Dial H for Hero a compelling surprise

Though Comics Guy has been underwhelmed with DC's team-up title "The Brave and the Bold" lately, he was looking forward to the debut of superstar

J. Michael Straczynski

("Babylon 5") on issue No. 27, starring

Batman

and

Dial H For Hero

. It is one of the most pleasant surprises in comics I have experienced this year.

Straczynski makes Dial H For Hero compelling, the overused Joker actually seem a little fresh and Batman almost touching.

It is one of the best comics I have read this year - and proves that Straczynski not only knows how to spin a helluva story but write dialogue as well or better than most in the business.

Straczynski is now playing in the DC Universe sandbox after a decade writing memorable tales for Marvel.

"It's very curious," he says. "When I first came to Marvel around 1999, when they were on the edge of bankruptcy, they were very adamant about the degree of total creative freedom they were offering, and they kept to that promise for many years. It was this which brought me and a number of other writers into their stable and helped pull them back from the brink. At that time, it was DC that was said to be more corporate and intrusive.

"In the last few years, however, that situation seems to have reversed, at least in terms of my admittedly subjective experience," he continues. "Both publishers are to some extent held hostage to the idea of these big crossover events, but there's a growing sense with DC that you can work around that more than you can with Marvel these days. I sense a real growing energy and vitality with DC that I haven't seen in a long time, and I think you're going to see other creators coming to DC for both that energy and the apparently greater creative latitude that seems to be on the menu these days."

Straczynski says part of the appeal of writing "The Brave and the Bold" was that he would be able to write different DC characters every month.

"I love the anthology format," he says. "'Brave and the Bold' provides the perfect platform for me to go in and have a lot of fun with great characters, in and out of continuity. In a world where everything now seems to be these big, huge, yearlong multi-title events, I think it's nice to have the latitude of doing a series where each issue is its own self-contained story, done-in-one. In some ways I find it more challenging from a creative perspective because if you're going to do a story in 22 pages it has to be solid, lean and really tight."

For his first story, Straczynski included the hero who has appeared in the most comics in history - Batman - and perhaps the most overused villain in comics - The Joker. Yet he still managed to do a fresh take.

"I needed to get [a] threat in motion and picked the Joker precisely because he is so overused, to see if I could find a voice that would prove appealing," Straczynski says. "In the end, I found myself gravitating to the Heath Ledger Joker. If you read the dialogue out loud and compare it to the syntax and grammar of the movie Joker, there's a direct stylistic line."

Straczynski's skill with dialogue is on display throughout the issue. He conveys Batman's toughness and the Joker's insane evil perfectly, but arguably his best moment is an extremely moving monologue from Batman to Robby Reed (Dial H For Hero) that Comics Guy argues lets readers see the most human and emotional Batman presented in comics in ages.

"A pet peeve I've had with the comics industry in general over the last decade is that it seems to have made many of our heroes as psychotic as our bad guys," he says. "Even someone as powerful and lethal as Batman has to have something decent within him that's capable of reaching out to what is, in essence, a child who was terrified of being killed. Especially given the kind of trauma that the young Bruce Wayne suffered - and was inflicted on any number of Robins. I came up in the '70s with the Denny O'Neill Batman which is as much canon as anything done today and I think Denny's approach to the character can be seen in some of what Batman says."

Comics Guy saw a parallel between a "bum" in the story wanting to finally do good and the Joker wanting to finally kill Batman because both are worried about their legacies.

"I don't think it's a stretch," says Straczynski. "I think it's a decision we all have to make at some point or other: What is it that I want to leave behind? How do I want to be remembered? What good will I have accomplished in the finite number of years I have? It's a question I ask every day, followed shortly by, 'Where's the men's room?' and 'Did you mean to wear those pants with that jacket?'"

Straczynski says his DC "dream project" is something he's currently working on, but it's "classified for another month or so. Suffice it to say it's something I've wanted to do my whole life, and now I'm actually doing it."

In an interview with "Slashfilm," producer Lauren Shuler Donner - who has been involved with the X-franchise since the first film with Bryan Singer - dismissed rumors that "X-Men: First Class" will be filmed any time soon.

However, a tweet from actor Tim Pocock - who played a young Cyclops in this year's "Wolverine" film, said that "First Class" - which would be an X-prequel of sorts. will start shooting by March of next year. However, he said two other possibilities were taking priority - a fourth "X-Men" film and possibly a "New Mutants" film, which would introduce a younger, all-new cast of mutants to moviegoers.

Comics Guy's opinion: Do a fourth X-Men film to make the main component of the franchise strong first. Remove the stench of "X3" - and even "Wolverine' - and remind moviegoers why mutants are cool again.

E-mail comicsguy@phillynews.com