The solicits for July’s Batman titles came with this little tidbit:
BATMAN, INCORPORATED #13
Written by GRANT MORRISON
Art and cover by CHRIS BURNHAM
1:25 Variant cover by GRANT MORRISON
1:100 B&W Variant cover by CHRIS BURNHAM
On sale JULY 24 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
FINAL ISSUE • Combo pack edition: $3.99 US
Batman saves the world and loses everything.
This issue is also offered as a combo pack edition with a redemption code for a digital download of this issue.
After seven years, Grant Morrison finishes his grand designs on Batman, leaving the hero in a very dark place. Morrison has murdered his creation, fan favorite Damian Wayne, destroyed ties binding the Bat-family and their international allies, turned Talia Al Ghul into a villain in her own right, and included enough esoteric references to make a very educated person’s head spin. He turned the Batman and Robin duo on it’s head during Dick Grayson’s time under the cowl; with a gleeful Batman and a sullen Robin. He has created several of the greatest stories involving Batman in recent years.
And his final coda is terrible.
Batman and Son introduced a bratty boy trained to be a killer and the heir to both the mantle of the Bat and the League of Assassins. He was intended to die at the end of his first arc. However, Damian Wayne had rapidly become a fan favorite, much to Morrison’s surprise. Future tales brought back Damian and his mother, Talia Al Ghul, to either aid or hinder Batman. During The Resurrection of Ra’s Al Ghul, Damian’s relationships with his father and his “brothers” began to evolve. In Batman: RIP, he helped save the day and his father from the machinations of the Black Hand. He became Robin and, in the eyes of many, earned the title of Robin. He may have been a brusque murdering prick, but we loved him.
And then Morrison took him from us in an exit that was both unworthy of the character, and was totally unneeded. Was it ego that led Morrison to do this? Envy about how Damian had grown beyond being a plot device? Because it sure was not a decent send off for the character. Damian’s death was no “Reichenbach Falls,” it was part of Morrison’s increasing convoluted plotting.
To call Morrison’s plots “confusing” is an understatement. Even starting with Batman: RIP, Morrison had a grand plan that you could see if you would step back and see the arc as a whole and then going back into the component parts. An example of this would be the reoccurring “Zur-en-arrh” motif starting with Batman and Son through Batman: RIP. We see elements of the Black Hand and the seeds for Batman, Inc. in Morrison’s Batman & Robin run. And even before the New 52, we have the seeds for the current volume of Batman Incorporated in the first volume. Add in references to Tibetan Buddhism and other Eastern Philosophies, time travel, labyrinths, nearly forgotten aspects of the Silver Age, and British culture (that last one later spinning out into the incredibly fun Knight and Squire) and things get confusing and complicated.
That complicated construction of stories also weakens the present volume of Batman Incorporated because while it builds upon pre-New 52 ideas, it forgets much of what came before it. There were no clues, outside the couple of issues leading up to his demise, of Damian’s death. There was no need of it, especially in regards to the other titles. It’s too blunt of Morrison, compared to his other titles.
Morrison’s run on Batman, pre-New 52, is one of the greatest runs of all time. Afterwards, it became a dark, muddied, plot hole filled mess. In many ways, his want to end his story, at the cost of everyone else’s stories, comes off as selfish. Batman Incorporated #13 will be the end of Morrison’s tale, and it will have ramifications to come. Given the dark place he’s driven Batman to now, how harsh is the place he intends to go? It will send shockwaves through all the title. The last few issues will need to bolster the weak story that has been the New 52 Batman Incorporated run. Compared to before the New 52, Morrison’s Batman stories are not that good.
In a period of seven years, Morrison changed the shape of the Batman mythos. His final bow on the Dark Knight will probably do the same. But it will be on a sour note as his goodwill with his fans, including yours truly, has dried up. His execution of Damian was unneeded. Talia’s plans are more convoluted than anything Morrison had come up with before, and the Heretic’s own origin is both disturbing and silly. Perhaps his best days are behind him, but Grant Morrison, for good or bad, will be one of the great Batman writers of all time. It is sad that his Robin-song might be a discredit to his past work, and to the denizens of Gotham.
Daredevil by Mark Waid Vol.1 TPB
The “Red Hulk Bank Bust”
Let’s just start with recent developments in last Wednesday’s Avengers vs. X-Men storylines. Judging by those, the latest Marvel family member whose life will probably take a dramatic turn for the worse will be Noh-Varr, who goes by the superhero name the Protector.
Monica wasn’t directly connected to the Marvel folks; she just adopted Captain Marvel’s codename after she got her powers. And her relatively thin connection to the Kree heritage, alien race angle may be why she’s the one of the people on this list who’s been spared a lot of drama. Today Monica still has her powers and her sanity. She’s just changed her codename a few times, and now goes by the name Photon.
This guy was never even really Captain Marvel, or a Kree, at all. He was a member of the Marvel Universe’s famous Skrull shapeshifting race. The Skrull government bonded his DNA with Mar-Vell’s to lock him into that form permanently, and his mental conditioning was messed up, so he believed he really WAS Captain Marvel, even though he wasn’t. Khn’nr was just a victim of the government messing up its own experiment. And, once he found all this out, he rebelled against his Skrull makers and battled to aid the Earth, and then, of course, he was killed in the battle.
