Batman #626, the first chapter of “As the Crow Flies,” I thought pairing Batman villains the Penguin and the Scarecrow was a pretty inspired idea (and felt a twinge of pity for poor Judd Winick and Dustin Nguyen, the oncoming creative team that had the unenviable task of following the Jeph Loeb/Jim Lee “Hush” and Brian Azzarello/Eduardo Risso “Broken City” teams on the Batman monthly).

The Penguin was not only named after a bird, but loves birds, and many of his earlier crimes revolved around stealing birds or committing bird-themed crimes. The Scarecrow took his name from something that’s whole reason for being was simply to scare birds. And yet despite the obvious crossover that presented itself between the two characters, I don’t think any writers had ever exploited it (at least, not since I took up temporary residence in Gotham City).

Though Winick did use them both in the same story, he doesn’t really play with that dynamic at all, and putting the volume down, I was a bit confused as to why the story was entitled what it was. It doesn’t really have anything to do with the story, which doesn’t even contain crows, literally or figuratively.

As for the Penguin and Scarecrow pairing, Winick simply has the former hire the latter, and their dynamic is exactly that of the weird one he built up between the Black Mask and Mr. Freeze in “Under the Hood.” Instead of two Batman archvillains working together or fighting one another, Penguin hires the Scarecrow as a hired gun in what has to be the most expensive and convoluted protection racket in the history of organized crime—To make threats of violence against hoods in his organization even scarier than actual violence, the Penguin hires the Scarecrow to provide him with fear dust which, like his fear gas, will scare the beejuzus out of whoever gets a whiff of it.

Both characters seem awfully out of character, and either one could be replaced with just about any other character in Batman’s rogues gallery to tell the exact same story. The Scarecrow takes an awful lot of crap from the Penguin for no discernable reason, and the Penguin’s bully act seems out of place directed at the Scarecrow, a character that has long ago eclipsed the Penguin in threat and relevance in Gotham City.

If the instilling-fear-through-fear-dust plot seems overly silly, I am withholding one bit of info because it’s something of a spoiler, but it involves a gigantic scarecrow monster that breathes fear gas and tears people to pieces which, you may rightly guess, is actually Jonathan Crane, The Scarecrow, turning into some kind of weird were-scarecrow.

It doesn’t make much sense on a story level—turning a brilliant if mad scientist into a rampaging monster is a bit of a waste of a brilliant if mad scientist, isn’t it? Why not inject a hired hand with the monster serum?—and makes absolutely no sense on a creative level.

The essence of Jonathan Crane’s character is that he’s a psychiatrist and scientist who becomes a criminal to further his studies in fear; his modus operandi is evoking terror through psychology and chemistry. Why turn him into just another monster? It reminds me of the update DC’s Bat Office did to Killer Moth during the “Underworld Unleashed” crossover. The Killer Moth was a lame villain whose very lameness made him fairly unique, but they turned him into a slavering moth monster named Charaxes, essentially making him indistinguishable from slavering crocodile monster Killer Croc or slavering bat monster Man-Bat among Batman’s rogues.

If the story was another sub-par effort on Winick’s part, belonging near the bottom of the Batman barrel of stories currently available in trade, at least Nguyen and Friends’ art is superior. As dumb as a were-scarecrow may sound on paper, they sure make it look cool on paper, particularly when it shows up to interrupt a meeting the Penguin is holding (Matt Wagner echoes the scene and design on one of his covers, which is used as the cover of the trade). They also do a nice Crane, who here has long hair, and an exceptional Robin, who actually looks like a young teenager here, instead of a short man, which is how far too many artists draw the Boy Wonder.

I used to think every comic book writer had at least one good Batman story in them, but after reading two of Judd Winick’s so far, I’m beginning to think that may not be the case. Perhaps every comic book writer exceptJudd Winick has at least one good Batman story in them, or else Winick simply hasn’t written his yet.

Would I Travel Back in Time and Buy the Individual Issues Off the shelves?: God no. In fact, I wish I wouldn’t have even bothered getting it for free from the library and reading it.