No Man’s Land

October 18th, 2005

Filed under: Comics, Politics

I spent the better part of the past weekend reading the Batman: No Man’s Land storyline. I only picked up a few peripheral Batman titles when this was originally published in 1999, so I missed most of the story.

For those of you unfamiliar with the plot: Gotham City has been demolished by a severe earthquake. Rather than rebuild the city, the government instead decides to abandon it. The residents are evacuated and all access to the city destroyed. Gotham City is declared a “no man’s land” and anyone left inside is considered an outlaw. The military is called in to enforce the borders. No aid of any sort will be given to Gotham’s remaining residents.

As the dust settles, different areas of the city have been claimed by different gangs. City block by city block, Batman and his associates, along with the remaining GCPD officers, reclaim Gotham City. As a final act, they head off an attempt by Lex Luthor to take over the city.

No Man’s Land was an overarching storyline that lasted for just under a year. Within this storyline there were several smaller story arcs* and some done-in-one stories.

Reading No Man’s Land post-Katrina, many of the plot concepts don’t seem quite as far-fetched as they did when it was originally published. Let’s look at a No Man’s Land/Katrina Prediction Scorecard: (green for correct, orange for maybe, red for wrong).

  1. A major US city can be entirely shut down by a natural disaster
  2. After an evacuation, the destitute, elderly, and invalid will be left behind.
  3. Food and fresh water will be worth their weight in gold.
  4. Disease will be an issue.
  5. Some police will turn to crime, while others will remain on duty non-stop.
  6. The Government will decide to abandon the city. Abandoning New Orleans was discussed, but I don’t think anybody really took it seriously
  7. Armed gangs will roam the streets. The national media certainly seemed to believe this at first. There was definitely looting and lawlessness, but not to the extent pictured in No Man’s Land. And no super-villains (unless you count ex-FEMA director Michael Brown).
  8. Through inaction, the government will let people die. I’m considering this one a “maybe” because of intent. In No Man’s Land, the government intentionally abandoned people to die. In Katrina, it was more inertia, ineptitude, and an inability to fathom the big picture that led to so many deaths.
  9. It will take a year before any rebuilding begins.We’ll just have to see.
  10. Caped vigilantes will protect the citizens.

Although it was dragging by the end, this was one of the better Batman storylines of the past few years. It was certainly better than War Games and Bruce Wayne: Murderer/Fugitive/DDR Champion. Until the very end (the conclusion of the Joker arc), it managed to avoid the unnecessary and wanton murders that have populated the Bat books as of late.

*The individual story arcs within No Man’s Land used the same technique Marvel has been widely criticized for using in its upcoming Spider-Man: the Other storyline — the same creative team writing and drawing all the cross-over books in a particular month. The stories definitely benefited from this unified presentation, though admittedly DC wasn’t trying to launch a new ongoing Bat book at the same time.

6 Responses to “ No Man’s Land ”

  1. Tom Smith
    October 18th, 2005 at 4:27 pm

    I really enjoyed some of the NML stories, especially the Rucka and Brubaker stuff.
    I don’t suppose you have the SCRUBS score for it though?

  2. bob
    October 18th, 2005 at 4:34 pm

    If Sean Penn wore a cape, would he qualify under #10?

  3. Scott
    October 18th, 2005 at 8:23 pm
    Official Comment

    The total SCRUBS score for NML is an awe-inspiring 90, but half of that is due to the sheer number of issues involved.

  4. David Oakes
    October 19th, 2005 at 8:06 am

    So what is the mean SCRUBS (”SCRUBS Bar”?) score for NML?

  5. Scott
    October 19th, 2005 at 3:28 pm

    On the true/not true spectrum, where do you put the “city made off limits, borders enforced by authorities” factor? On the one hand, there was some rescue work going on at all times, and the Mayor started pushing for people to come back to at least assess the damage pretty early; on the other hand, you have lots of volunteers who wanted to help with search and rescue operations (even with their own boats) being turned away, and incidents like the crowd from the convention center being turned back on the bridge.

  6. Nevin
    October 20th, 2005 at 11:21 am

    Given that this takes place in a superhero story, I think you need to differentiate between “true for our world” and “a logical extension of a world with superpowers”. (”Definitely wrong” would be another category.) I’d say that having armed gangs roam the streets and superheroes protecting them are both exaggerations of our reality, but exactly what would happen if Katrina had happened in the DC universe. Likewise, taking a year to start rebuilding (well, to make significant progress on it, at least) is probably over-optimistic for us, but is expected in the higher-tech superhero world.

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