BATMAN #677Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Tony Daniel and Sandu Florea
This will be a negative review. I'm telling you this now because I'm almost positive, after loving his opening
Batman & Son and the
League of Batmen stories, that I am biased against this second half of Morrison's run on Batman.
Where his opening stories were off the wall Morrisonian type tales with insane ideas and things only
Grant Morrison could only conceive of happening, it all still made sense and felt like I was reading a Batman story. An LSD, drug enduced version of Batman, but a Batman story nonetheless.
With his
Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul and everything that's come after that, I just feel like Morrison is browsing through some old Batman archives, grabbing random stories he thinks would be cool to use and tries to stick square pegs into round holes to form a story.
For instance, we've got "
Zur en Arrh" in this issue. It was an old
Silver Age story where Batman went to an alien planet where he gained
Superman-like powers and helped stop an invasion before returning home at the end of the story. He uses it here as a trigger word for
Dr Hurt and seems to be trying to retcon most of the Silver Age stories into parts of an old story where Batman was locked in an isolation chamber for 10 days.
Granted, it's an excellent bit of research into
Batman lore that he is trying to incorporate into his story, but I'd wager 99% of the people reading the book don't know about them and the references are probably lost on them. Yet he goes out of his way to try and make them fit into the story that it feels forced and barely makes sense.
Another major problem I'm having is with his new girlfriend,
Jezebel Jet, who we've seen all of maybe 5 times, being so involved in his life all of a sudden. She knows he's Batman. He brings her to the Batcave in this issue. She feels free to give him advice on how everyone he knows is afraid of him and Bruce just takes it from her, despite knowing that
Alfred could put him over his knee and spank him and he would just take it or that
Nightwing doesn't fear him in the slightest and considers him an equal and the feeling is likewise with Bruce. Hell, even
Robin doesn't outright fear him. It's more of a father-son relationship where Robin feels ashamed or knows he did something wrong if he gets hollared. Yet Bruce doesn't even correct her on any of this and let's this bimbo that's been in the series for about 2 years and shown up a handful of times tell him how things are.
On top of that, every other time we see her, she's moaning about her goddamn poor country's debt. Even here, she goes out of her way to comment on how the money Bruce spends on the Batcave could have paid off her country's debt. Newsflash Jezebel. You're wearing $1000 dresses, thousands of dollars worth of jewelery and flying around the world all super model-like in private jets. I think you could help out your damn country if you stopped moaning about it for a minute or two.
The fact this
Bruce considers this woman so special and considers her the best thing to happen to him in a long time, despite numerous, more involved relationships with
Catwoman,
Talia, who has a freaking child with, and many other women throughout the years, all of which were more developed than this generic super model. Am I wrong to be infuriated everytime I see her or is she just going to end up being a plot device that either a) dies or b) betrays Bruce and ends up being a part of the
Black Glove? If it's b), I think I could justify most of this nonsense if it benefitted the story in the end.
As for the story of this issue, Bruce sends Alfred to watch the movie, The Black Glove, the only concrete clue they have to the Black Glove. Why Bruce didn't go see or just outright buy / rent it eludes me. Maybe Netflix doesn't deliver to the Batcave?
This sets up Bruce's date scene with
Jezebel. This is where she marvels at how much money Bruce has and how he outspends her poor, little country. Afterwards, she goes on to insult his relationships with
Robin, Nightwing and
Alfred by implying she knows more about him than them and that they are afraid of him and won't tell him that he's, literally, acting batty and implies he may have actually created this whole
Black Glove mystery in his head and that it would make sense that the only person that could match wits with Batman is Batman. He takes this all in with nary a complaint or response and actually starts to believe her, making me wonder what the hell is wrong with him.
Finally, the
League of Villains shows up in the cave as Batman collapses due to the retconned in preprogrammed words, "Zur en Arrh", are said by Jezebel, who is reading off the computer screen, which Bruce mysteriously can't read. It isn't shown what happens to her once the villains show up, but Alfred, fresh from his romp at the movies, get jumped by the villains who beat him to death with bats. Now, it's left open in the final splashpage, but it's implied they intend to kill Alfred and he looks pretty battered and bloodied with the villains pouncing on him for more. Maybe Nightwing saves him. Who knows?
The only other noteworthy thing was the trampling on of
Martha and
Thomas Wayne's memory. I assume the Black Glove sent some doctored photos or evidence to a newspaper that shows pictures of tracklined arms and brain dead, coked out expressions on the face of Martha and other information about how abusive Thomas was and their drug and alcohol related problems. They go so far as to imply Thomas is still alive and that Alfred may have been the illegitamite father of Bruce.
By issues end, we are left with four possible mystery villains. One is the obvious
Dr Hurt behind everything. Another is
Thomas Wayne. Third is
Alfred, with the missing casebook and other implied nonsense, and the final one is
Batman, himself, gone insane.
Verdict - Avoid It. I came away with nothing from this issue. Maybe it's not for me. Maybe I'm being too critical and trying too hard to fit Morrison's Batman into what I perceive to be the "true" Batman image in my mind. I just can't see how throwing old Silver Age nonsense at the wall and hoping it sticks as a coherent story makes this good and I'm very tentative in picking up any future issues of this storyline.
BATMAN #678
