By Grant Morrison, Andy Kubert & Jesse Delperdang (DC Comics)
ISBN13: 978-1-84576-429-6
Expectations were high when Grant Morrison was announced as the new scripter for Batman, so disappointment was always a risk. This volume (collecting Batman issues #655-658 and 663-666) tells only half the story of the eponymous son, however, so perhaps it’s a little premature to rush to judgement. Still, if I was a newcomer picking up a Bat-book for the first time…
The Joker is back on a murderous rampage when the Caped Crusader, finally snapping, shoots him in the face… The revelation that the shooter was an impostor is brushed aside and the obsessive hero goes on a vacation to London where Talia, a criminal mastermind and ex-girlfriend, attacks a charity ball with an army of mutated ninja Man-Bats, kidnaps the Prime Minister’s wife and leaves behind a sword-wielding boy she claims is their son.
Bringing the boy home, Batman tries to assimilate him into his life but the murderous child, trained from birth by the world’s greatest assassins, proves to be a bit of a handful. Even though he assaults Alfred, attempts to murder Robin and actually beheads a minor villain, Batman brings him along for a final confrontation with his mother and her Were-bat army.
After an interlude with the Joker (a prose story that took up a whole comic book issue – cloyingly overwritten to the point of self-indulgence, but with photorealistic illustrations by John Van Fleet) the saga reconvenes with Gotham plagued by more brutal Batman impostors terrorising the underworld and the populace, whilst son Damian (back with his mum) is still proving a trial…
Jump forward (for no apparent reason) a couple of decades and Damian is the new Batman: A savage, murderous mastermind in a monstrous world staving off the end of everything with uncompromising ruthlessness. And that’s where we end…
Although magnificently drawn by Andy Kubert this mess is just a pretty-but-vacuous triumph of style over content as Morrison “phones it in†for a change, in his typical iconoclastic fashion. Ending with Damien as a new Batman in a future the author knows full well won’t be part of the “real†continuity appears lazy and gratuitous, and although possibly good for the publicity machine, the faithful fan-base surely can’t be appeased with shallow stunts.
My own problem is the sudden stop without any attention to a narrative pay-off. People who buy books want endings as well as middles, no matter how familiar they think they are with the characters and scenarios. Let’s hope there’s a satisfactory conclusion coming, and soon.
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