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And so it ends.
I hate giving spoilers or clues about plotlines, but just look at the title, R.I.P, and it doesn’t take a lot to guess theme of this newest Batman plot arc.
I hadn’t been reading Batman for a while (being in Vietnam for over 2 years is part of that, but downloadable comics have helped me catch up), but I did first learn about the Grant Morrison run a few months ago.
Reading about it on Wikipedia, the plot sounded ridiculous: Bruce Wayne’s new girlfriend Jezebel Jet (Morrison does make fun of her name himself), a teenage Robin imposter named Damian, more from Ra’s al Ghul and Talia, a group of Batman wanna-bees, Bat-mite, and a bunch of strange, perhaps interesting developments to the core history of the character. Interesting as in crazy. But is it good? Keep reading.
Kyle wasn’t a big fan, and I swore I would hold off, but I finally just decided to check it out last week, and now have completely caught up on his 23 issue run (655-658, 663-681) and the conclusion of the RIP story arc.
And like I said, Kyle didn’t like it. He didn’t like it in terms of the parts he’d read. But he hadn’t read the end.
I started reading it, and I felt the same. A little too far out there, and little too out of character.
But the end.
Amazingly, the end makes it all work. Any doubts, any personal suspicions, Morrison puts it all together, but leaves enough room so you have to see what’s next. The ultimate value of a story like this can only come from what’s coming next, and I hope Morrison is staying on for a while longer to define and make sure his vision for this new concept is faithfully followed.
It’s something worth checking out, and while I am still not completely sold, still a bit wait and see, it is interesting.
In terms of the art, I liked Andy Kubert and Tony Daniel’s art on this run quite a bit- they reminded me of Jim Lee’s run at times 6 years ago without quite the statue-esque pose feel that hurts Lee at times.
Strangely, the one issue that stood out beyond 681 seemed to came out of nowhere, and to this point has never been mentioned again, issue 666. It’s a future Elseworlds-like story, a combination of Batman Beyond and The Dark Knight Returns.
Also, issue 663 might be good to check out if you liked Morrison’s work on Arkham Asylum nearly 20 years ago, it’s another single issue stand-alone story.
Some of the covers throughout the run:
