Batman and Robin #4: "Revenge of the Red Hood: Part One: Red Right Hand"

The new issue of Batman and Robin features the predicted drop off in art quality, as Philip Tan’s murky, sketchy pencils replace the pop dynamism of Quitely. The story generally works though, the series remains very straight ahead and accessible, without the convoluted psychological insanity of Batman RIP, which most people seem to like, but I’m finding a bit frustrating on some levels.

I’m guessing, and hoping, that this new Batman series will follow a similar arc as the first part of his run, starting with just straight forward fun stories showing Batman on the top of his game, then gradually layer in new problems and issues until it becomes a complex psychological web. I think Morrison’s first couple of arcs on Batman are among the most generic comics he’s ever written. I love Damien, so he spices things up whenever he appears, but apart from that it’s pretty light ninja manbat adventures. It’s not until the JH Williams arc, and particularly the “Space Medicine” arc that the series takes off, and pretty much everything after that is among the best work Morrison’s ever done.

The new series has gone back to the original mode, focusing more on fun and light stories, with occasional moments of character introspection and thematic development. I found the psychological stuff a lot more interesting. I know that Batman RIP got some negative response, but I think it was an ambitious, hallucinatory experience. Reading those issues was like spinning down the insane rabbit hole that was Bruce’s collapsing psyche. It’s also some of the most avant garde content in any of Morrison’s big superhero titles, going further than anything he did in JLA or New X-Men.

But, I respect the direction he’s taking the reinvention and am able to enjoy the journey. It’s just a bit frustrating that it seems like the majority of these issues is action scenes that don’t really go anywhere, and the more intense character stuff is minimized to smaller interludes, very effective interludes, but if every page of this issue was as strong as the scene with Sasha talking about taking off her face or Dick and Damien on the roof, it’d be a much more emotionally engaging experience.

The Red Hood and Scarlet function on one level as another riff on the intrusion of grim and gritty supeheroics in the day-glo world of Silver Age comics. They represent the worst excesses of early 90s heroes, like The Punisher, killing villains that Batman and Robin would bring to justice, and doing so in a very modern way, publicizing their exploits on Twitter.

The Red Hood is very media conscious and sees Sasha’s mask as just another element of their image. In the same way that we wonder who’s under his hood, he claims that people will “imagine the beauty beneath that creepy mask.” That scene is the highlight of the issue, as Sasha’s inner humanity is contrasted with the Hood’s assurance that she’s doing the right thing. These two characters are clearly meant to be a mirror of Batman and Robin, and Sasha’s murders in response to her father’s death echo both Bruce and Dick’s origin. This is what Dick could have become if he was trained by the wrong man, and it’s what Dick is fighting to keep Damien from becoming.

One of the things I like about this issue is the way that Grant continues to expand the Batman universe and bring in new characters and concepts. In addition to the Red Hood and Scarlet, we get the introduction of a mysterious English author, another masked man. The Black Glove mystery in RIP was a lot of fun, and these two characters bring back the detective element to the comic, while also giving Batman some new villains.

The end of the issue builds to a flourish with Batman and Robin brought into contact with their counterparts and raising the question of who is the Red Hood. Jason Todd would definitely make sense, but I feel like Morrison wouldn’t go with such an obvious choice. Perhaps either the Hood or this English author is going to the Joker, he’s still out there, and I’m sure will return before the end of the run.

I’ve got to comment on Tan’s art, which is not a good match for the pop fun the book’s supposed to be going for. Cameron Stewart and Frazer Irving will both be a great match for the tone, but Tan stuff is murky and ugly. I think even the much maligned Tony Daniel was a better fit for the book. I actually liked Daniel, this, not so much.

As a side note, some of my waxing nostalgic for RIP was prompted by reading through Batman: The Black Casebook this week, the TPB collection of the 50s stories that inspired the early parts of Morrison’s Batman run. Why that book wasn’t out when RIP was running I have no idea, but it’s still worth a look. The thing that’s most striking about all those stories is how it’s not actually that far a leap from the strange psychological short stories in this book to what Morrison did in RIP. Many of the stories are about Batman being forced to question elements of himself and his identity, spinning into nightmarish scenarios of identity displacement and loneliness before everything is restored to the status quo on the last page.

My favorite story to date is a surreal one in which Batman wakes up in jail and is told that he’s a crazy man impersonating Batman. He goes to Wayne Manor and talks to Robin, revealing himself as Bruce Wayne. But then another Bruce comes down the stairs and our Bruce runs away. Eventually it’s revealed that Alfred was posing as Bruce, and he and Dick had set up this scheme to stop the real Bruce was dying due to a poison gas he’d been exposed to. It’s totally surreal and like a raw piece of psychological terror. He doesn’t face villains, he faces his own psychological demons. It’s a lot like the Superman stories of the era, just raw drug trip deconstructions of self in comic book form.

I’m sure there were a lot of less successful or ambitious stories from the era as well, but this book is a great compilation of ones that are fun to read and illuminate more of what Morrison was doing with RIP. Morrison has always embraced the absurdity of comics, and managed to find a way to make a story like RIP totally surreal, but still emotionally relevant in a way that more ‘realistic’ superhero comics aren’t.

And, I hope he gets back to that mode on Batman and Robin eventually. Doctor Hurt was teased to return at the end of issue one, and I can’t wait to see him back in action. After this Red Hood arc, at least we’ll have the awesome prospect of Cameron Stewart drawing a story with the Squire, one of Grant’s most entertaining pet characters in the DCU.

Batman and Robin #3: "Batman Reborn: Part Three: Mommy Made of Nails"

The first Batman and Robin arc wrapped up with another great issue, that again spotlights Frank Quitely as the best visual storyteller in comics history. The overall Morrison Batman story makes some progress, and some great groundwork is laid for future storylines, but this whole arc feels kind of like Morrison and Quitely cutting loose after the very structured, for the ages perfection of All Star Superman and just jamming on various crazy Batman ideas.

As with the other issues in the arc, the majority of the issue is a fight scene, in this case the intercut Batman and Damian fights to open things, then a triumphant reunion of “Robin and Batman” to bring Pyg to justice and firmly establish themselves as the Batman and the Robin, no matter what else happened in the interim.

As with a lot of recent Morrison work, there’s decentralization of the narrative, and an emphasis on singular moments. The threat has already escalated when we get there, and we go right to Pyg ranting at the height of his insanity and Batman mid-interrogation. This style works with Morrison for a number of reasons. One is that it allows him to give you all the pleasures you’d want from a Batman story, but still allow for Quitely to do his astonishing work on the extended fight scenes. The entire issue seems written to allow Quitely to draw something amazing on every page.

But, it also works that way because Morrison has just gotten better and better at summing up a concept or emotion in a single page, or even a single panel. There’s not that much explicit character work done with Damian over the course of these three issues, but by the end here, we can tell that he’s changed. We’re never told that he’s changed, we can see it in what he says and the way he responds to things.

The most haunting moment in the issue is after Damian promises to save Sasha, when he decides to go after Pyg instead of saving her. It’s a choice that may make sense in the moment, and is certainly where Damian’s instincts would lead him. He’s been raised by assassins, trained to kill, and he’s not going to fail in his mission. But, as he jumps on to a roller coaster car in pursuit of Pyg, he sees Sasha left behind, terribly deformed by Pyg’s process, being consumed by the Dolls, yelling “Don’t leave me! You promised!” The most haunting panel here is Damian’s hand reaching back towards her, unable to reach her as the car rolls down the tracks. That visual tells you the emotion of the moment perfectly, we know how much Damian wants to save her, but he can’t. It’s only a three panel sequence, but it’s a pivotal moment in Damian’s arc.

Sasha has lost her father in the same kind of traumatic event that Bruce Wayne or Dick Grayson lost theirs, and in the issue’s final moments, we see that she has become the Robin to Red Hood, scourge of the underworld, who seems to be a more violent version of Batman, gunning down the cops who threaten Sasha. So, because Damian failed to save her, she’s gone to work with someone on the darker side of things, and when Red Hood and Sasha invariably come into conflict with Batman and Robin, Damian’s guilt about failing to save her will come to the surface. We only hear Damian mention Sasha once after he fails to save her, but you can still tell that it phases him.

As I mentioned earlier, Quitely’s work in the fight sequence is just astonishing. I think he sometimes goes too far in drawing grotesques, but the doll people work pretty well, and the choreography is just on another level from anyone else out there. Quitely also manages to make both the Batman and Robin costumes look like the coolest outfits out there, something you wouldn’t mind being caught wearing on the street. His Damian looks like an actual ten year old, and that adds a lot of weight to the action. I love the look of his hood at the end of the issue, and the “Bang!” sound effects written in blood at the end are the capper on the issue.

The entire viral drug thing feels kind of tacked on, but I don’t really mind. That’s not what the story is about, Morrison and Quitely chose to focus on the parts they found most interesting, and then you can piece the rest together with the exposition here. The sequence with Batman and Gordon isn’t really about resolving the Pyg story, it’s about establishing the new Batman and Robin’s relationship with Gotham PD, and confirming that no matter what the earlier suspicions were, these guys are Batman and Robin.

And, with this new fresh start wrapped up, we return at last to a loose end from Batman RIP. It’s been a while since I read those issues, but I’m assuming that between the approach to Bossu’s place and Batman and Robin’s entrance through the ceiling is where the iconic “Batman and Robin will never die!” splash takes place. Either way, it’s great to see that stuff come back, and to get a really badass moment with Dick and Damian enjoying their success.

This issue wraps up Quitely’s run on the title. His art is masterful as always, but this is definitely a more low key Morrison/Quitely collaboration than most of their previous work together. I’m really excited to see what they work on next, be it the wrap up to this Batman stuff or something else, to see them incorporate the more experimental freeform style here into a new project. I can’t say I’m thrilled to have Philip Tan coming on board. I didn’t think much of his art in X-Men, and his aesthetic doesn’t seem a great match for Quitely’s or Frazer Irving’s down the line. But, we’ll see. The series has established its new status quo, now it’s time to play around in that world.

Batman and Robin #2: "Batman Reborn: Part 2: The Circus of the Strange"

Batman and Robin #2 is a lot like the first issue, in that much of the first half is spent on a fight scene seemingly designed to show off Quitely’s unparalleled storytelling abilities, and outré design sense, and then spends the second half picking apart the emotional impact of recent events in the characters’ lives. I like the way that Grant doesn’t do the story as a strictly continuous series of events, you get the sense that things happen off camera and inform the way the characters behave.

Most of the time when I talk about comics, I talk about the writer primarily, with the artist as kind of an afterthought. That’s because most writers don’t take full advantage of what the medium can do, and most artists aren’t doing anything particularly innovative. But, even working with the best writer in comics, it’s Quitely’s work that leaves the biggest impact here. I love the design sense of his Batman and Robin. The costumes are barely altered from traditional looks, but the gray pants on Damian’s outfit, and the green boots make all the difference in turning one of the lamest costumes in comics into one of the coolest. His Batman also looks great, making the classic grey suit look very fresh.

Quitely’s design sense got the most attention on New X-Men, with its emphasis on “pop sexy” characters, and his work there was great, but he always makes his superhero characters look so much cooler than anyone else. He makes their clothes look like something you’d actually want to walk around in, even more so than any of the movie Batman outfits. I still wish that someone would make a line of clothes based on his X-Men outfits, I’d love to wear those.

His storytelling is fantastic here, and the aesthetic he creates is what lingers after the issue. I think he’s just gotten better and better as time has gone on. Something like Flex Mentallo was beautifully rendered, but he’s gotten more and more formally inventive as time has gone on, and the experimental approach of We3 has given way to the almost three dimensional action feel of All Star Superman and this book. This book feels a bit grittier than the day-glo clean of Superman, fitting in light of its subject matter. The one misstep for me is the obese man in a tutu, who feels like a stock Quitely grotesque. But, everything else is great.

I don’t’ have too much to say about the fight scene, it’s fun, particularly the buildup with the roof meeting, but the real gem on a writing level is Alfred and Dick’s discussion in the cave. Here, we see the Dick/Damian relationship as a kind of adopted child thing. Dick can never live up to Bruce, who Damian now deifies, despite having little respect for him when they first met. So, Damian is rushed into both the role of Batman, and the role of adoptive parent of the world’s worst child.

Damian’s criticism only makes it even clearer to Richard what he sees from people like Gordon, he’s only impersonating Batman, it takes something deeper to be the real Batman. Alfred shortcuts that by suggesting that Richard take on the role of Batman, and channel his spirit as an actor would.

This series so far has seemed generally disconnected from the rest of the Morrison’s Batman run. The renumbering signals a clear break, but the approach is also very different. I loved the death metal heavy ambience of RIP, but I think it was smart do a break like this, to reflect the introduction of the new Batman. But, a scene like this one ties back into a lot of the key stuff from RIP. That storyline had a heavy emphasis on Alfred as an actor, raising the question of whether he was behind what the Black Glove was doing. Telling Dick to “play” Bruce calls back to the questions that were raised there.

In addition, it brings the series much closer to Morrison’s core thematic concepts than the first issue was. Much of Morrison’s experiments with magic and drugs in the 90s were about turning himself into the person he wanted to be, through the medium of the fantasy persona King Mob. He chose to abandon his previous incarnation, the low key guy we saw in Animal Man, and reinvent himself as a comics rock star. Did something just click and change in him one day? No, he chose to become the person he wanted to be, and that’s what Alfred is telling Richard here, to just play Bruce until it becomes real.

It ties in to a lot of stuff from previous Morrison comics, the characters in Division X for one, and Magneto’s performance as Xorn in particular. In that case, Magneto played the role so well, he created a character that people liked more than his actual personality. So, the inspirational message here is don’t worry about your “true self,” just be the person you want to be, and the world will catch up. It’s a magical act of transformation.

Things close out with Damian getting overwhelmed by the creepy doll henchmen from last issue. It’s a great visual moment, colored in neon day-glo shades. It also sets up a nice redemptive moment for Dick in the next issue. While those closing images are great, my favorite drawing in the book is Damian speeding along on the bike, a spectrum of color streaming out behind him.

So, I really liked this issue. I think it deepens the world we saw last time, and raises some deeper character stuff, keeping the arcs from the previous Batman stories in mind. It’s a totally enjoyable book, and I’m eager to see where Morrison goes with it next.

Batman and Robin #1

Morrison and Quitely’s Batman and Robin isn’t anywhere near as profound or majestic a work as their recent collaboration, but it is a really fun comic, that sets out an interesting new status quo for the characters, a shift in approach for the next chapter in Morrison’s great Batman novel.

I thoroughly enjoyed the issue, I think there’s a lot of great stuff in there, but I’ll admit that it didn’t move like the over the top insanity of Batman RIP. What the issue does best is set up a really strong world and a new outré threat for the characters. A lot of that change in feel is due to Quitely’s art, which feels so much cooler and futuristic than the Tony Daniel art on RIP. It’s a new pop world, which needs a different Batman and Robin.

Morrison’s economic characterization is a large part of what makes him so great as a writer in comics specifically. He tells everything we need to know about the Dick Grayson/Damien dynamic from their brief interactions with each other. Damien sees himself as the real heir to the Batman identity, and is supremely self confident, while Dick expresses uncertainty about taking on the identity of his legendary mentor. But, it’s not done in a really emo way because they’ve both got a job to do, and that takes priority.

I admire the artistry of the opening action sequence, or the cool cut away view of their Gotham apartment building, but it wasn’t until the ending that the issue really took off for me. The introduction of The Pyg is really creepy, bringing a horror movie vibe to this otherwise rollicking adventure. Morrison described the series as David Lynch directs the 60s Batman TV show, and that’s the sequence where I really felt that coming to life. This is the same doofy theme villain with a gang of identical henchmen you’d see in the series, but with a creepy twist to it that makes it really disturbing.

The first part of Morrison’s Batman was largely about confronting the horrors within. Everything that Doctor Hurt did to Bruce was designed to send him down a self created spiral of insanity, to destroy Batman’s ability to be Batman. In the series, every criminal that Batman fights is really a prismatic reflection of his own confrontation with death, his own thogal. Hurt is designed to be a deliberately ambiguous worst nightmare ultimate enemy for Bruce. So, he may be Thomas Wayne pretending to be the Devil, he may be the Devil posing as Thomas Wayne, either way, he’s the worst threat that Bruce could imagine.

Morrison played with the idea that Bruce was really the one behind the Black Glove, creating an enemy so strong he could never defeat it as a way of preserving his own purpose. The whole thing was that kind of bizarre psychological journey, and I loved it, but I still respect the change in approach he’s going for here. It’s almost like the change in the identity of Batman necessitates a kind of back to basics fighting crime approach. I’m sure things will become more twisted and psychological as it goes on, but for now, I enjoyed this issue as a fun romp.

Though, I’ll admit the most joy I got from the whole thing was seeing Doctor Hurt holding the keys to Wayne Manor on the teaser page. For whatever reason, that character totally resonated with me. I love his outfit, I love his over the top lust for destruction, and I’m eager to see him come in contact with this new Batman and Robin.

The Spirit and Female Superheroes

I watched The Spirit on blu-ray a couple of days ago. The film was enjoyable enough, bouncing between some really strong, fun material that was baffling in the way only current era Frank Miller can be, and some scenes that just didn’t work at all. I think it’s totally understandable why the film bombed, and was poorly received, but for me, it was more exciting to watch than most movies out there.

Reading a bit about the film, a lot of people are knocking Miller for his objectification of every single female character in the film, a trope that goes back to his comics work. Miller definitely falls into many standard men writing about women tropes, the virgin/whore dichotomy and identifying a woman by her ass before her face, as well as dressing most of the female characters in a variety of fetishized outfits. But, at the same time, the narrative action in the film is largely propelled by the female characters, and they invariably take center stage over the rather blank slate hero, The Spirit. The Spirit actually does very little, he is bounced between various other characters who define him, be it Ellen who draws him to a normal life, Sand who pulls him towards adventure or even Silken who tempts him towards evil. Essentially, The Spirit himself is placed in the role traditionally held by women in action movies, of being a pawn the other characters use as an excuse to fight each other.

Now, that’s not to say that the film doesn’t have some problematic thoughts on gender roles. The Spirit flirts with everyone he encounters, and is able to have a climactic kiss with Sand, then walk right over to Ellen and be cool with her, even as he flirts with Morganstern at the same time. And, you could argue that the entire film is Miller putting various actresses he finds attractive in outfits he likes and making them fall in love with a blank slate male protagonist. But, in lavishing so much attention on them, they control the film, in a way you very rarely see in a superhero movie.

I’d argue that the film becomes its own kind of feminism, a distinctly male brand of feminism, but valid nonetheless. It reminds me a lot of a Russ Meyer movie, where female characters are presented as objects of visual pleasure, but also become dominant actors in the narrative, and control the movie, lording their power over generic beefcake men who have little personality and no say in how the movie proceeds. Look at the film’s climax, it’s really about Sand vs. Silken, The Spirit and The Octopus are just there to backup their female associate.

Yes, like a Russ Meyer movie, there’s a heavy emphasis on showcasing the beauty and particularly the tits and ass of the female characters, but does doing so invalidate the agency of the female characters? I don’t think they’re particularly fully realized characters, but no one in the film is, you certainly know more about Sand than you do about Denny.

I’d argue if this movie were directed by Joss Whedon, people would look at it very differently. In the same way they can overlook the way he dresses Echo in everything from schoolgirl to dominatrix fetish because Whedon is a self professed ‘feminist,’ they would hail the strong female characters at the center of the narrative, and write off the photocopying an ass bit as just having some fun, or presenting a character with a strong sense of her sexuality. Because Whedon makes such a big deal about being a feminist, it’s a lot easier to accept the contradictions of his work, to accept the fact that a high school girl is presented in a sexualized fashion throughout the first three years of Buffy. Or, look at River on Firefly, a mentally challenged teenage girl who is consistently sexualized throughout the series. Because Whedon is a feminist, it’s okay, but if Miller did the same character, people would find it objectionable.

Now, admittedly tone is a big part of this. Whedon’s work is much more self aware, and pokes fun at its own indulgence, even as it still gives you the pleasure of that indulgence. People don’t seem to realize that ever since Dark Knight Strikes Again, Miller has been messing around with the ultra-serious image he had in the 80s and 90s. To criticize All Star Batman, or this film, by calling it self parody, is like criticizing Airplane for having jokes, and not treating its aircraft disaster story seriously. He’s intentionally pushing things to the point of total insanity, and when it works, it’s a lot of fun to read.

More generally, I find it interesting that this film gets so much criticism for the presentation of its female characters, when it’s one of the only recent superhero films to have a female character who’s anything more than just the girl waiting at home, worried about her hero boyfriend. Who’s a more interesting character, Sand Serif or Pepper Potts? Silken Floss or Rachel Dawes? The Dark Knight is a particularly notable offender, using its female character as an excuse for the men to fight, then killing her off to motivate the final act of the story. She’s a cipher, existing solely for plot purposes, with no will or agency of her own. As in many recent films, she’s given her own job, but essentially she’s just there to support the man she’s involved with.

A large part of the problem stems from the fact that there aren’t that many compelling female characters in either the DC or Marvel universes. Thanks to the efforts of Grant Morrison and Greg Rucka, there’s more than there used to be, but they’re still not the brand name characters that can headline a film. Still, I’d love to see Renee Montoya as The Question pop up in a Batman film, or see some kind of standalone movie about Zatanna.

Over at Marvel, there’s a lot of great female characters in X-Men, but very few in the Marvel universe in general, where most of their movies take place. Is The Wasp the best we can hope for in the Avengers movie, a woman who’s best known for being a victim of spousal abuse? In the X-Men though, there’s a ton of great female characters, largely thanks to the effort of Chris Claremont, who much like Joss Whedon, has created a lot of really strong female characters, some of whom are fetishized, but no more than the male heroes were in his run.

Claremont most importantly manages to have a wide variety of female characters in his X-Men run. There’s the Earth Mother goddess type, Storm, there’s the everyday girl Kitty Pryde, the powerful and dangerous Phoenix and many others. Jean Grey or Storm are probably the most well known female superheroes beside Wonder Woman.

The X-Men movies never made Storm really work as a character, and Jean existed largely as an excuse for the Logan/Scott rivalry. There haven’t been that many great female superheroes on screen. The best presentation to date was Catwoman in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns. The film has an underlying feminist subtext, but melds it with the narrative such that it never seems preachy. And, the dynamic between Catwoman and Batman, Bruce and Selina, is consistently interesting and challenging. She’s the character with most of the agency, the one who defines their relationship and her own identity. He’s the one who just wants to settle down with her in a big house and have a family.

Again, the character is presented in a sexualized, fetishy way, but I think there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. She’s a fully realized character, who dresses that way for a reason, it’s a means to express something within herself. She becomes a kind of grotesque parody of the sort of “bad girl” that men want. Men want a “bad girl” who’s just bad enough to still be controlled by them. It’s the illusion of a dominant woman. She subverts that by then pushing things further, to the point that her power becomes dangerous to the male order that’s trying to control her.

Compare her role in the narrative to Rachel Dawes in The Dark Knight. Selina controls things and actually pushes the narrative forward for her own ends, not just to get together with whatever man she’s interested in. And, though it’s far from the film Batman Returns is, that’s what the women of The Spirit do as well. So, even if you're to say that The Spirit is just pandering to men with its parade of hot women, isn't it better to see hot women who can actually do something and have their own lives, than hot women who exist just to support the male hero?

Batman #686: "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?" (Part 1)

Picking up where Grant Morrison left off, Neil Gaiman’s Batman #686 presents yet another spin on the death of Batman. This one also appears to be taking the “It’s all true” approach to Batman, mixing elements of pre-Crisis Catwoman with post-crisis Barbara Gordon and a reincarnated Joe Chill for a pretty mysterious opening. Is this a dream like trip through hypertime that Batman takes on his journey between worlds? Are the various deaths he experiences a piece of his journey through Darkseid’s Omega Sanction? Or is it just an excuse for Gaiman to get a bunch of characters he likes together and tell some fun stories about Batman.

I haven’t written that much about Gaiman on this blog, but I do love his work. Sandman was the first long form comics series I read, and I still think it’s one of the high points of the medium. I was debating at the New York Comicon who the fourth best writer in comics is, with everyone having the foregone conclusion that Moore, Gaiman and Morrison are the top three. I can’t argue with that, Gaiman doesn’t write that many comics, but what he writes is usually really strong. 1602 didn’t work so well, but I’ve liked pretty much everything else I read by him in comics.

I’d still love to see Gaiman get to conclude his Miracleman run. I’ve only read “The Golden Age,” and there he did the near impossible of following up on Alan Moore’s legendary run in a way that didn’t step on what Moore had created, and only served to deepen and expand the universe. It’s a shame the series has been trapped in legal limbo for so long, one day, hopefully Gaiman will be able to finish the story.

When reading a Grant Morrison comic, the thing that overwhelms you is the amount of ideas. In Final Crisis, there’s a dozen cool concepts littered on every page and you can’t believe that he has this vast store in his mind to draw from. With Gaiman’s work, what has always amazed me is the huge amount of stories. Sandman knitted together its larger story with countless standalone stories. Where do they all come from? This issue is similar to a lot of Sandman arcs in that it uses a gathering of a bunch of people as a framing device for various smaller tales, each from a notable member of Batman’s supporting cast.

I’m not sure what the end result of all this will be. How can all these different incarnations of the characters be there together? I think it’s the perfect thing to tie in with the Omega Sanction, that this is Bruce’s hallucinatory journey through a series of different lives and deaths, watching all his friends betray him and leaving him utterly alone. Selina, particularly this Earth 2 version, and Alfred have always been allies of Bruce, why would they kill him?

The Selina story covers a piece of the Batman mythology that I love, but hasn’t really been touched on in either of my two favorite comics Batman stories, Morrison’s Batman RIP or Miller’s The Dark Knight Strikes Again. The uncertain flirtatious relationship between Selina and Bruce, Batman and Catwoman, can be great because it explores the thin line between Batman and the criminals he hunts. If Catwoman can so easily switch sides from good to bad, why can’t Bruce do the same thing, and, could he find himself on the other side without even meaning to be there?

The relationship is most brilliantly explored in what is still the finest Batman film, Batman Returns. There, we see Bruce go one step further than he does in this comic and offer to throw away the Batman persona and settle down with Selina, only to have his image of an idyllic homelife rejected. The two of them need that fire to be together, they aren’t normal, and can only really be together as Batman and Catwoman. One of the things I love about the film is Selina’s defiant rejection of his offer of a classic heteronormative dream life, marriage to the most eligible bachelor in Gotham, a good looking guy who’s also incredibly rich. She has moved beyond that world now, and doesn’t play by their rules.

Wonder Woman is so messed up in a history of bondage and power/subservience, I’d argue that Catwoman is DC’s real feminist hero. Sure, she may be a villain some of the time, but the character argues for a rejection of traditional feminine roles, and the embrace of a new kind of independent lifestyle. I’d really like to see Morrison’s take on the character in his next batch of issues.

Catwoman’s story here is largely about the impossibility of being together with Batman, primarily because he has his way of doing things, and doesn’t see much room for someone with her own approach. He is attracted to her when she’s a criminal, but when she tries to fight crime, he just chastises her for doing it “wrong.”

Here, Selina does achieve the kind of domestic dream that she rejected in Batman Returns, but she gradually loses the fire that drove her as time goes on. In letting Batman die on the couch, she is making it possible for her to kill herself. As long as he was out there, there was always the hope he’d come back to her, and things could be like they were. When he comes back and she finds out that he knew she was there all the time, but never chose to see her, she decides that it would be best to let them both die together. Only, she’s too scared to do herself, and instead she just watches the man she loved, a piece of herself, die.

The Alfred story is also extremely interesting. It works fine as a straight up elseworlds type story, but I’d argue it functions more as Alfred exercising his guilt for enabling Bruce’s delusions over the years. In letting Bruce become Batman, Alfred indirectly upped the ante in the crime stakes, and paved the way for supercriminals like The Joker. We see that dramatized here with the story of Alfred literally creating supervillains as a way to make Bruce feel better.

The whole story feels a bit like the portions of Watchmen that discussed how much better it felt to go out in costume when the villains were wearing costumes too. If Alfred hadn’t created ‘The Riddler,’ Bruce might have gotten over his depression naturally and given up the illusion of being Batman. But, Alfred kept raising the stakes to keep him happy, and eventually the illusion he’d constructed spun out of control.

And, as time went on, the illusion became real, which is discussed in the scene with Bruce and Alfred at the window. The fight against evil is real, therefore the evil itself must be real as well. The whole story is interesting in light of the rampant speculation that Alfred was the force behind the Black Glove, and also in light of the idea that Bruce was his own worst enemy, another possible candidate for Black Glove status. Batman RIP was largely concerned with the idea that only Batman himself could come up with a villain powerful enough to defeat him. This story would take place early in Batman’s career and play off the idea of Batman and The Joker as symbiotic entities, each becoming more violent and powerful in response to each other, riding together on an inextricable path towards destruction.

I’m still not sure what the overall setup for the story is, but this was a great, really dense issue that brought back memories of just how good a comics writer Gaiman can be. This is stronger than 1602 or Eternals, and it made me wish that he’d jump back on an ongoing, or just do some more work in the DCU or anything. I want more Gaiman comics. But, for now, this two parter will do.

Final Crisis #7: 'New Heaven, New Earth'

After a tumultuous seven issue run, Final Crisis wraps up with its best issue yet, an issue that manages to resolve all the threads in a satisfying way, and perhaps achieves Morrison’s long discussed goal of making the DCU a sentient entity. The parents of the universe are gone, the gods are fallen and it’s up to the characters to invent their own world. A large part of the issue is about the characters gaining the agency to control their own story and build this fifth world of their own design. It’s at once a return to the pre-Crisis DCU, and a celebration of everything that has come since. It’s a complex issue, and not everything about it works, but the overall impact is huge, I think this is easily the best issue of the entire series, and a great way for Morrison to wrap up his current time in the DCU.

The issue begins with a trip to an alternate world where there’s a black president and a black Superman. I was already talking about the resonance of Obama and this comic, and this opening fuses the iconography of Obama and Superman to foreshadow the emergence of a new, better world at the end of the series. It’s also a pretty badass moment to have the president rip off his suit and have a Superman costume underneath. The discussion afterwards about using the “wonder horn,” and the music they hear makes a lot more sense after seeing what Superman does later in the issue.

The issue is odd because it violates so many seemingly basic rules of writing, and in the process proves that rules are good, but what really lingers about a story is the energy and experience of it. The early parts of the issue are told in flashback, or perhaps narration in the present, it’s unclear. Images flow from the narration in a seemingly stream of conscious way, drifting from fight to fight in a haze of action. What this means is that we don’t get to see some important story points. I’m frustrated that we don’t get a closer view of Shilo activating his boom tube, after all the buildup of his story, he either doesn’t appear or is barely visible in this issue. I also find it frustrating that we never really see Wonder Woman liberated from her Justifier enslavement, we can infer it, and we get an emotional beat when she crumbles the mask, but we don’t get the seemingly critical moment when her mind comes back to the surface.

So, there’s some sloppy story construction on those beats. I’m not sure how much is a product of the art and how much is conscious choice. I will say that Doug Mahnke kills it on this book. I’ve heard a bunch of people say they wish he had drawn the whole thing, and I can’t disagree. JG Jones did a good job when he was on time, but he wasn’t good enough to justify the delays or art mess. He’s not Frank Quitely. If Mahnke could have drawn the whole story in a timely fashion, it would have been great to have him on board. At least in terms of art, the series goes out on a high note.

The other major issue is the amount of deus ex machina in the story. On some level, a story about gods is going to always involve this sort of ending, but the stuff about the monitors doesn’t feel as developed as other elements of the story, and that makes it feel kind of out of place here at the end. Darkseid was the villain of this whole thing, and to end on a different, somewhat related, but not really connected story thread feels a bit off. But, I think Darkseid gets a good finale too, so it works okay. It’s partially an issue of pacing, it might have been better to have Batman do the final strike on Darkseid in this issue, while Superman was off with Mandrakk and the Monitors so they could be intercut instead of happen in succession.

One of the things I love about the issue is the sheer epic quality of the story. I think that all three Crises, for their flaws and merits, manage to feel truly epic and important for the universe. They stand as testaments to the insane over the top storytelling capabilities of the DCU. On a meta level, the tour of all of the aspects of the DCU in this series is a way of showing its strength, the power of its lifeblood, a way to combat the vampiric death that Mandrakk represents.

This issue’s use of narration in particular makes it feel huge. I’d be hard pressed to say exactly what sequence certain events happen in, but I felt the importance of them, and was emotionally engaged throughout the entire thing, Lois’s narration serving as a way to heighten our emotional engagement with what’s going on. Yesterday, I said that Superman Beyond worked on an intellectual level and a pure spectacle level, but it didn’t have the emotional component. This issue has all three firing at full cylinder, reading the pages, I was really excited to see what came next because it really felt like anything could happen. There were a ton of panels in here that just made me smile, and that’s one of the greatest things about Morrison’s work, and superhero comics in general. They can be so huge, so archetypal that it transcends the traditional demands of a story and just hits you in that part of the brain that loves spectacle and excitement.

In Superman Beyond, we saw Zillo Valla claim that Superman’s origin story was the most powerful story in the multiverse, the story that could pull Dax Novu back from the darkness. Here, we see that story invoked again, and replayed as part of the battle against Darkseid. It starts with the rocket full of Batman’s iconography. Batman is just as powerful an archetype as Superman, the core things that make him who he is will survive any threat against the world, he’ll always find a way. I love the idea that in a world made of story, symbols and images are the life essence, if those can be preserved on another world, Batman will find a way back to life.

That’s perhaps the boldest innovation in this miniseries, the idea that the DCU is literally built on stories. It will live on because it’s always “To Be Continued,” and the characters will perpetually deal with the same archetypal story elements. Something like the Joker/Batman conflict is a founding principle of the universe and it will always cycle itself through again and again.

Superman’s confrontation with Darkseid is really well done. At this point, Darkseid has infected virtually the entire populace, the world itself is evil, so what can Superman do? As Darkseid says, “Kill me and you kill everything!” So, Darkseid does precisely that, he fires the bullet at Orion, which he knows will eventually come back to kill him, and in the process, he intends to take the whole world down with him. At least that’s the way I see it, the whole bullet backwards in time thing is pretty hard to fathom, but this view of it makes sense.

I love the payoff on the Flash’s long run through the entire series. They bring death to Darkseid and zip off in a haze of trippy visuals and the sort of crazy science dialogue that Morrison does so well. Lois describes it as “the story of the flashes outrun Death, the Black Racer.” In some ways, this caption is used simply to facilitate the dissemination of narrative information, but I’d argue that the goal is also to transform this story into instant mythology. This is a story so huge they’re already telling it to kids within the DCU, it’s the creation myth of the fifth world, the way that the world was saved and changed and rebuilt. And, the crazy brilliance of the Flashes outracing Death and bringing him to Darkseid lives up to that kind of mythos.

From there, we see the dissolution of the world, conveyed in a series of perfectly chosen scenes that convey what I view as the dissolution of the entire multiverse. We see all the scientists working together to buil this Miracle Machine, even our old friend the Chief from Doom Patrol, whose head is no longer in a jar. This builds to the dizzying assault on Checkmate and the Atoms doing something. These panels are drawn from the pure reservoir of superhero stories. This is what every comic should feel like, filled to the brim with insane images and concepts. Morrison has talked about how comics have to up their game now that films can do superheroes. This is what he means, this is a comic that spans universes and does something you’ve never seen before in every panel.

It’s also a marvel of economy. The Arrow and Canary resolution is touching and funny in just three small panels. I love their hands barely touching as they drift through space, staring down at the Metron symbol. A panel down we can another fuck yeah moment with the appearance of Most Excellent Superbat and his team in action. I don’t know who these characters are on an individual level, but Morrison makes me care about them through the sheer pop joy inherent. Who doesn’t want to save Lolita Canary? Who doesn’t love Lighting Flash dashing between panels, all in a massive buildup of light and fire.

I’m honestly not totally sure on exactly what happens at this point in the comic. I know that the Checkmate satellite explodes, apparently killing Mister Terrific and Hawkman and Hawkgirl, while the Super Young Team and the others evacuate via Mister Miracle’s Boom Tube. Then, there’s a separate JLA satellite where the survivors of all the destroyed multiverse worlds stick around. So, are those worlds entirely destroyed, and then rebuilt later on, or are the only survivors the ones who were stuck in the freezer? I guess it might be that everyone’s possessed by Darkseid, and it takes Superman’s wish to make them better again. It doesn’t really matter, perhaps a couple more reads will make it clear.

The sort of free association storytelling is present in the panels where Renee tells her story. Speaking to Overman about his cousin’s death, we jump to a scene that may or may not have ever happened where he screams in the rain while holding her body. On one level, this is likely an allusion to the original Crisis’ famous dead Supergirl cover, but it also works as a visual way to express the emotion he’s feeling. The walls of reality are breaking down at this point, emotion and logic are converging into a psychogenic reality where idea and feeling are indistinguishable from physical reality.

This brings us to Superman realizing that Darkseid intended to kill himself to bring the whole world down into the black hole with him. If he possesses all their minds, his death will destroy everyone. But, Luthor won’t have that. As I mentioned in earlier reviews, Luthor always exists in reverse moral polarity to the world he’s in. Now that he’s in an evil world, he’s going to fight for good.

Luthor claims that “Libra was the anti-life equation and now he’s not.” So, was Libra a physical incarnation of the concept of anti-life? I’m not sure about that, maybe it’s more that Libra was some kind of vessel used to channel the anti-life into our reality. I’ll have to reread to see what exactly was up with Libra throughout, but the point here seems to be that Luthor and Sivana have created a machine that co-opts the anti-life equation and overrides it. So, using this machine, they’re able to rescue the people under the control of Darkseid and restore their individual will.

This leads to the fantastic moment where Frankenstein rides a giant dog and hacks the head off of someone. It’s great to see Frankenstein back in action, I’ll always have great affection for all the Seven Soldiers characters, and particularly with Mahnke drawing, Frank is as good as he’s ever been.

The Morticoccus virus comes seemingly out of nowhere here. Apparently, it was mentioned in Countdown, and is a call back to Kamandi. The way it reads here, it sounds like the “god-bacterium” could easily be Darkseid himself.

So, this all leads up to Superman’s final confrontation with Darkseid. This is another huge fuck yeah moment. The world is seemingly collapsing, but Superman knows the nature of this world, it’s made of “vibrations,” of stories. If you put a better story against this bad one, the good one can win out. Darkseid is the bad virus designed to destroy the world, Superman is an agent of good, rebuilding the world from within. He sings like only he can and Darkseid explodes, unable to withstand the onslaught of pure universal essence.

I love these sorts of moments because deep down I do believe that good and hope will always overcome darkness. As in this series, things can go bad for a long time, but progress will always win out in the end. I don’t think a moment like this is hokey or unearned, it kills it on an emotional level. Love will win out in the end, you can have a whole world of darkness, but all it takes is one little light to make things bright again.

This leads up to the confrontation with Mandrakk, and our intersection with the stuff from Superman Beyond. Mandrakk is the anti-story, the desire to end the universe and prevent the characters from developing any further. He invokes Superman’s origin story, but positions Superman as his father, a man who failed to save his universe. The origin is the powerful keystone of the entire reality, and Mandrakk is trying to twist it to serve his own ends.

Superman igniting the Miracle Machine with his solar battery is a literal representation of the light concept I was talking about before. I love the panel where he reaches his hand out and seems to have a tiny galaxy spinning below him, electricity arcing to create the Metron symbol around his head. There, he truly is a god, the benevolent architect of a new reality.

This leads to another fuck yeah moment when we see a legion of Supermen descending on Mandrakk, shouting “Let the sun shine in!” You can’t help but play the euphoric Fifth Dimension song in your mind, the music that tore Darkseid apart now echoing in your own mind, a truly bizarre bunch of characters stand and tear down Mandrakk.

The choice of such wacky characters as a bunch of Earth-35 animals and Captain Carrot can easily be read as a meta assertion on the health of the DCU. Mandrakk is the kind of reductive writer who seeks to tear down the magic of these characters, while Morrison wants the universe to be strong in all its bizarre contradictions.

The assembly of Supermen also reinforces Superman’s status as the ur-hero of the DCU, the source of everything that has followed. He has inspired all these others, he is the true god and architect of this world, and next to that power, Mandrakk is decidedly insignificant. He is staked, and the cancer eating at this world is gone, the “symmetry of the orrery” is re-established, Darkseid’s hold is slackened and the world can go on again.

Part of this is Nix Uotan’s emergence as a fully realized 5-D aware being. His story is kind of a reverse John a Dreams. He starts out beyond reality a piece of the core universal essence that is chipped away into an individual form to become a monitor. Then he falls in to our reality and gets lost in a human life, forgetting that he was ever anything more than that. But, now he’s fully realized, he has his monitor powers, but also human emotion to anchor them. There is a power in our lives and loves on this world, and that’s what Mandrakk doesn’t understand.

In his power, Nix summons the “Forever People of the 5th World” and the Super Young Team shows up. This reinforces the idea that new characters will be inheriting the roles of the old archetypes in the new world. The Super Young Team are the new Forever People, Shilo the new Mister Miracle, and I’m sure we’ll see a new Orion and others in the future. But, where does that leave the original New Gods? They are seen here watching over the birth of a new Earth, Earth-51, rehabilitating the graveyard world into a flourishing New Genesis. The war is over and a new world can be born.

At this point, the Fourth World gods seem to have passed beyond physical form, and serve more as touchstones for the next generation. They are the archetypal essence of good, and will reign supreme in a world where the archetypal essence of evil has been defeated and fallen deep down in to a black hole. And, they will guide Earth 51 to better things. It’s a classic Morrison trope, the worst, most corrupted thing drawn back to goodness through positive influence. Earth 51 is Quimper, plunged through the worst shit and reborn as a glorious flower.

This all leads up to the Monitors abandoning their post and descending down into reality to live as humans. The Monitors were old order gods, trying to maintain order in the universe, to keep the parallel worlds separated and limit humanity. They are the evolutionary shackles that helped us grow, but have to be thrown out as we advance into a new world. They are in some ways like Barbelith, and the dissolution into white here echoes Jack’s entrance in to the supercontext at the end of The Invisibles.

Superman Beyond equated the Monitors with the DCU’s writers. So, does this ending imply that the DCU is now beyond writers, it’s a self sufficient entity guiding its own way. One could argue that if this is meant to be Morrison’s farewell to the universe, he’s sending it off to a place where malevolent gods no longer control it and the characters are free to live out stories without his outside influence. Throughout Morrison’s DC work, we’ve seen negative portrayals of god-like controlling figures, from Morrison himself in Animal Man to the Time Tailors in Seven Soldiers. Both the Monitors and Time Tailors are mixed influences, but the point of this ending seems to be that it’s time to stop trying to control everything and to let the universe direct itself.

Superman is such a strong idea, he can guide things forward in a fine way. There’s no longer needs for an intermediary, people have shown that they can control their own destiny. Our heroes are now like the gods of old, and the fifth world has begun. We get very little glimpse of what that fifth world will entail, but I guess that’s ultimately up to you. We’re all Nix Uotan, waking up anew, ready to write our own story.

In a lot of ways, the story is comprable to The Invisibles’ liberation from the needs of a structured universe at the end of the series and the journey out to the supercontext. The DCU has been engineered to specific ends by these monitors, they thought that they needed to rule like that to ensure the safe progress of the universe. They sought to keep the universes apart and organized because it was too dangerous to let them mix. But, the people here have shown that they can manage their own reality. The child universe has become an adult and we don’t need the gods to guide us anymore. We can be our own gods. As King Mob said on his way to the supercontext, “I’m ready to play with the grown-ups, babe.”

This leads up to one final big moment, the return of Batman, who’s stranded way back at the Dawn of Man, drawing his sigil on a cave wall. Will the bat symbol become as enduring a symbol as Metron’s sigil? How will he make it back to the present day? Has he become a god? Who knows, but the ending feels right, and I’m eager to see Morrison pick up his story again when he returns to the title in the summer.

So, after all that, what is the major takeaway? The DCU is built on stories, and as such, the Miracle Machine can control it by rewriting the story. When Superman wishes for a happy ending, he’s essentially rewriting his own reality. He’s the ur-hero, the source of all good in the universe, and he’s always going to do just the right thing. This version of Superman seems very influenced by Morrison’s vision of the character in All Star Superman. I think he works even better than Morrison’s JLA Superman, outside of All Star itself, this is one of the best Superman stories of all time.

At this point, he seems to have become meta aware of the nature of the universe. He knows it’s built on stories, and will always continue on, but he’s got to make sure this story goes out on a happy ending.

And it does. After all the messy darkness of the previous six issues, this single issue manages to resolve pretty much all the narrative threads and give us a glorious rush of hope to overwhelm all the darkness. It’s a lot to fit in a single issue, but Morrison pulls it off, and makes it emotionally relevant. I had mixed feelings on Final Crisis throughout, I really liked most of it, but it didn’t hit me in the way that the best Morrison does. But, this issue, he’s at his best, and it’s a great farewell to the DCU for now. I want to read some creator owned work soon, but in a year or so, I wouldn’t mind a trip back to the DCU to check on the Fifth World’s progress.

Final Crisis #6:'How to Murder the Earth'

I’ve been re-reading The Invisibles over the past few weeks, as part of getting the book ready, and I’m in the heart of Volume III right now. That makes it unfortunate timing for the release of Final Crisis #6, an issue that’s solid Morrison, but pales next to the brilliance and progressive feel of late period Invisibles. I love almost all of Morrison’s work, but I do think he’s been trapped in this kind of turned to 11 insane superhero storytelling for a while now, and it could be time to go back to something more introspective, along the lines of “Karmageddon.”

FC #6 is as strong an issue as most of Final Crisis to date, and I’m sure read under normal circumstances I would have been more into it. There are some absolutely fantastic moments, most of them involving the use of the Metron symbol to tie the resistance together and cut holes in Darkseid’s power. I love the moment where the Tatooed Man ignites his symbol and throws chaos into the onslaught of justifiers. Also awesome is the two page spread at the end where Metron tells Nix Uotan about the oncoming fifth world.

The issue is also notable for the ‘death’ of Batman. Again, people say that he’s dead, but even Morrison is making it clear that this is just part of Bruce Wayne’s ongoing evolution. The Omega Sanction is just another version of Thogal, a series of deaths and rebirths that will culminate in Batman eventually being reborn again. Morrison just wrote a lengthy story that made it clear that Batman is always prepared for anything, surely he can overcome the worst that Darkseid has to offer. What I hope is that we’ll get the rumored Bruce Wayne as god of the fifth world story, at least for a little bit before everything eventually resets to the status quo.

But, I’m hoping that after Final Crisis is over, Morrison takes some time off from big superhero comics and does some more restrained comics. I love the intensity and scope of this book, but when I read the incredibly precise ‘Karmageddon,’ or even look at the very specific emotional moments of “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” I want to see more stories like that. During The Invisibles, he balanced the heights of JLA with the more grounded Invisibles, we need that counter now. I’d love to see him do another long form creator owned project, or at least a couple of minis. I’m sure there’s a lot of stories still to tell in the DCU, and I do want to see those, but I want to see something closer to Seven Soldiers or The Invisibles as well.

Best of 2008: Film

10. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

This film succeeds both in spite of and because of its excess. At almost three hours, it’s about 20 minutes or a half hour too long, there’s a lot of material that while interesting in and of itself distracts from the film’s core. The center of the film is the relationship between Benjamin and Daisy, and that works wonderfully. The two actors are great as they deal with the frustrating impossibility of being together, as well as the joy of the brief moments when their lives overlap and they can be together. That stuff all works wonderfully, the material surrounding it ranges from strong to distracting. The old age Benjamin stuff works well, but goes on too long, and I found the constant cut backs to the present day framing story distracting. But there’s a haunting magic to the final hour or so that few films can match. I think it’s simultaneously been over and underrated by the film critic world at large, but it’s certainly a top 10 worthy film.

9. Wall-E

Pixar’s second best film (behind only Toy Story 2) is a remarkable piece of visual storytelling. Drawing on the visual language of silent comedy, the film is a cautionary tale about the world we live in, as well as a touching romance, and galaxy spanning sci-fi story. There’s moments of such pure joy in the movie, it’s more exuberant and exciting than anything else this year. I think the film does dip in quality a bit in its more conventional second half, but that’s only because the first half is so strong.

8. Synecdoche New York

Charlie Kaufman’s distinct cinematic voice goes in a more extreme direction than ever before in this film. I think it’s one of the best films of the year, but also extremely flawed in many ways. The second half goes rather off the rails, repeating the same beat over and over again, but the first half is uncanny in its ability to create a really unnerving vision of everyday life. There’s moments that are just disturbing, and the passage of time serves to disorient you in interesting ways. There’s very little difference between dream and reality here, is it a surreal world or are we experiencing the psychotic mind of the film’s protagonist? Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. The film is an experience, and I’ll definitely give it another look when it turns up on DVD.

7. The Wrestler

It’s less ambitious than the previous three films, but The Wrestler still stands out for its ability to make the everyday life of its protagonist into an epic struggle as large as anything on screen. Cinema can do so many different things, create so many different moods, and put you in different worlds. Most films you talk about in the context of world building are fantasy or sci-fi movies, but Aronofsky is as precise with his details as a Peter Jackson or George Lucas. The choice of music and props places you in this guy’s life, in the ever-growing distance from his glory days. It’s a really well made story that turns everyday life into something huge and meaningful.

6. The Dark Knight

I still have strong feelings against Batman Begins, but this film won me over, primarily due to the chaos incarnate performance of Heath Ledger as The Joker, but also Aaron Eckhart’s virtuous and troubled Harvey Dent. It’s an epic summer blockbuster done in the style of a 70s crime film, and the fusion really works. I don’t think all superhero films should have the self-seriousness of this one, but it works here. The story is epic, it doesn’t always make sense, and there’s some issues with the ending, but the overall takeaway is pretty phenomenal.

5. My Blueberry Nights

Yeah, there’s a lot of haters out there on this one. Even I will concede that it’s not at the level of Wong Kar-Wai’s other films, but there’s still wonderful moments that no one else can create. Wong Kar-Wai uses a different cinematic language than everyone else, and I love the chance to dip into his world for a while. I think he got a bit lost trying to capture some imagined idea of Americana, but there’s a great romanticism to the film, and some of the most beautiful images captured on film this year. And I still love the voiceovers that everyone else called pretentious or overwrought. Just get lost in the movie and then they’ll make sense.

4. Rachel Getting Married

Like The Wrestler, this film uses a ‘realist’ handheld aesthetic, but still manages to turn everyday events into consistently memorable film moments. It’s one of the most exciting and energetic films of the year, ably shifting from deep emotional moments to the simple joy of being together with everyone you know for a wedding. That’s what life is like, it’s not one tone, there’s a lot of emotion inherent in every experience, and we run the full gamut here. Great stuff.

3. Let the Right One In

Vampires have so much metaphoric resonance. On some level, we all exist as drains on the people around us, and the mix of violence and sex inherent in their bite has fueled millions of romances. This film de-dramatizes the traditional vampire narrative and uses it as a way to connect two isolated teenagers in Sweden. Visually, the snowcovered landscapes of the town are amazing, creating this incredibly stark world for everything to happen in. The relationship between the two kids is perfectly realized, and so subtle. It’s not played as a horror story, it’s just these two peoples’ lives, and there happen to be horror elements there. Things happen in a dreamy almost slow motion cadence, and that pace helps draw you in and lets you get lost in the film’s world. It’s one of the best horror movies I’ve ever seen.

2. Rebuild of Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone

This is a hard film to categorize. Is it something new? Is it a remake? Is it a sequel? I think to some degree, it’s all three. It’s a more focused, emotionally clear take on the series’ first six episodes, and it was one of the most exhilarating, emotional experiences I had with a film in 2008. It doesn’t reach the heights of End of Evangelion, but it does a great job of clearing up some of the strange logic issues the series had, and making the emotional arcs a lot clearer early on. I don’t think it replaces the series, but it’s a great supplement, and if I had to start someone with the show, I might just show them this movie first. The animation was beautiful, and the final moments of the film are as haunting a closing as anything on this list. I can’t wait to see where they go with Rebuild 2.0.

1. Australia

This is a film that didn’t get much love from the critical community or audiences, and it baffles me why. No film was a more absorbing emotional experience for me this year than this one. Baz Luhrman has an uncanny ability to create signature movie moments, building the images and music together to sublime emotional crescendos. It was three hours, but still zipped by, and even though the “two films in one” structure meant there was a slight drag in the middle, I was riveted for the vast majority of this film. I don’t think it had the deepest characters or most challenging narrative, but emotionally, the film hit me like no other, and that’s what the best movies do.

Batman #683: "What the Butler Saw"

I don’t have that much to say about Grant’s last Batman issue for the foreseeable future. It’s a nice conclusion to his run so far, summing up the major themes in an easily accessible way, and bridging the gap to Final Crisis nicely. However, I found myself more eager to read that Final Crisis issue than this issue. The ending was never that in question, but at least if Final Crisis #5 hadn’t spoiled the ending of this one, there’d be a bit more tension.

A lot of the criticism of Morrison’s Batman run has centered on the idea that it’s incomprehensible without knowledge of the classic Batman stories Morrison’s referring to, or the philosophy he’s presenting in interviews. These issues tell a condensed version of the “it’s all true” Batman history that Morrison discussed in interviews. It is the first time we see this concept rendered so explicitly in the text itself, and I think that’s the major merit of the issue. But, having already heard the concept in Morrison’s interviews, it’s not that much of a shock. This is basically confirming what we’d already suspect from the run to date.

There’s some fun moments here, but the major significance is found in the events with the Lump, and in Alfred’s final speech. During Batman RIP, Batman puts forth the idea that Gotham is a machine designed to make Batmen, that’s debatably true, but what we see in these flashbacks is the process that led to the creation of Batman, the way he turns the memory of his parents’ death into an engine that drives him past human limits of endurance. The Bruce Wayne we see in the alternate reality scenes is the kind of person that maybe he was meant to be, a spoiled rich kid, but the tragedy fuels him to be an undefeatable superhuman fury of justice.

The Lump tells Batman that he’s useless and immobile, he needs something to power him, and after his emergence in Batman’s mind, he has Bruce’s own trauma to drive him. The concept of Thogal is a brilliant addition to the Batman mythos, rather than just referring to the Nanda Parbat experience, it refers to the entirety of his life as Batman. Each awful thing that happens pushes him deeper into the darkness, but he continually climbs out. He faces death, he experiences the ultimate evil and is able to come back stronger and more able to fight it. That’s what Alfred’s speech that closes the issue is all about, his ability to face death and triumph over it.

The entire saga of Morrison’s Batman will apparently wrap up in Final Crisis #6. It’s a rush reading this in single issues, and seeing the two thematically similar stories literally cross over. Morrison is tying up all his loose ends in the DCU, there’s a lot to cover in the last two FC issues, hopefully they’ll hit that same manic insane hypercondensed style as Seven Soldiers #1 had. I don’t think anyone could manage a totally satisfying traditional narrative wrapup in that short a time, he’ll need something that unwraps in your mind as time passes. It’s only a couple of weeks until we’ll find out.

Batman #682: 'The Butler Did It'

It’s great to get another issue of Morrison’s Batman so soon after the end of RIP. This one doesn’t exactly clear up the many mysteries that still linger after RIP, but it does a great job of showing us the revised history of Batman that Morrison’s used to underlie his run, and ends with a brilliant twist that ties Batman’s run so far into both his own Final Crisis mythology and Kirby’s New Gods mythology. The initiation never ends.

Ever since the major shift in tone with the Torture Chamber three parter, Morrison’s Batman run has been a series of death and rebirth experiences, with Batman facing down an essential darkness that plagues humanity, all on his quest to reach a higher level of existence. In the last issue, we’re led to believe that Hurt may in fact be the Devil. He is a pure source of evil that Batman has been fighting against his whole life. But, in the DCU, who’s the true source of evil. Why, it’s Final Crisis villain Darkseid, and as we find out at the end of this issue, Batman’s Thogal experience continues after RIP ends when he finds himself at the mercy of Darkseid’s eugenics experiment.

The major question left unanswered between RIP and this issue is what exactly happened to Batman after the helicopter explosion. I don’t think that was ever meant to be death for Batman, and this issue makes that clear. Sorry to everyone in the media who reported last issue as the death of Batman, but he’s back alive and imperiled again in this issue. Perhaps real death, or true transcendence awaits at the end of Final Crisis, but for now, he remains earthbound.

This issue reinforces the thematic ties between the Batman run and Morrison’s Seven Soldiers: Mister Miracle miniseries. Batman #681 was essentially what happens with Mister Miracle after the end of Seven Soldiers #1, of course he’s going to rise again, and of course he’s going to do battle with, and triumph over evil. That is the nature of heroism. But, both series have their heroes dealing with something a bit more complex than simply battling evil, it’s all about doing battle with someone who’s out to destroy their minds. Shilo’s trippy journey through a myriad of alternate realities, each one bringing him closer to total despair mirrors what happens with Bruce in RIP. I love that kind of storytelling structure, breaking down strict narrative reality and replacing it with a shifting subconscious realm, where you can read the story as simultaneously a straight up, twisted superhero narrative, or as a meditation on the hero’s fractured psychology.

Last issue, Bruce talks to the evil monk about how during Thogal you see a mix of past, present and future. Here, Bruce flashes back through his entire career, as part of a psychic interrogation by The Lump. I’m not sure that we really needed another spin through the Batman origin story, but it is nice to see the schizophrenic history of Batman synthesized into one linear issue.

We start with the darkness of Batman’s early days, when he’s thoroughly committed to battling criminals, and never takes his eyes off the mission. Time blurs and soon he finds Robin entering his world, bringing “color” to their “monochrome lives.” Morrison makes a good case for Robin being essential to the Batman mythos, in the same way that Miller did over in Goddamn Batman. Robin makes Batman human, he makes him about more than just avenging his parents’ murder.

We next spin through another trippy 50s flashback with my favorite panel of the issue, Bruce and Batwoman facing a strange beast on another world, or maybe just tripping on acid together in the batcave. There’s a constant emphasis on chemicals in the story, and one of Morrison’s big concepts is that many of Batman’s strange adventures can be written off as side effects of exposure to Joker gas and other chemicals. In the cave together, I love Batwoman’s rambling monologue, “…my soul dying…on another planet…oh god…when our souls die…we die too.” It’s the sort of stream of consciousness raw emotion that Morrison does better than anyone.

Next, we reach the introduction of Simon Hurt. Here, he’s equated with Darkseid’s Lump monster, a parasite that digs through Batman’s memories and uses this knowledge to attack his weak points. Hurt is the Lump, and he is, in some ways, Darkseid. He’s all the evil that Batman’s ever faced, and this Final Crisis story is just a heightened stakes version of the same stuff we saw in Batman RIP.

This section has a strange panel in which they bury Alfred, then all of a sudden he’s back. I’m not that familiar with Batman history, but I believe this refers to a death of Alfred at some point in the 60s, before he came back during the TV show era. I do like Morrison’s nod to the 60s series with Batman and Robin stream of consciousness solving a riddle. However, I can’t help but wish that JH Williams had been drawing this. His ability to blend styles from disparate time periods together would have made this a much more visually compelling issue, and also helped clarify the changes in Batman’s world over time.

As Robin grows up, and away from him, Batman claims that he never liked any of this goofy stuff anyway. The dark age Batman reasserts itself, “Crime. Madness. Horror. These are the things I understand,” and a reinvented, more insane Joker beckons. Presumably, the next issue will deal with Batman’s dark journey through the 80s, and end in a way that sets up his final fate in Final Crisis.

But, this issue ends with a brief spin through an alternate universe, where Bruce is not Batman, all part of the process of keeping Bruce unaware that he’s under psychic interrogation. It’s understandable that he’s so paranoid, it seems like someone’s always trying to destroy him. I’m reminded of the quote from “Robin Dies at Dawn,” echoed in Morrison’s run about eyes, thousands of eyes watching. Batman thought he defeated Hurt, but now he’s part of something larger, a conflict with Darkseid and the essence of evil itself.

Morrison definitely uses some old tricks here, the journey from pulp age to silver to Bronze recalls Flex Mentallo’s similar structure, and a lot of material in Seven Soldiers. Is any medium so obsessed with its own history as comics? Whereas New X-Men and Marvel Boy were largely about new pop concepts that tie in to Morrison’s own philosophy, this is a book about riffing on comics history, and exploring things from within the DCU, rather than from our own universe.

But, I think there still is enough fresh stuff here, and I like the way it bridges the gap between the themes of Final Crisis and the themes of the rest of Morrison’s Batman run. This is another aspect of the ongoing Thogal process, the plunging into darkness before an emergence into light. The entirety of Final Crisis is a kind of Thogal for the DCU, it must die before it can eradicate its flaws and darkness, then return a stronger, more healthy entity.

Final Crisis has gotten a lot of bad press lately, be it for the lengthy delays or the art switches, but I think once all the story that Morrison wanted to tell is out, and removed from the hype, it’s going to be looked back on as a great storytelling experiment. It’s on the road to synthesizing most of his DC work to date into a single story. Batman’s running in, Superman’s running in, 52 is running in, Seven Soldiers is running in, JLA is running in, it’s all coming together in this epic, and I’m hoping he gets the chance to tell the story he wants to tell, and give the DCU the glorious rebirth it deserves.

Batman #681: RIP Conclusion: 'Hearts in Darkness'

“Hearts in Darkness,” the conclusion to Batman RIP, continues the recent trend in Morrison’s work of creating issues that are hypercondensed on the page, and just expand in your mind after reading. As such, I’ll admit that after finishing the issue for the first time, I was a bit underwhelmed. Was exploding in a helicopter a fate worse than death for Batman? What was the big reveal of who the Black Glove was? The issue doesn’t fulfill the expectations that had been built by both Morrison’s comments and DC’s framing of the storyline.

The way I read RIP, the “fate worse than death” doesn’t refer to what happens in this issue, it refers to the storyline as a whole, Bruce’s adoption of the Zur-En-Arrh persona and his descent into life on the streets and insanity. This issue is the triumphant return of Batman, literally rising out of the grave, back in his regular outfit and revealing how even in his insane state, he’s managed to stay one step ahead of the Black Glove because “Batman thinks of everything.” Batman can go away at the end of this issue because his purpose is filled, he’s inspired enough people to continue his mission, and his confrontation with Hurt at the end is the final stage of his journey through Thogal, the conquering of his greatest fear.

When I read The Black Glove hardcover, and the subsequent RIP issues, I didn’t think there would be a big reveal about the identity of the Black Glove, I thought Hurt and his crew were the Black Glove. Surely, Hurt was evil enough, you didn’t need a shocking twist that Alfred was behind it all, or something like that. It’s mostly the marketing hype that leads you to expect something so shocking this issue, admittedly some of that is Morrison’s fault, but future readers will judge the book on its own merits, not the hype.

The significance of this issue, and the run as a whole, is underlined by the red and black flashbacks to Bruce and the monk speaking in Nanda Parbat. Bruce speaks of experiencing hallucinations in the darkness, the blurring of past, present and future. This sounds exactly like the torture chamber three parter that preceded RIP, but what is the “place that’s not a place” that he refers to? That could be the opening page of this issue, where he lies in darkness, awaiting rebirth. It could be where his primary self went when Zurr-En-Arrh Batman was in control. While he was Zurr-En-Arrh Batman, his rational self was able to process all the weird stuff that happened to him, and come up with the plan he could use to take down the Black Glove.

This issue raises the question of what exactly Batman was experiencing during RIP? Was he totally insane, as it first appeared, or was he actually one step ahead of the whole thing, as this issue implies? Here, Bruce claims that he always knew Jezebel was evil, and his “love” for her was an act. On some level, I think that makes the story less satisfying, but I’d argue that it isn’t as simple as reducing everything to two competing acts, with Bruce’s as the successful one in the end.

One could argue that Zur-En-Arrh Batman is the Batman that Bruce imagined himself to be as a child, the raw force of nature who could destroy Joe Chill and save his parents. With his gaudy, multi-colored outfit, he resembles a child’s fantasy, and the last page of this issue makes it clear that Zur-En-Arrh actually refers to the last moment Bruce had with his parents before they were killed. Earlier, Hurt talks about how Zur-En-Arrh is a totally Freudian power construction, a Batman without emotional ties, just pure combative energy.

This entire arc is designed to mimic the experience of Thogal, as in The Invisibles, the initiation never ends. For Bruce, Thogal is the equivalent of meeting Barbelith, only he’s more about the journey within than the journey without. Bruce has gone through all these strange adventures, which he’s struggled to synthesize together in the Black Casebook. The great mysteries of the universe lie inside himself, and that’s why this arc, and the series as a whole, is about Batman confronting the worst in himself and deciding to press on.

Earlier in the arc, Jezebel plays her trump card, and calls Bruce’s whole life into question, confronting him with that darkness inside himself that he found in Nanda Parbat. Jezebel thinks she can blow Bruce’s mind by raising the question of whether he’s the evil force that’s been out to get him all this time, but Bruce is one step ahead, he’s already thought of that too when he asks the monk if he “I have been, even unconsciously, my own worst enemy?” Knowing that he could be turned even on himself, he creates this backup personality, drawn straight from the trauma of his childhood, and lets it take control when he seems to be in the clutches of the Black Glove.

I don’t think that Bruce is “acting” when he goes through the whole thing with Honor Jackson and the heroin addiction. I think he put the regular Bruce Wayne away, and let Zur-En-Arrh Batman go through the “weapons grade crystal meth” attack. The real Bruce is tucked safely away, waiting for his moment, and subconsciously guiding Zur-En-Arrh Batman where he needs to go. Reading the arc now, you could see Bat-Mite as the lingering remnant of Batman’s sanity, helping him get where he needs to go, then leaving before Batman confronts the worst of things. His sanity is tucked away and Zur-En-Arrh Batman goes through the Joker poisoning and Jezebel’s betrayal. I think the betrayal does hurt him because the Zur-En-Arrh Batman doesn’t want to believe she’d betray him, even if regular Batman is thinking many steps ahead, already planning how to take her down if he needs to.

One could even read it that Batman has to retreat to the Zur-En-Arrh personality just in case she’s right, and he is the Black Glove. The implication in this issue is that Hurt is the Devil, and I think that interpretation fits, but the read that makes the most sense for me goes back to the first introduction of the Black Glove, they aren’t even an organization really, they’re everything out there that could hurt Batman. It’s Jezebel, it’s Hurt, it’s the third Batman, and in the end, Batman defeats them all. It’s notable that Hurt mentions trying to take away Batman’s purpose by taking all the criminals off the street. Those criminals are just part of the same game that Batman plays, it’s what The Joker represents. They have a kind of bargain, but the Black Glove is differnet. By removing his everyday threats, they force Batman to confront something deeper, his own existential purpose. They make him question himself, and the thought is that he won’t be able to withstand their torture, that they’ll always be one step ahead.

The Joker thinks the Black Glove is naïve because they believe that they can beat him. The Joker may be totally insane, but Batman always remains one step ahead of him, finding the pattern and connection between his seemingly random action. As we saw in “The Clown at Midnight,” The Joker prides himself on the constant reinvention of himself, but Batman always “builds a new box around me.” That’s the conflict, and in that sense, The Joker functions as an evolutionary imperative. Batman must become a better crimefighter to keep up with what The Joker does. That’s why he went through Hurt’s experiment in the first place, he wanted to be able to feel what The Joker feels.

Hurt took advantage of Bruce’s desire to see the dark side, and implanted in him the insanity trigger. At that point, Batman wasn’t ready to deal with what he saw in the hallucination. That’s probably why he went to Nanda Parbat and underwent Thogal. He lost this battle against himself in the isolation chamber, so now he’ll take it one step further, and purge the demons within himself.

The Joker here seems to function as more of a John a Dreams type character than the pure evil of the Black Glove. Simon Hurt is predictable because he’s always going to do the evil thing, The Joker frightens them because they don’t know what he’s going to do next. Here, he essentially takes Batman’s side and tells the Glove that they’re fucked, they shouldn’t have left Batman out there because even if you think you’ve got him beat, he’s always one step ahead. As Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the character made clear, he’s often evil, but he’s more interested in producing chaos. I also like the absurdity of The Joker getting tossed off a cliff by Alfred and Damian.

Throughout the story, there’s great little character moments with Batman’s allies. One of Morrison’s most underrated strengths is his ability to distill the essence of characters in a very small period of time. I think that’s why he’s such a brilliant comics writer, no one else can make you care about people in a few panels like he does. The moment between Robin and Beryl here is fantastic, and makes you want to see more of the two of them together. And, all we need to know about Damian is captured in that one panel. The Club of Heroes doesn’t do that much here, but we understand all we need to know in those couple of pages. It does make me wish that the Robin RIP tie in focused on Robin and the Club of Heroes battling the Club of Villains in Gotham, I’d have loved to read that.

The issue reminds me a bit of the finale of this past season of Doctor Who, with its cameos from everyone on the series to date. Even as Batman passes on the cowl, we know that he’s inspired a legion of people who will fight crime and keep his mission alive in his absence.

Batman climbs out of the grave in a pretty awesome sequence. I still see people cracking on Tony Daniel’s art a lot, but I think he did a great job with the arc. Sure, JH Williams or Quitely would have been better, but I think Daniel gives things a pulpy energy that the two of them might not have captured. I love the way he draws The Joker, and I love the crazy 20s pulp hero look that Hurt has. I also think he does a good job of showing Jezebel’s loss of control, culminating in her deadeyed plane ride look. I think Daniel’s better than Kubert was at the start of the book, and he’s crafted some of the most memorable images in any Batman comic ever. A lot of that is Morrison’s script, but Daniel has gotten better and better as things have gone on. And, I think the juxtaposition of all these wacky happenings with his very 90s Image style worked really well.

I think Morrison does a great job of conveying the turning point in the arc. It starts with the Bat-Radia, which turns out to be a transmitter, connecting him to the Arkham security system. Where did the Bat-Radia come from in the first place? Was Honor Jackson a John a Dreams like entity, helping Bruce fulfill his mission for the universe? Or was it that Bruce had left the radia somewhere, knowing that he could use it in the event he had to resort to his backup personality? I’d argue that it was part of the autopilot mode he went into when he became Zur-En-Arrh Batman. He built that radio, and didn’t consciously know what was in there until it was needed. Batman writes in the casebook about not knowing how things would play out, he would have to just “trust preparation to see me through.”

The Joker abandons the Glove, and Batman rises from the grave. Then, Hurt’s guests start to turn on him. The religious and political figures here echo the crew from The Invisibles’ “120 Days of Sod All,” only this time they’re confronted with their own sins. They enjoyed being in the presence of evil, but now things are spinning out of control, and they’re going to be held accountable for their sins. Batman’s raiding their mountain fortress, and they just want to get out of there.

This leads up to the final confrontation between Batman/Bruce and Hurt. Hurt is that which Bruce can never destroy, the doubt within himself, the fear of betrayal and pain, the guilt about what he’s done. Hurt tries a number of tactics to get to Bruce. First, he plays on the idea that as Batman, Bruce is really the same as the Black Glove, attacking the poor in a never ending attempt to make up for the trauma of losing his parents. He positions Bruce’s nightly patrols as something analogous to the “fox hunts” that Sir Miles does with homeless people.

Then, he quotes Batman’s own words from “Robin Dies at Dawn,” the isolation chamber story. I read that original story a few weeks ago, and it’s a good story on its own, but doesn’t really delve deeply into the psychological implications of what happened. Morrison does a great job of expanding on the basic ideas, and appropriating some of the imagery, like the strange stone idol face. Here, Hurt taunts Batman saying, “I must put away my Batman costume…and retire from crime-fighting!” Hurt is playing on all Bruce’s fears, in this case, the idea that he’s so insane, his personal crusade is endangering the lives of others.

Hurt then claims he’s Thomas Wayne, playing on Bruce’s ultimate fear, the idea that not only was his father evil, but he was the one who killed his mother. If Thomas Wayne was behind it all, then Batman’s crusade against violence was totally misguided. Hurt says that “Wayne became Hurt,” he has warped the image of Thomas Wayne into this insane doctor. That’s also what he threatens to do to all Bruce’s loved ones, spin them into drug addicts and criminals as he spoke to Alfred about earlier. Does it really matter if Thomas Wayne is Hurt? Hurt will create a new reality in which Bruce’s parents were evil.

Now we come to the one moment in the issue that I still find a bit underwhelming, the revelation of Hurt’s ultimate plan. As I just said, it makes sense, but it doesn’t seem like the ultimate capper to this storyline. I suppose the significance is the idea that Bruce has very few good things in his life to cling to, he exalts the memories of his parents, and his adopted father, Alfred. To tear them down would be to destroy the foundation of Batman, the last piece of humanity that existed before Bruce had to become Batman. But, I don’t think it totally works as a topper to everything insane that’s come before.

I do like the pay off on the next page. Batman poses the idea that he’s found a “pure source of evil” as he reached “the limits of reason.” If Batman is pure reason, always prepared and ready to deal with anything, it would make sense that his greatest foe would lie at the limit of reason. Perhaps that was the journey through the entire arc, his time as Zur-En-Arrh was a journey beyond reason to insanity. Now, he finds himself not quite believing that Hurt could in fact be the devil. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t, it doesn’t matter in the end. Ultimately, the Black Glove is Batman’s ultimate foe, they will always win. But, in punching through the glass, Batman shows that he is the Black Glove, and he can destroy the evil that opposes him by destroying himself as well.

Bruce has sacrificed himself, confronted the ultimate evil within and come out stronger, but he’s going to become something else for now. In The Invisibles, we saw humanity move into the supercontext after ending the war that had raged forever. Here, Batman has been in a war with the Black Glove his whole career, what does he become after defeating them? He will evolve and become something else, leaving the Batman identity to someone else. As we saw in the page that opens this issue, and come after the end, “Batman and Robin will never die!”

The issue ends with a flashback to the birth of Batman. On one level, this shows us where Zur-En-Arrh comes from, the misheard final words of Thomas Wayne. If Hurt is the ultimate source of evil, he would know everything about Bruce, and he would know that those words would have a major significance for Bruce. By equating Hurt with Bruce’s father, his defeat becomes the ultimate cleansing. Bruce has passed through the worst shadow, this endless Thogal, and perhaps come out as something closer to the happy kid we see here.

I’m curious to see how Morrison handles the character when he hopefully returns to the book in the spring. Will we see the long promised “hairy chested love god”? I’d like to see him keep up the psychedlia of these issues, but perhaps spin it in a slightly more positive direction. Either way, it’s great that we’re getting another issue this week.

In the context of Morrison’s work as a whole, this arc and Final Crisis continue the style he first used on Seven Soldiers, the hyperdense comic that requires a lot of work to unpack, but is incredibly fulfilling to analyze and ponder. It’s interesting to read criticism of the issue because the comics world often seems totally backward from what’s praised in other arts. Nobody’s telling The Wire to do more done in one stories, or not rely so much on continuity, but here, people criticize Morrison’s Batman because they have to do a little work to understand it. Morrison may work on the most mainstream characters, but he’s using a very complex storytelling method, much more so than in his 80s superhero work or JLA. It does rely on the reader to fill in some gaps, and people can call that sloppy plotting, but I prefer it because it gives you a lot more. This issue took me over 25 minutes to read, and a lot of thinking to fully understand. That’s the sign of a great work, and it’s also why Morrison is the best writer in comics. He understands that the 22 page comic needs to be more than just what’s on panel, it’s got to be a world that’s downloaded into your head and gradually unpacked over time.

It’s strange that a comic this dense and tied into the rest of Batman continuity should get such media attention for “killing” Batman when actually reading the book makes it clear that he’s not actually dead. But, if it gets more people to check out Grant’s work, all the better. He has no illusion that Bruce will not eventually get back to being Batman, it’s the journey through the story that matters, and this was a great journey.

Ultimately, I don’t think the issue is the most shocking revelation in seventy years of Batman history, but it’s a great capper for RIP and Morrison’s run as a whole. If we don’t see anymore, I’d be disappointed, but still satisfied. This arc is my favorite Morrison work since Seven Soldiers, a constantly confounding, strange and complex story that gets to the core of Batman in a totally different way than you’d expect. I think my favorite Batman comics story is still The Dark Knight Strikes Again, but this is a close second. And, considering there’s seventy years of Batman stories, that’s pretty good.