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Frank Miller
Sin City: That Yellow Bastard
Titan, hardback £16.99, paperback £10.99 
Collecting the 6-issue series published by Dark Horse Comics (original & collection are black & white)

Jamie Delano & John Bolton
Batman–Manbat
Titan, paperback, £10.99
Collecting the 3-issue series published by DC Comics

Review by David Kendall (1997)

We all know Miller did wonders with a moribund Batman a decade ago, and the first Sin City escapade was dazzling in its surface speed, but does he need to keep churning out progressively simpler versions?

That Yellow Bastard is writer-artist Miller’s hyper-macho fantasy – a big, grizzled police veteran clings to his honour while all around others compromise theirs. A young, nubile wet dream is the prize, a sex perv the off the peg villain. There’s some occasional inky-humoured dialogue, mixed in with the big guns and barn-door shoulders, which wouldn’t look out of place in a Van Damme movie, and is just as laughable. The ageing hero is even too honourable (or knackered) to take up the chance of a last shag with the aforementioned nubile, which he’s certainly earned after being beaten, shot, lynched and locked in solitary for eight years. Miller should either get the ghost of John Wayne off his shoulder, or start digging a lot deeper into his characters.

Manbat, on the other hand, is worth a hundred Sin Citys. Just about every collection these days has a moist-lipped, brown-tongued intro from some pony-tailed comic exec boring on about how this is the best Man-in-Spandex yet. This one, however, has its introduction penned by Christopher Fowler, a writer known for his discerning eye. Still, I assumed they’d simply paid him a fat wedge or indulged some deviant whim. However, on reading the first few pages of this story, I knew I’d been proved gloriously wrong. 

Here Batman is in a secondary role. His presence impinges on every frame but, mercifully, the much-analysed one is in a strangely quiet mode. This is Batman as detective, a cross between the scientific Holmes and the fascist Judge Dredd. Environmental activists break into a research lab intending to video animal experimentation atrocities. Things go wrong and the shit hits the fan in a big way, leaving one eco warrior fleeing into the desert with a vial of unknown content. Wandering blind, she stumbles onto the lair of Kirk Langstrom, the Manbat, and his genetically-odd family. 

On the face of it, Batman-Manbat is standard comic book stuff; mad scientist disfigured by his experiments, dreams of the end of the human race and the rise of his own created kin. The difference is the depth of character Delano coats his players in. Langstrom’s holocaust musing is never boring, his wife Francine’s love is touching, and Delano doesn’t shrink from the real ‘horror’ at the core of this family: unconditional love can be sublime in this context. Francine’s love allows Langstrom to mess with the very core of her being. The outcome of the story is not as important as the way Delano arrives at it. Bolton’s dark and moody artwork perfectly complements the narrative, allowing the characters to be murky yet distinct. Batman: Manbat deserves to be recognised as the best written Batman of the 90s.

As an aside, I wonder if either Delano or Bolton read an old Brit comic, Lion and Thunder, from the early 70s. Described as ‘too butch for me’ by Alan Moore, one story I remember dealt with a race of bat people remarkably similar to Langstrom. Just thought you might be interested.