the Brave and the Bold #29 - DC

Of all the Brave and the Bold stories that I've read, as well as any other books in which Batman has teamed up with . . well, anybody . . I have to say, I've never seen, or expected to see, Batman in a book with Brother Power the Geek. That's not to say that it didn't work, or wasn't interesting, but . . it was just something I never expected to see. I will say though, first . . it was awful daring of J Michael Straczynski. And secondly . . if all of JMS's stories get me thinking this much afterwards . . I think he's going to have a long a fruitful run on this book. Also, Jesus Saiz's pencils were fantastic. I loved the feel of this book. This story really turned out to be rather existential. For some reason Brother Power has woken up in Cindy's Toy Shop. It's in Gotham, and has been out of business for years. As it turns out, the owners never wanted to sell, hoping that the area would turn itself around. But now . . now somebody doesn't want to wait for that turn-around, and they've begun burning down buildings to speed up the redevelopment process and line their own pockets. The irony is that if BP had not returned, and was sighted by Batman, Batman probably wouldn't have looked in to the circumstances here and the abusers of power would have never been caught. So it seems that BP's power is that he's some kind of beacon, or 'sign' . . someone to open up others eyes to a development that needs rectifying. The part that really got my head racing though was the comparisons BP made between the 60's and now. BP's always been a character that's out of place. But now he's also out of time. Being a product of the 60's, and thereby his point of reference, it's easy for him to see the differences between the world he's woken up in, and the one he left behind. For us, it's been a gradual slide . . a change in degrees. But . . if you take a snapshot of the world then, and compare it to a snapshot today . . we see that all of the changes haven't been for the better. And that the world we live in now would barely have been dreamt of by our brothers and sisters in the 60's. But then again . . maybe they did know what was going to happen and that's why they were so adamant about their beliefs. Maybe we need to develop that same type of passion for the things that we believe in. But as most people today would probably say . . 'I'll look into that tomorrow. Tonight, I just want to 'veg. I worked really hard today.'