<span class="mx-1">‘The Dark Knight Returns.’ Yawn. ‘The Long Halloween.’ Snooze. ‘Batman: Blink’ is what Matt Reeves should read before making the next Batman sequel.</span>
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<span class="sf-entry-flag sf-entry-flag-creditline">DC Comics</span>
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By Brad Gullickson · Published on February 26th, 2022
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<em>Welcome to <strong>Pitch Meeting</strong>, a monthly column in which we suggest an IP ripe for adaptation, then assign the cast and crew of our dreams. In this entry, we’re pitching the next Batman sequel using the deeply underrated Blink as its backbone. </em>
When discussing Batman comics, the same books come up repeatedly: The Dark Knight Returns, Year One, The Killing Joke, Arkham Asylum, The Long Halloween, and The Court of Owls. With good reason, they’re all exceptional takes on the Caped Crusader. But once you’ve worked your way through them, where do you turn? Probably Birth of the Demon, The Black Mirror, Ego, Batman Incorporated, Knightfall, and Dark Victory.
Drilling your obsession even further, you’ll uncover Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader, Gotham by Gaslight, Hush, Under the Red Hood, Batman Universe, and The Best Man. There are 83 years of Batman comics, and I’m sure there are loads of stories I neglected to mention that others are currently shouting through their screens. But, I’m also willing to bet that most of you are not screaming Batman: Blink at the top of your lungs. And its lack of representation on Batman listicles bums me out.
Batman: Blink remained uncollected for years. Originally published in 2002 across Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight issues 156 through 158, Blink introduces DC Comics readers to Lee Hyland, a blind grifter with the supernatural ability to see through the eyes of others. When he accidentally bumps into a serial killer on a Gotham City sidewalk, he’s pulled into a vast conspiracy involving snuff films and the rich bastards who consume them. Hyland becomes the Dark Knight’s best link to solving the case, and a reluctant partnership is formed.
Imagine David Fincher directing a Batman movie, or 8MM’s Joel Schumacher desperately trying to get serious after his dayglo dalliances with Batman & Robin.
The Batman: Blink Creative Team
The actual brainchild behind Blink was the late, great Dwayne McDuffie. At this point in time, he was still struggling with the dissolution of Milestone Media, which was an alliance of African-American writers and artists who published such titles as Static and Hardware under the DC Comics umbrella. While the line was cut short in 1997, Static found a second life as the popular animated series Static Shock in 2000, and that led McDuffie to write and story-edit on other cartoons like Justice League Unlimited and Ben 10.
One reason why Blink may not appear on lists alongside Arkham Asylum and The Long Halloween is that the art is much more traditional with its illustration and paneling. Despite some radical covers supplied by Brian Stelfreeze, the interiors are somewhat basic. Not bad, just not Dave McKean or Tim Sale. Penciled by Val Semeiks, inked by Dan Green, and colored by James Sinclaire, Blink operates mostly with close-ups and tightly secluded action sequences. The script traps the readers in the heads of its two characters, Batman and Hyland. McDuffie does not want us to wander too far away from what they’re thinking.
The plot feels rooted in the novels of Thomas Harris and the film and television adaptations that followed the success of The Silence of the Lambs, with a good dash of TheX–Files and maybe even Quantum Leap thrown in. However, I would love a Batman movie sequel to embrace McDuffie’s conflicting interiors. Blink tells Batman’s point of view from some unknown distance in the future, with Bruce Wayne describing the events through journal entries. Meticulously lettered by Kurt Hathaway, these captions reveal Batman’s troubled hindsight as an expert crimefighter grappling with the foolish blunders he assumes throughout his investigation.
In contrast, Hyland’s perspective merely bubbles into panels from seemingly nowhere. He talks to the reader, guiding us through his grifts, not picking pockets, but bank accounts from checkbooks written in offices under the assumption that no one is watching. Somewhere on their daily journey, these marks unsuspectingly pick up Hyland as a mental hijacker. A week later, their savings are barren.