A Sense of Doubt blog post #3925 - The Politics in Batman's Grave

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3925 - The Politics in Batman's Grave

I really liked this comic. I have read it multiple times.

Of course, I am on record as a huge Warren Ellis fan, especially on my blog, here.

Here's reviews of the comic:

https://comicbookroundup.com/comic-books/reviews/dc-comics/batmans-grave


Today's share:

https://650centplague.wordpress.com/2025/06/12/politics-in-warren-elliss-the-batmans-grave/

Thanks for tuning in!

Politics in Warren Ellis’s The Batman’s Grave

Posted: June 12, 2025 | Author: Martin de la Iglesia | Filed under: review | Tags: Alfred Pennyworth, Batman, Bryan Hitch, comics, DC, Labour Day, politics, superheroes, US, Warren Ellis |Leave a comment

Better late than never, here’s what I had planned to be this year’s Labour Day blogpost.

The Batman’s Grave is a strange comic – a 12-issue limited series that came out just at the same time when the allegations of sexual misconduct against Warren Ellis were made public. Apart from a three-month gap between issues #6 (cover date: May 2020) and #7 (August 2020), however, publication went on regardless, unlike most of Ellis’s other comic projects that were swiftly cancelled by the publishers, including DC. Due to the scandal, DC’s promotional activities for the later issues of The Batman’s Grave might have been a bit muted though, which could explain the lack of impact this comic seems to have had – despite its high-profile creators, Ellis and penciller Bryan Hitch (inks by Kevin Nowlan and Hitch himself, colours by Alex Sinclair).

The plot is standard Batman fare: the eponymous protagonist investigates murders, battles minor villains, and finally discovers the mastermind behind those crimes and confronts him. Batman’s supporting cast is limited to two characters in this comic: Commissioner Jim Gordon of the Gotham City Police Department, and butler Alfred Pennyworth. The GCPD plays an important role here, which allows Ellis to once more show a police force (and thus, a government) that is not only incapable of protecting society from crime so that it has to rely on masked vigilantes like Batman, but also corrupt and almost a force of evil itself (e.g. executing a cop killer in custody). Batman is not much better – he acts ruthlessly, e.g. torturing a villain to extract information and drugging the inmates of Arkham Asylum.

But it’s Alfred who is the most interesting character in The Batman’s Grave. There is, of course, a fair number of stories in which unassuming supporting characters like Alfred (or his Marvel counterpart, Jarvis, the Avengers’ butler) get their time in the spotlight and perform heroic deeds that one would have thought unlikely for a humble, non-superpowered servant. The appeal of such stories doubtlessly lies in the contrast between those characters’ ‘badass’ heroics and their usual prior characterisation as polite, discreet, soft-spoken, and docile. The profession of a butler in itself is somewhat politically charged – a job in which one refers to one’s employer as “Master” must be deeply problematic to at least those leftists who subscribe to a “No gods, no masters” philosophy. The job of a butler, at least as carried out by Alfred with his absolute loyalty to Bruce Wayne, his subordination of his entire life under his Master’s, is perhaps the antithesis to the ideal of self-determined working.

In The Batman’s Grave however, the dialogue between Alfred and Bruce Wayne puts Alfred’s character in a different perspective. Ellis’s Alfred is snarky, back-talking, almost defiant. He still carries out his duties, but he questions Bruce’s actions and openly voices his objections, e.g. when he learns about WayneTech’s Alexa-like voice assistants designed to spy on their users. Not only do Alfred’s lines of dialogue give him a bit of independence and personality, they sometimes also hint at the faintest trace of political leanings. For instance, when he remote-controls a Batmobile and uses its external speakers to have “a lovely conversation with some young people about the unfair pressures of neoliberalism on the youth of today”, it’s clear that he is not a neoliberal himself. Add to that an apparent fondness for alcohol and narcotics, and Alfred almost becomes a countercultural figure. Or at least someone quite different from what one might expect from a butler.

Does Ellis’s Alfred deconstruct the image of the butler? And if so, would that make The Batman’s Grave a subversive comic? Perhaps one needs to take the whole comic into account. Alfred still acts only as Batman’s sidekick, offering his opinions and advice, and it is up to Batman to decide which advice to take and which not, and ultimately to act as he sees fit, accountable to no one. In the end, it’s hard to tell who is right and who is wrong, because there aren’t really any conflicting views that needed to be resolved. For instance, Batman doesn’t want Alfred to use firearms. Alfred does so anyway. Neither of them changes their opinion, they just go on doing what they do in their own way.

People say things like Ellis is “letting his thoughts out onto the page” (Evan Valentine at ComicBook.com), but what are Ellis’s views exactly? Is there a message in The Batman’s Grave? Is there something he wants to convince us of? It seems that neither Batman’s moral rigidity nor Alfred’s laissez-faire attitude would work on their own; they can only succeed as a team, keeping each other in check as it were. The key to success (justice? safety? law and order?) requires a great deal of ‘the end justifies the means’, and when the supervillain is defeated at the end, a lot of damage has been done to get there. Which, again, is typical Ellis: the world in which we live is a rotten place, but at least we can – like Alfred – tirelessly and viciously bemoan it.

In a different political reading of The Batman’s Grave (#7), David Brooke at AIPT draws a connection to the then-ongoing George Floyd protests.

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2511.16 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM = 3790 days ago & DAD = 444 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.