This week I have a set of three posts for the week in review
and one is a cheat of sorts. The first post is about Batman Inc #8 and will of course contain many spoilers.
It is impossible for me to talk about this book without ruining the issue, but
let’s face it DC has tried to guarantee that everyone knows about. The second
post will be another “Random Thoughts” post. Lee had plenty of stuff for Friday
so I held onto this post but feel it only works if it is timely and even by
Monday afternoon it is going to be stale. The final part will be commentary on
a few other books that I read from this week. Sadly I keep falling behind on my
reading and need to catch up so I try and read current stuff every week and
save other books for later.
Of course before we hit Batman Incorporated I need to
provide the links for next week with Cosmic Comix listing here and Midtowncomics here. Next week has a lot of good stuff but the one book I’m really
looking forward to is Sex by Joe Casey.
Click here for a good interview with Joe as he talks about what the series is
about and why he wanted to do it. Also coming out is Mara, Snapshot, Superior Spider-Man, Colder, Green Arrow, Age of Ultron
and Before Watchmen Rorschach. I
have noticed that my list needs some dramatic trimming as I have too many books
on the list that are not being anticipated by me. If I can’t remember at all
what happened in the prior issue it is a good chance it is a book to be
dropped.
Okay that was a damn long preamble to the first part.
I’m bitterly disappointed the Damian died and I also totally
understand why he died. Grant Morrison
with Chris Burnham (and his art is
great Gwen, regardless of what you call fat faces) have been killer on this
book and in many ways it has been the best Batman book on the stands. The “but”
is that the great work being done by Snyder and the heavy shift that the new 52
caused in Grant’s storyline relegated this book to a second tier status. As a
straight up comic book this issue was excellent. The heroic death of Damian was
well played. The character interaction between Dick and Damian made me long for
the Batman and Robin series that featured Dick as Batman. The artwork was
stunning, I’m sure work I could never afford an original page and Jason Masters’s
work, while not as strong as Chris Burnham’s held up. I did notice Jason’s four
page sequence did not feature Damian. The final two pages were flat out amazing
as we see Damian die and then see Batman die a little as he holds his dead son
in his arms.
Now what I want to talk more about is the character Damian,
what Grant did for the Batman franchise and why I think it is funny how in one
issue Grant has overshadowed all the other Bat books.
The character was suppose to have died sooner based on what
I have heard from others who read various interviews with Grant Morrison, but
for various reasons he survived a lot longer. I also read that some people feel
he was a one note character, but I disagree. Damian added an element to the
Batman books that have never existed before. Damian was the darker character
and with Dick Grayson as Batman, Batman was the lighter character. Think about
how clean and simple it was to do and Grant managed to flip the dynamic on its
head in a fairly simple story. The story was an unknown son is raised by his
mortal nemesis’ daughter Talia. She has raised him to be a master assassin and
killer with her warped world view. Batman is presented with this son and then
Batman dies, leaving Dick Grayson to take the mantle and a new Batman and Robin
are born.
The franchise had been mired in the same dynamic for 70
years and Grant kept the core of the story and inverted it making the entire
book have a fresher feel to it. Some of the Bat books fed off the dynamic. We
also had DC do some horrible things in trying to play off what Grant was doing.
The Battle for the Cowl and Batman the Return were both based on what Grant was
doing, but showed that the main DC office had no actual clue what was going on.
It reminded me of the weekly Countdown series that was supposed to be leading
up to Final Crisis. I just keep thinking that Morrison tells them a detail or
two and then DC thinks it is going to be one thing and Morrison has it going
another direction. The desperation of trying to make great series into events
has driven me to distraction and also made me take an internal pledge to never
buy an ancillary tie-in again unless I’m getting the series or if the same
writer of the main book is writing the tie-in.
The crux of the entire thing is that Grant changed the
Batman mythology like no one done in a very long time. It was actually a
dramatic change equal to what was done by O’Neil/Adams to make Batman back into
a dark knight. The O’Neil/Adams Batman broke the mold the character had fallen
into due to the comics code and the popularity of the sixties TV show. I would
also say that this change was even more then Frank Miller imposed with Dark
Knight Returns. The sad part of it is that the new 52 caused tons of changes to
the Batman franchise and wiped out a lot of the context of what Grant was doing
with the character. The Robin character is being framed as an internship to
train young heroes and that is eroding the family feeling. Also Grant knows he
is unable to actually kill Bruce Wayne so he was only able to make that a
“reality” for a short period of time. That leads to the Damian story only being
able to have one ending and that is his death.
That is the shame of what has happened because Damian was so
young that they could have shown him growing up. Even over the few years (was
it already seven?) we have seen a shift in Damian from who he was to who he is
at the end. It would have been fun to let the character age over time and we
could see Damian as a young man and how he could have been maybe a truer hero,
but one that was darker then Bruce. Grant’s future stories gave us a glimpse of
that idea.
Instead we are left with one of the great all time runs on
Batman and a story that I will re-read over the years. The aftermath will
likely lead to Harper Row as a new Robin or some other sort of surrogate but
nothing that can impact the books like Grant did. The new 52 reset Barbara Gordon,
wiped out Stephanie Brown as Batgirl, made Dick’s time as Batman appears to be
a blip in time and has essentially destroyed the idea of an older Batman who
truly learned to value his family.
The next few months we will see Grant wrap up his run, the
other Bat books exhibit the angst of the death of Damian and in another year
the story line will be an occasional reference and then eventually lost in
time.
It is the nature of the beast with DC and Marvel that no one
is willing to let characters grow old and move on to new things and one I will
lament forever. That is why I will cherish this run and especially I will
appreciate all that Grant had done prior to the wonderfully marketed new 52
that was poorly planned and ill advised. The impact to Batman was one where DC
tried to fix what was wrong, but fixed what had already been repaired and made
new again.
One thing I have to say is that I think Grant’s work which
was being under marketed by DC is a superior story to what Scott Snyder has
been doing with Batman. Of course the bottom line is that we are getting two
great Batman books at the same time. I’m sad to see Grant leaving but like his
run on Animal Man, Doom Patrol and X-Men these are stories to keep on my book
shelf and being enjoyed over and over again.
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