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Grant Morrison's Batman

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23:31 / 30.03.07

Well, hopefully Bruce'll get to the opportuntity to do the clown shoes with Jet before she's tragically murdered.

Anybody could have written this, surely? Chuck Dixon, Marv Wolfman, Frank Millar after happy drugs to begin with, and then sad drugs later on.

Increasingly, I'm feeling as if my time might be better spent stalking Geoff Johns.

00:42 / 31.03.07

A few points (and yes, this issue was a weird one--weird because it was so apparently conventional, I guess):

1) Morrison is clearly making Bruce Wayne ridiculously effective (downing a helicopter with a ski pole, while skiing!) and Batman ridiculously ineffective (crushed and defeated by Bat-Bane). This is a fun inversion of the norm, but why is he doing this?

2) And the narration IS off. It reads very much like the Beardhunter's narration from Morrison's Doom Patrol, which was a parody of this exact kind of internal monologue. Once, again, why is he doing this?

3) Also, is Batman really on a first name basis with these hookers? And does he say stuff like "what's up?" Doesn't seem quite right to me, for Batman or for Morrison. So why this?

Possible theories:

It's all a dream. Or some of it. Or a hallucination. Which wouldn't be impossible. "Arkham Asylum" was, in Morrison's own analysis, basically just all a dream.

Someone is impersonating Batman again. Very possible. Yet there are too many inconsistencies--and this guy clearly THINKS he's Batman.

It is Batman, and he's really talking/acting this way. Because of a Superboy punch.

It's metafictional, and Batman's investigation to find the "Black Book" will lead to Grant Morrison's house, and the notebook will all of the author's ideas in it. Then Batman will kick Morrison in the face.

Or, more likely, some reason I haven't thought of that's actually way better than all of these theories and makes perfect sense in the end. I'm rooting for this one.

02:00 / 31.03.07

http://geniusboyfiremelon.blogspot.com

...for my full pseudo-analysis of issue #664.

simulated stereo

07:25 / 31.03.07

It's times like this when I hate living in S.Korea. Whether it's a sub-par storyline or not I'd still love to read it. I guess I'll have to wait until the HC.

The Natural Way

10:12 / 31.03.07

Well I still love it. I thought the internal monologue was fine as well. Why's Grant doing it? Because Batman monologues, that's all. The testosterone like weather line was great. The whole Batman's sixth sense stuff really works for me. I like the idea that there's something... uncanny about his detective skills (see also Bat's divining of the city in the text story). There was some great bat-art in this issue too.

Shut up Barbelith.

12:21 / 31.03.07

I still like the assumption that Batman has a very rare and functional form of autism aiding his super-detection.

I enjoyed the issue, but it felt like quite a change to me.

I can maybe see a thread developing n Morrison's run about what the audience/writers want Batman to be as opposed to what he wants to be.

Between the 'art with no substance' critique, his son's image of him, the recurring alarm at the misperception that he's gone murderous, and the two Savage Police Batmen now, a pattern of Batmen wanting more brutality and edge to the character than Bruce Wayne (and thus Morrison) seems to want is emerging.

The Sheeda were partly a critique of idea-stripmining culture in comics. I expect we'll see more of the same in Batman in regards to his feelings on Edgybatz.

12:32 / 31.03.07

Yeah, it worked for me too. Morrison is obviously having fun with this stuff. The Batman who monologues (and for fuck's sake, people, this stuff has been crying out for a gentle pisstaking for years!) is the same Batman who fights steroid enhanced BatBanes, as apposed to colourful rogues, and gets trounced. He's the guy that people who like to think of Batman as some kind of gritty vigilante have stock in. A guy who's on first name terms with pimps and prostitutes. He's the guy that goes on about "The Night" and refers to it as "she".

Okay, observation time.

Multiple Batmans.

Man Bats, Batman's son, playboy globe trotting Batman, urban gritty vigilante Batman, the Batmen of Many Nations, future Batman, the Batman who shoots people in the head.

And then there's all this stuff about the Joker having had multiple identities, and that Population Explosion sculpture and the young prostitute with the clown make-up.

Oh yeah, something's going on here. Is Morrison prepping some kind of survival of the fittest incarnation thingamywotsit? Whatever's happening it all somehow fits with the Zurr-En-Arr graffitti.

The Natural Way

15:11 / 31.03.07

Indeed.

It occurs to me that, if you're going to do Bane, you couldn't do a better job at nailing the scariness than Grant in this issue. The whole locker rooms sequence stank of the vibe I get from the scene in Lost Highway when Patricia Arquette's waiting to see Mr Eddy. The hyper-masculinity on the verge of exploding into (misogynistic) violence. The rigid, phallic hard body, 'snorting engine of muscle etc.', that's what Bane's all about. Horrible.

Thoughts on the Batmen? Well, isn't this supposed to be the arc where we find out exactly how Bruce exorcised his demons. Didn't I read something about Tibet and a ritual. Perhaps the 'Three Ghosts of Batman' are the demons in question, each representing a specific trauma embedded in Batman's life. We've had the Gun wielder and the back-breaker... Are these things virulent thoughtforms crawling into people's heads? Were Bruce's psychic wounds extracted in the form of tulpas?

15:34 / 31.03.07

Extremely excellent points.

15:44 / 31.03.07

Yeah, that's sharp.

The all-out Battle Of The Batmen on Planet Zurr-En-Arrh would be an amusing climax.

There's of course the old cliche that all these psychos/villains only showed up because they were inspired by Batman to rise to the occasion of crazy showmanship as well; thinking of even the Joker as some weird anti-bat-coping tulpa.

And then I think of all the Shadowhawks and Midnighters that he's inspired in comics elsewhere, the current resurgence of 90's Image superhero motifs, how very big the pouches are on Future Batson's utililty belt in the cover of #666, the weird recurring want in comics culture that seems to say that Batman's OK but he should. be. harder. That an audience want something more from him than zebra suits and bat-shark-repellant, a bigger dick than the oddly queeny dominatrix Batman who makes such things allows.

Why am I thinking of Batman's weird relationship with authority? Cops as failing dads, or perpetually rebelling against parental absence... Something. Why are all the freaky Batmen cops?

Thinking about this makes me think of Joe Chill for some reason.

===

I think Morrison might've keyed into something in The Killing Joke that Alan Moore didn't. For awhile, Moore regularly said that he wasn't fond of his DCU work, including the Killing Joke - that it might have said a lot about Batman and the Joker, but he didn't think it said anything at all about being human.

Maybe it's obvious, but I would think Morrison sees a story about coping with meaninglessness or grief when he looks at that relationship, that dichotomy.

Next issue is apparently Black Casebook and flashbacks about Joe Chill and Nanda Parbat. Issue after that is #666 and Future Batson Battles The Anti-Christ.

15:52 / 31.03.07

That is to say, you've nailed the utter morrisonian rightness of that BatBane sequence. Distilled essence of Bane. I mean, the locker room! Perfect.

And, wow, that's a fantastically plausible theory that makes complete sense of everything we've seen. I wonder what the third tulpa will look like?

Oh, and the Black Casebook sounds distinctly er... spiritual.

15:53 / 31.03.07

I bet that somehow the Black Casebook of this story leads into the 'International Batmen Getting Killed' story that JHW III is drawing...

So in the first page, is that one Man-Bat ninja actually falling from the sky, to tell us that this moment is happening literally seconds after the big battle from the last story arc (and I guess Batman can change clothes super-quickly, the 'incredibly fast change even if you don't have super-speed' being a comic book convention and such)? So that's he's in a tux even as the final hench-bat-ninjas are still falling from the sky...?

Also, I think GM can cool it with the 'lifting a gift of a super-rare custom-bred rose from Alan Moore's FOR THE MAN WHO HAS EVERYTHING story,' since now we've seen it in the 'Pa Kent' death issue of All-Star Supes and now here as well. The Pennyworth Blue? *lol* It just seems funnier since the issues where he uses this came out so close together.

I guess that's not really Bane, even though it would work if it were Bane, since a) it's a cop and b) the next issue solicits clearly say 'this new enemy/menace/whatever'. So it's a cop who got hopped up on Venom (how quaint it is that DC's super-drug is called Venom, given the Spider-Villain of the same name over at Marvello) and fancied himself a Bane mask.

15:54 / 31.03.07

x-post

16:05 / 31.03.07

Except that after Marriage's post I'm inclined to think that BatBane thing isn't simply a cop, Wolfmaster.

18:41 / 31.03.07

Great comments. They got me thinking--since Grant's trying to sythesize Batman as a centered and whole character, the multiple Batmans/Batman-derivatives technique is a wonderful thing to do in order to help achieve this.

Aside from Damien the Bat-son, we've seen the cop impersonator, Manbats, Bat-beast from the current issue, and we'll be seeing the International Batmen in an upcoming story arc.

Carl Barks used this technique a long time ago when Disney handed him Donald Duck to work on. He found Donald to be a limited one-note character, so he bolstered and defined Donald by creating variations of Donald to work in contrast to the lead character--his nephews, Gladhouse Gander, the beloved Uncle Scrooge and more. The result was a Donald Duck that was more defined, textured and receptive to different kinds of stories.

If this is GM's ultimate goal with Batman, then the use of multiple versions of Batman in contrast to his 'true' version could definitely work in this regard.

19:00 / 31.03.07

You know, I don't think we should lose sight of the Joker in all this. Grant's quite possibly planning something similar with him too.

But then you were speculating about that way back upthread, Andrew. I wasn't convinced at the time, although I liked the theory, now I'm thinking you and Hector were on to something.

Will there be a war between the Batmen and the Jokers?

20:09 / 31.03.07

I hope so. In space no less.

21:54 / 31.03.07

It's very much the same approach as in JLA, I think, where you had those Martians, Ultramarines, Injustice Gang(s), the CSA and JSA. I guess it's the old saw about DC characters being archetypes and their (faceted) proliferation being possibly the best thing to do with them.

I did really like the issue; it's very off-kilter, and the ski scene is specifically a Moore Bond (Octopussy?) and not so great, much as I like Jezebelle generally. But, yeah, even though Kubert appears to use a fish-eye lens to read perspective (and it took me some time to understand i) what Bruce was still doing in Gibraltar and ii) where the hell that giant manbat, bottom left, was exactly 'til I realised it was affixed to a barely visible and scrutable as such lamppost) it still popped a fair bit; the page with the L-Pod ad was everything last ish's text told us Gotham was, and he's generally good at making an impact with the often boot-to-face splash.

Other than that, just to reemphasise every word Marriche said, really; especially the weather bit. Grotty.

05:56 / 01.04.07

I appreciate what you're saying about the JLA, Falke, but I think the approach might be a little more plot orientated here, in that I think the issue of multiple incarnations is going to be directly addressed in the story in some way or ways, and it starts in this arc, I reckon.

The Natural Way

10:34 / 01.04.07

Well, I don't think these 'Batmen' are anything other than a threat to everyone, so I can't see them teaming up against multiple Jokers. They're demons, pure and simple, possessing people. The third ghost? I figure, because he's the last one we meet, he's gotta be pretty bloody horrible and dramatic... Something to do with crowbars, Robins and grinning maniacs. I mean after gun-bat and Bane-bat, can anyone think of another event more traumatic than that?

11:47 / 01.04.07

Not really no. Again, hadn't thought about that, but now that you mention it it seems blindingly obvious. I suppose you could do something with Hush but that would be fucking shit so you wouldn't want to. I imagine Grant agrees with me. I'll ask him over swingball.

If a Joker virus does start to spread, I'd actually quite like to see Bats face it alone. More exciting that way.

12:29 / 01.04.07

The three ghosts are Dickensian (Christmas Carol) though, innit? So, Batson fightin' Satan in #666 is Batman yet to come, shoorly (also, apparently not evil, and nor will the Internationals be I'd imagine. Maybe one.) - Batbane past, present? Past I'd imagine given the very obvious broken batback trib on the last page.

Population explosion, certainly, anyway.

13:15 / 01.04.07

That's a very good point, oh-wing-ed-one. I'm struggling to fit Marrapige's tulpa hypothesis in with it, but I'm sure it is possible. Afterll, they're far from entirely unrelated story concepts.

Wooo, were firing on all cylinders this weekend, eh Barbelith. Between this, ASS, elements of 52, and The Brave and the Bold, I'm finding myself getting excited about superhero comics again.

Yay.

21:13 / 01.04.07

There's something in there about paternal failure to protect women and children. I think that's why I was thinking of Joe Chill before.

The fundamental guilt of a son unable to protect his mother from violence is a key part of Batman's character. The failure of that genetic imperative to protect the mother and wife (and even child).

Gunbats shot the Joker in the face. He supposedly did it out of psychotic spite, but children were being threatened.

Banebats murdered his women, but successfully 'protected' them from Bruce-Bats. His compassionless brute force "succeeded" where Bruce "failed".

If these are some sort of tulpas or tulpa-like (tulpic?) manifestations of his released traumatic stress, they're in the world testing Bruce's resolve, testing his assumption that he's purged them, throwing his failures in his face from without rather than from within, where they've lain his whole life/career/run.

It occurs to me that the 3rd Ghost might even be/have been Damien. He nearly killed Tim, Bruce's adopted son, by throwing him from a great height right into Jason Todd's costume, right into his memory. The final paternal failure, the failure to protect the children - both from violence and from growing up wrong.

The Jason Todd/Red Hood character might represent the same kind of thing, but I don't know if Morrison would want to touch that particular character right now. Sort of tainted meat there.

07:53 / 02.04.07

I think the introduction of Damien is very interesting if you consider that Bruce already has a load of children running around the DCverse. He seems entirely superfluous to me, so I'm hoping Grance has got something up his sleeve, otherwise I'm likely to be left feeling that the kid is one very big mistep.

I think future Bats is Damien, so that would fit with Falke's analysis above.

15:23 / 02.04.07

It's funny to watch as half the internet fans seem to think it's actually Bane, and the other half think it's a new character/cop hopped up on Bane's venom and mirroring Bane's fashion sense. Although it seems the 'new menace' described by the next issue solicits, seems to put things in the latter, the former would be cool too.... we'll see next issuewhen Grant (hopefully) clarifies it for us, frantic ones! Face front, True Believers!

Uatu.is.watching

16:05 / 02.04.07

The "real" Bane has been showing up in Checkmate the past couple issues as the political power over in Santa Prisca, so I think it's likely that beefy Batbane isn't the bloke that broke Bruce's back.

16:18 / 02.04.07

I also don't think it's as simple as a cop hopped up on Bane Venom. That would be weak and boring and not at all in keeping with the fun that's been had on this page.

17:36 / 02.04.07

Face front, True Batlievers!

The Natural Way

20:37 / 03.04.07

Perhaps, Mr L Dones, the bat-demons chose the cops to possess because, like Bats, they play a similar role as the public's protectors. It not being, after all, their custom to go where they are uninvited..etc.

I don't know, I'm fucked if I've got any clear theories, but the tulpa thing seems to make some kind of sense.

The Natural Way

20:39 / 03.04.07

Oh, and I just want to add: the transition from plush restaurant to neon-lit, rain-soaked Gotham rooftop hurt it was so good.

And BATARANGS! YES!

23:44 / 03.04.07

marryapige, the tulpa idea... that's making me buy the comic. I can only imagine it's like ASS#4 with the death of Superman (a major labor-demon from the 90ies that needs exorcism, where Doomsday=Bane).

That, and the idea that so far we've had many Bats on one writer's run. It's like we're playing with fiction suits avatars with a Bat that's like Arkham Asylum's Joker taken to the extremes of fun -- Jimmy Olsen's one identity per day lifestyle in the form of fun reading processes.

I loved the mention of Batman-who-shoots-in-the-face (as a "serious man in a serious world"), and the twist on our link-avatar that it was all a "stupid nightmare that deserved to be thrown in the dumpster" (but to twist back again and use it whenever it seems fit -- except for old days' purpose)

It's one of my major guilty pleasures, but as a kid I loved the fun version of Batman in "Batman Forever" (to as a teen, kick it to the curb in favor of seriousness) and all of it's action packed vertigo-cameras and not taking itself so seriously. I prefer Nolan's, but nowadays I tend to think that at least "Forever" was fun, on the contrary to Burton's -- whose "seriousness" and gothyness proved itself with time to be perhaps more crass and campy than Adam West's.

Well, that was a long post to just say I'll be buying this comic (was in serious doubts after last issue -- even though I was curious to see Morrison's prose).

BrianFitzgerald

12:26 / 04.04.07

I agree that the Batulpas are affecting police officers because of their roles as protectors.

Seems to me that Batman and Gotham City have a real symbiotic relationship. When Batman was taken away from Gotham for a year, the city tried to "regrow" its severed hero. The police department would be a good place to look for replacement Bats, since the police exist to enforce/protect justice ("justice" being open to a wide variety of interpretations, especially in Gotham).

But I doubt that it was only police that were affected. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that the Batman who was stomped at the end of this issue is a Beardhunter-type nutjob (the monologuing reminded me a lot of Dwight in Sin City).

The Natural Way

14:29 / 04.04.07

I think that's because it reminded you of Frank Miller, really. Afterall, he's the original hard-boiled-bats writer and it's his stuff that Grant's really referencing.

15:48 / 04.04.07

On the tulpas being police officers; in a number of elseworlds (Thrillkiller springing to mind) Bruce joins the GCPD as a kick-ass dick. Possibly Grant riffing on that part of the toybox.

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