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Grant Morrison's Batman

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11:25 / 27.11.08

Well maybe. Hasn't George Morrissey's mouth been writing cheques that his poor, beleagured ass simply can't afford, for some time now?

12:28 / 27.11.08

Why on Earth would we want to dismiss the supernatural angle, Freitas?

Also, didn't Damien (in 666) say something about meeting something that you might as well call the Devil. I kinda think that's what we've got here. It's about categories like supernatural not quite cutting the mustard, but having some utility regardless

12:47 / 27.11.08

it think it's meant to be ambiguous, mostly because the supernatural aspects of the dc universe are a bit rubbish, actually. barring some lecter-esque maniac who litteraly wore mangrove pierce's skin to a party, and somehow everyone was too drunk to notice, it's safe to say hurt is some kind of disembodied intelligence. I'd even go so far, setting aside accusations of apophenia and wiki-itis, that hurt is a manifestation of the anti-life equation and future tie-ins to final crisis will make this evident,if not explicit.

really you could see the whole run from beggining to end as batman exploring the depths of the anti life equation and finidng out how to defeat it, without even knowing it by the name that the new gods would. for him, it's just the life-negating void that opened up when his parents were senselessly killed, and his very nature dictates that he always find a way to trap it, overcome it, and build order out of disorder. my reading of the whole thogal thing was that bruce was trying to confront this directly, becuase it was eating away at his life from the edges, and the only way to do so was to strip away all external sensory phenomena and dive into the abyss.

the prior experiment with hurt had kind of thrown down the gauntlet as it were, and everything after that was racing towards the existential confrontation between batman and hurt, as vessels of life and anti-life, respectively.

13:33 / 27.11.08

It's clearly meant to be ambiguous, in the same way that Batmite was clearly meant to be ambiguous.

The really good stuff happens in the cracks

13:59 / 27.11.08

Bloody hell, Boboss...coincidence.

I just posted this over on the DCMBs:

"Pleased to meet you" indeed. Nice one, Grant.

It was left slightly ambiguous, but I think it was ambiguous in the way that Batmite was - you may, if you want, decide that Hurt was not the literal devil, or you may decide that he was. It's ultimately irrelevant, but whatever lets you sleep easier at night. I'm impressed by that.

(Batmite is the same; you can put him down as a figment of the imagination, and the dialogue supports it. Or, you can take the dialogue where he talks about Space B and Zrrrff or whatever it was, and put him down as a genuine 5th Dimensional imp. Either way works and the dialogue supports either reading)

14:08 / 27.11.08

I’m not sure that the ambiguity is at root about letting people believe what they want, I think it’s about setting up a tension between the rational and the irrational. I think it’s about troubling the reader, setting up a feeling of unease, stuff like that

14:14 / 27.11.08

In the case of Batmite, I reckon it is. Little evidence to support, of course, but I find it unlikely that the little fella will be referenced again by Morrison in the near future, so the explanations given allow the reader to draw their own conclusions, and I think that was probably deliberate.

In the case of Hurt, we've got at least two more GM issues in the near future, so we might find out some more info that clarifies one way or another.

14:31 / 27.11.08

But the problem with ambiguity is that it doesn't permit people to state definitively that they have **the** answer. It's the old sufficient vs necessary distinction in action.

Batmite-as-fiction is sufficient to explain the phenomena, but it isn't a necessary explanation, as the supernatural explanation will also do the trick.

Derrida talks about this kind of tension and makes a lot of it, but I'm not familiar enough with his thinking to say anything meaningful. Papers?

14:40 / 27.11.08

Actually, in the case of Batmite, it’s not even a clear cut case of the Batmite-as-figment –of-the-imagination being sufficiently true, in that it’s strongly suggested (if not conclusively stated) that Caligula sees him.

To me that's an example of Morrison throwing the ambiguity in our faces and saying "do you see how tricky I'm making this for you/"

14:43 / 27.11.08

Sorry for the triple post

I’m not sure that the ambiguity is at root about letting people believe what they want, I think it’s about setting up a tension between the rational and the irrational.

Annnnnd the reason why I think that is because there is simply more story utility in it. It's about creating a creepy, awkward atmosphere

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

15:44 / 27.11.08

Derrida gives me hives, so I'm not sure how much help I'll be. I can see some Borges in that tension, though, which doesn't surprise me given that Morrison has used his works as a starting point before (Orqwith being the obvious example).

(And keeping in mind that I'm a bit behind on Batman.)

Batmite's fictional/Zrrfian tension is intentional, like Boboss points out, and I'm surprised it's not chalked up to intentional cognitive dissonance, which is supposedly (not up on my psychology) a standard human mental state. And Batman being the "ultimate human" would have ultimate mastery of cognitive dissonance and be able to take full advantage of it (Batmite as byproduct and root of the back-up personality), to the extent that this will probably aid him when R.I.P. feeds back into the Final Crisis state of affairs.

Basically, if the upthread comment that this is all preparing him for facing Anti-Life should be taken as true, and I can't see any reason it shouldn't, the tension between delusion and supernature (which is always there in Batman, and has with Morrison's reminding us of the Silver Age been foregrounded) is a tool for Batman to use against Anti-Life. Because?

Because Anti-Life is: Darkseid is, when it boils down to it, and if Batman has to get around that horror, well, he's got to be able to say Darkseid isn't at the same time. Anti-Life is all about one bad thought erasing all others but Batman's learning how to hold conflicting ideas in his head at the same time.

Which is probably all crap and obvious and people have said it before, but it reads to me that the cognitive dissonance (like, is this actually happening or is Bruce still mid-Thorgal?) is set up for the audience to clarify that it's one of the skills/weapons Bruce is developing for later action.

16:58 / 27.11.08

one way or another, I hope we do see that alluded to battle of wits between batman and desaad, whether in FC or a latter issue here. batman on the rack waging a purely mental battle against anti-life itself. and winning. you know he's been sitting in that helmet for months and months with the anti life signal beaming into his head and desaad raving at him to finally submit and when desaad just collapses in despair, someone lifts the justifier helmet off, and it's all like "hh".

17:45 / 27.11.08

I quite enjoyed that, but Grant really did take a lot of acid back in the nineties, didn't he?

21:48 / 27.11.08

Well, you should know, it was from your prescription and you wrote the receipts, Gran.

huckleberry glove soup

00:31 / 28.11.08

To play Fanboy's Advocate...

We haven't seen Desaad pop up in FC at all, right? What significance has Darkseid's fall through time, up to this point, held in the overall story? None really, right?

So what if Desaad inhabits Thomas Wayne and plants the trigger in his head that The Masked Vigilante concept is pure lunacy, destined to fail. (Didn't we all love the little "What?") Providing the impetus for failure at such an early age at such a particularly impressionable juncture in little Bruces's life.

He later inhabits Hurt, further trying to destabilize his psychology and Break The Bat. Because Batman pwns, as mentioned upthread. Desaad at the behest of pure evil...the Devil/Darkseid/Pure Evil Personified has been playing this Cat and Mouse game with the Bat all his life.

"And yet the cloak fits." or something along those lines... Wayne and Hurt were (at least briefly) possessed by the same evil soul. Maybe Pierce was possessed/plays in there as well (based soley on the "Double" line I'm still not connecting with)... Maybe part of the plan was the destabalization and dissolution of The Club of Heroes as well?

Maybe The Evil is responsible for Batman's overall creation? Chill was SUPPOSED to off Bruce, but lost his nerve...

02:19 / 28.11.08

Well... the Devil could be many things, to many people.
It could be the biblical Satan. The one we read about in "Gothic" (remember it? from the Legends of the Dark Knight).
It could be a metaphore for "Evil". As in "the Evil that man do", "the Evil in the human heart", something like that.
In the DC Universe, full with superheroes, aliens and New Gods, it could as well be Darkseid. Final Crisis aside, in the JLA classic "Rock of Ages" we see what was supposed to be the Batman's last stand against Darkeside and Desaad.

Also, Darkseid himself can be many things. He could be just another cosmic-powered alien villain (à la Thanos, for instance). Or he could be something of a more metaphysical nature: the root of Evil, the Dark Side of humanity. It depends on how you read the "gods" in "New Gods", I guess.

By the way, Batman DID die, in "Batman: RIP".
For a few minutes. Clinical death, as he later jokes with Robin (or was it Nightwing? don't have the issue with me, right now)

Does it really matter?

I think it's a given fact that, with millions of dollars in merchandising, a few high-budget movies under his bat-belt, and him being one of the most worldy-reckognised "secret" identities, the Batman will always be Bruce Wayne, in the long run. He's not Blue Beetle, guys. He's more valuable, in an artistic and monetary sense, than Captain America (who really looks like a dead guy, more than a year after his "death").

He could retire, he could spend some time in Arkham (my money's on this, by the way), but ultimately he'll be back. In Batman 700, I think.

But, for now, he's gone.
He'll be back in Final Crisis, but for now, I think we should bid a fond farewell to the Dark Knight. Knowing that, ultimately, he will Return.

07:39 / 28.11.08

Thanks Papers/Boboss. Interesting stuff, and largely new to me as well. The idea is, then, of Batman being able to say Darkseid both IS and ISN'T at the same time, meaning that he doesn't rationalise one or the other belief, or try to elevate one over the other?

Or, since Darkseid self-evidently "is", is it that he has to be able to hold the "false" belief that he "isn't", since that's the only way to win? Alice In Wonderland, impossible belief stylee?

(Somewhere in FC, we've seen Barbara Gordon mention that she saw the AL equation, unarguable mathematical proof of Darkseid's sheer "is"ness, so there's evidence right there that she, at least, needs to be able to shake that belief)

As I said, I've got precious little evidence to support my idea that the ambiguity was deliberately engineered with the intent of allowing readers to make their own mind.

Never-the-less, Boboss, people are definitively coming down on one side or the other. There are people who absolutely believe that Batmite was a figment of the imagination, because of the dialogue before ZEABats enters Arkham, and are using this as proof that Honor Jackson didn't exist either, and both are just defense mechanisms Bruce built in his mind.

On the other hand, there are people who are saying he was absolutely real, taking the mention of Zrrrf and Space B as evidence of that.

(I veer towards the latter explanation, since I think it makes the comic more enjoyable, but I'm making the decision based on preference, rather than because I think it's somehow objectively true)

08:45 / 28.11.08

God, I'm headdeskingly aware of people's desire to reduce it to a simple explanation, especially one which doesn't involve the Devil.

The fun thing is definitely an important factor - it is much more enjoyable for me to To assume that Hurt is something that could be described as the Devil (to paraphrase Damian in 666)*. I also think the Gothic vibe of the arc, and the whole question of Batman’s spiritual odyssey throughout RIP, work to make that particular reading considerably more attractive than the alternatives. Basically, It fits tonally and thematically. It also chimes with the iconography – all the reds and blacks, the religious imagery, Le Bossu’s demonic henchmen, last issue’s descent into Arkham/Hell, Batman rising from under the earth.

To complicate matters further, there’s also the fact that an ultimate evil is at play in this arc, no matter how you want to frame it. It’s the black wound in Batman’s soul, it’s the haunting possibility that Thomas Wayne was an evil man (the implications of this, for Bruce Wayne, have an apocalyptic edge), it’s the Joker showing deference, other bloody stuff.

This is multi-layered, fuzzy, as above so below stuff, and as such I expect most people to run to the safety of a nice, pat answer. People like nice, pat answers.

*I imagine that Morrison would also like me to believe that Hurt was the Devil

09:43 / 28.11.08

There's a lot of people who don't want it to be the Devil, for sure, since it doesn't fit tonally with Batman's realistic roots, etc, etc. I don't share that view, since my Batman has always been off fighting alien invaders, demons, and whatnot, but I have a certain amount of understanding.

I like it being the devil, personally, since it tops the story off nicely. Bats has now faced down the biggest baddest evah, and as far as I'm concerned, the whole story is now over.

13:50 / 28.11.08

as far as I'm concerned, the whole story is now over

I know exactly what you mean.

16:50 / 28.11.08

having re-read a bit, and in retrospect, the whole run is a large play on ambiguity.

the lynchpin is the 'joe chill in hell' issue, where bruce relives himself at age five intuiting the reality of death, symbolised by a flood of bats out of the earth. then the batmite appears and tells him that it's not scary if you make friends with it, it can even be funny. this intimation death is described as a void in the heart of existance, ( precisely the way hurt/the devil is described/describes himself).

grant says in one interview that batman isn't insane. in fact he did the ultimate sane thing that allowed him to rise above his tragedy. there's an ultmimate emptyness, an inevitable death for everyone? fine. be a superhero!

the joker actually thinks as much in the prose issue but he can't bring himself to say it, and his reconstructed pallate won't let him speak it clearly anyway;

" both of us are trying to find meaning in a meaningless world! why be a disfigured outcast when I can be a notorious crime god? Why be an orphaned boy when you can be a superhero?"

over and over grant goes out of way to flip things over and show the squalid 'realistic' underside of things, and always points out that it doesn't make things any better. from joker, to bat mite, to charlie caligula, to jezebell jet, to batman. It can be absurd, meaningless, and nihilistic, but only if you choose.

Hurt/the devil is ultimate symbol of this. which is really worse; that a framed and debased actor loses his mind and devotes himself to destroying noble souls, to reflect/avenge his own fate at the hands of the rich and amoral mayhew... OR that there is an intelligent primordial darkness at the center of all human being, and it schemes and works constantly to drag us down and destroy our meaning, and corrupt us, and hurt was just a 'skin' that it wore? if bruce can be batman and whoever-it- is can be the joker, then hurt can be the devil.

that seems to be the whole point. if you allow that a traumatised kid can elevate his trauma into a carrer as a superhero, then you have to allow that the existential horror that drives him can be elevated to the level of a dark demiurge.

18:40 / 28.11.08

Could this series be a load of bollocks, about fuck-all?

I'm not saying it is, but there does seem to be an outside chance that, maybe ...

19:06 / 28.11.08

it's possible, but one would have to be a bit of an asshole to just drop that in leiu of actual discussion. but stranger things have happened around here, apparently.

05:38 / 29.11.08

He later inhabits Hurt, further trying to destabilize his psychology and Break The Bat. Because Batman pwns, as mentioned upthread.

If Hurt's Desaad, he would have a very practical reason to try to break Bats. Hurt describes his plan for Batman in almost exactly the same language the Apokliptians use to describe their plan for Dan Turpin: "The ruination of a noble human spirit."

Perhaps Batman RIP is Desaad's failed attempt to prepare Bruce Wayne to host Darkseid, and Turpin was the fallback option chosen by the other evil gods.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

07:44 / 29.11.08

Or, perhaps Morrison is so desperate for money that he's using the same plot twice? Just a thought.

It's amusing reading the news reports about this story, especially as the journos haven't thought to pop down to Forbidden Planet and buy the comic in question so they are all transcribing from phoning nephews and asking them to look on the internet for the story.

The Natural Way

13:22 / 29.11.08

Or maybe he can earn a living doing something he enjoys and occassionally accidentally repeat himself.

Why are you always so cynical?

14:06 / 29.11.08

I think it's probably more likely he's going for internally consistant themes within the overall body of his dc work. I doubt he would ever go so far as to explicitly say hurt was connected to desaad, or anti life, or that darkseid and the devil are aspects of the same thing. that would be excessively obvious I think.

16:08 / 29.11.08

I tend to think that, as a writer, Morrison likes to throw a whole bunch of ideas at the page, leaving a lot of room for the reader to find what they want in his work, and breeding discussion - a lot of the ideas cross over (these are his worlds, so they are part of him) and even lines of dialogue are repeated - a lot of the ideas are diluted down by editorial, and sometimes they plain get too literal thanks to his exposure in interviews.

When it works, it's great - simple things like the bullet shot through time in FC, or that the 5th dimension is imagination, which seem like such throw away ideas from him - when it doesn't it doesn't, but it feels like a lot of it is subjective because of the volume of ideas/jumps in time narrative that he employes.

Fact is, I'd pretty much given up on comics over the last few years, but yet still get drawn back and interested mainly because of writers like him being around.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

16:38 / 29.11.08

The Natural Way Or maybe he can earn a living doing something he enjoys and occassionally accidentally repeat himself.

Why are you always so cynical?

Because it makes you hot for me.

It's not necessarily a bad thing, I did spend a fun few minutes this morning thinking my way through what of Mozzer's stuff I've read where he reuses ideas, where you have to write a story which ends up with people punching one another your options are perforce limited and, at the same time, Grant's stylistic tics are generally a lot more interesting than say, any Warren Ellis you might care to mention.

But, as Funnybook Babylon point out, we were specifically promised a reveal of who is behind the Black Glove and a promise that this would be shocking. We didn't get the first so we couldn't have the second. I'm tempted by the idea that it's a tulpa created by the trauma of his parents being killed, Bruce pushed the pain out of his head, rather than embracing it like the Joker did. Wasn't it Grant who mentioned that book by one of the sixties Superman writers about tulpas?

huckleberry glove soup

16:51 / 29.11.08

Who knows if there are more DCU details to unfold around it, but I'm convincing myself I like the idea of a fiction suit(or glove if you would) weilding, Ultimate Evil, John-A-Dreams type "outside of time agent" responsible for screwing with Bruce's entire life. Adversary-Preparation for ruination < Bat-Preparation through initiation... (forgive me, didn't sleep much last night.)

Batman is An Ultimate Invisible.

Has anyone sat down with the run recently and figured out Pierce's connection? I'm screwed up with timelines cause it's been a while, could he have blamed Thomas Wayne as well as Mayhew for his betrayal? Could he/The Black Glove-suit, have ordered Chill to put the hit out on the Waynes?

16:57 / 29.11.08

LOL, Lady

For many, many, many, many, many totally uncynical, RIP-related words from The Natural Way (dressed in his fluffy be-ribboned, wet-nosed fiction-suit) I direct thee to the Mindless Ones' Dark Dimension

20:00 / 29.11.08

Another thought.

Dr.Hurt talks about wearing other people's flayed skin.
We se the act of wearing skins in the "Club of Heroes" storyarc.
And then, there was "Frosty" in the "Joe Chill in Hell" story.

Well... what is a glove, if not something you WEAR?
But what really matters, is the hand wearing it, not the glove itself.

Just thinking...

ONLY NICE THINGS

21:00 / 29.11.08

No body.

Boba Fett Wayne.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

07:17 / 30.11.08

Can I have a 'Die Evil Monk!' t-shirt pls?

19:14 / 30.11.08

It's weird to see all these random news articles about Batman's death, often quoting Grant's line about this being a "fate worse than death" for Batman. The thing is, I feel like that quote makes a lot more sense applied to the whole arc than this issue. Blowing up in the helicopter isn't death, or a fate worse than death. It was getting dosed with weapons grade heroin and descending into Zur-En-Arrh madness that was the fate worse than death. His "death" was the entire arc, and this issue was his glorious rebirth, clawing his way out of the grave, and taking down the enemy that's the source of evil, of everything that's menaced Batman in the past. After defeating Hurt, he's not needed anymore, that is the completion of his Thogal. He has faced the darkness and come out on top.

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