Batman/Detective Comics Series Discussion *Spoilers*

Should we split off the Batman R.I.P. discussion to its own thread?
 
BATMAN #682
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Lee Garbett
Cover by Alex Ross
Variant cover by Tony Daniel
Two issues of BATMAN in one month! Now that "Batman R.I.P." has concluded, the aftermath begins! If you thought mastermind writer Grant Morrison surprised you with "R.I.P.", just wait until you see what he has planned for this retrospective story. In his last hours, Alfred the Butler tells the life story of the Batman as you've never seen it before in this two-part adventure which bridges the gap between the events of "Batman R.I.P." and FINAL CRISIS. Learn the secrets of Batman's early years! Witness the nightmare of a Gotham City where Batman never existed!
Retailers please note: This issue will ship with two covers. For every 25 copies of the Standard Edition (with a cover by Alex Ross), retailers may order one copy of the Variant Edition (with a cover by Tony Daniel). Please see the Previews Order Form for more information.
On sale November 12 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US
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I bet this takes place in the future, maybe even with Alfred telling Damian the story before he dies. I think that would be neat. Because they can't kill Alfred.
 
So, I've been reading through a bunch of older Batman Story-Arcs, because some of them are just really damn good... I read Knightfall, and No Man's Land, and right now I'm reading Bruce Wayne: Murderer/Bruce Wayne: Fugitive. And man, I forgot how damn good it was.

I think I've also finally decided to collect the complete "Batgirl" series.
 
I really wish the only place where all the Neal Adams/Denny O'Neil stories are reprinted wasn't the giant, crazy expensive prestige hardcover thingies. I really want to read them but I can't afford a whole series of $60 hardcovers.
 
moonmaster said:
I really wish the only place where all the Neal Adams/Denny O'Neil stories are reprinted wasn't the giant, crazy expensive prestige hardcover thingies. I really want to read them but I can't afford a whole series of $60 hardcovers.
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I've been reading Legends of the Dark Knight, and a lot of Denny O'Neil's stuff in there is pretty damn good. I've read his Question and a little bit of Green Arrow/Green Lantern, but it's my first exposure to him as a Batman writer. I really like his flavor. The guy contributed a lot to the mythos. Ra's Al Ghul and the whole pulp adventure element that goes along with him are great.

There's also a Grant Morrison story wedged in there called Gothic which, curiously enough, features ideas of sacred urban geography similar to what's being hinted at in RIP.... and it has Batman meeting the Devil.
 
Zombipanda said:
There's also a Grant Morrison story wedged in there called Gothic which, curiously enough, features ideas of sacred urban geography similar to what's being hinted at in RIP.... and it has Batman meeting the Devil.
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it's pretty good.

it also has a slight retcon with his parents - in gothic bruce falls out with them the day before their shot and shouted 'i hate you' at them and while the next day he was still going to see zorro with them, he didn't say a single word - so basically when they died...that's what his last words to them were.

tragic

I think i've got hold of some of the denny o'neill question series, and i really wanna read the whole no man's land saga. It sounds a bit epic though and I'm not really sure where to begin.
 
So, I've been flipping through some of the Dennis O'Neil/Neal Adams era on Batman and so far, it seems like O'Neil is just absolutely insane.

This one story, for instance. Bruce Wayne is riding around on a train, because he knows another car on the train is transporting prisoners including Catwoman, and he wants to be there in case they try to escape or something, so he can turn into Batman. And some gypsy shows up in his car while he's playing backgammon with the dude, and she's all "You've got a plague of coincidences coming! KA KA KA KA KA!!!!!!" Anyway, the prisoners don't have an escape planned, but some douchebag doing construction forgets to put the e-brake on the Caterpillar and it derails the train. So, in the mess, Catwoman gets amnesia, and she's just kind of stumbling around while Batman deals with all the other escaped criminals, and she just wanders off. And then when she wanders a safe distance away, she just gets her memory back, and some criminal dickhead she knows pulls up in a truck coincidentally and he's like, "Hey, I know some dudes. Want to be our boss?" and she's like, "Well, I was going to just do my sentence and come clean but sure, why not?". Anyway, Commissioner Gordon tells Batman about some jewel robberies, so Batman hatches an ingenious scheme to dress up as a rich old widower and show up at a hotel, loudly talking about her wealth. Then he just turns into Batman and waits for a robber to show up. Then he beat the **** out of him. This particular robber is smarter than average though, and cocky! "I ain't gonna fight you, Batman! You're too tough... Everyone knows that! But I'm agile--", he shouts, then, proudly "--I'm the most agile man in all Gotham City!" But Batman still beats the **** out of his agile ***. But oh no! A cat broke into his hotel room while he was busy kicking *** and stole a necklace!

So he has to chase the cat through the city. Then it jumps into a van with Catwoman in it and they speed off, only to sideswipe a cat food truck, allowing Batman to close the gap and get ontop of their van (which he explains in thought bubbles, while crouching atop the van. Coincidence! Anyway, he bursts in on the robbers and Catwoman and some ocelots. Don't worry though. As the comic assures us, "the big cats' quickness is matched by the Batman's thought-fast reflexes!" He catches both ocelots in a bed sheet and swings them at the thieves to knock them out. "That should stun the ocelots enough.... ...to keep them out of action a while!" he exclaims! Catwoman escapes, but he knows the cat will go to find her, so he trails the cat..... by walking along half a foot behind it in the middle of the street. And it leads him to a warehouse with Catwoman, standing atop a bunch of bags. She tries to whip him, but he just grabs the whip and tugs on it to knock her over. Batman wins! And it turns out the cat wasn't following Catwoman! It smelled catnip! Catwoman was standing on a pile of catnip bags! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Oh, coincidence! You're priceless!
 
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Zombipanda said:
So, I've been flipping through some of the Dennis O'Neil/Neal Adams era on Batman and so far, it seems like O'Neil is just absolutely insane.

This one story, for instance. Bruce Wayne is riding around on a train, because he knows another car on the train is transporting prisoners including Catwoman, and he wants to be there in case they try to escape or something, so he can turn into Batman. And some gypsy shows up in his car while he's playing backgammon with the dude, and she's all "You've got a plague of coincidences coming! KA KA KA KA KA!!!!!!" Anyway, the prisoners don't have an escape planned, but some douchebag doing construction forgets to put the e-brake on the Caterpillar and it derails the train. So, in the mess, Catwoman gets amnesia, and she's just kind of stumbling around while Batman deals with all the other escaped criminals, and she just wanders off. And then when she wanders a safe distance away, she just gets her memory back, and some criminal dickhead she knows pulls up in a truck coincidentally and he's like, "Hey, I know some dudes. Want to be our boss?" and she's like, "Well, I was going to just do my sentence and come clean but sure, why not?". Anyway, Commissioner Gordon tells Batman about some jewel robberies, so Batman hatches an ingenious scheme to dress up as a rich old widower and show up at a hotel, loudly talking about her wealth. Then he just turns into Batman and waits for a robber to show up. Then he beat the **** out of him. This particular robber is smarter than average though, and cocky! "I ain't gonna fight you, Batman! You're too tough... Everyone knows that! But I'm agile--", he shouts, then, proudly "--I'm the most agile man in all Gotham City!" But Batman still beats the **** out of his agile ***. But oh no! A cat broke into his hotel room while he was busy kicking *** and stole a necklace!

So he has to chase the cat through the city. Then it jumps into a van with Catwoman in it and they speed off, only to sideswipe a cat food truck, allowing Batman to close the gap and get ontop of their van (which he explains in thought bubbles, while crouching atop the van. Coincidence! Anyway, he bursts in on the robbers and Catwoman and some ocelots. Don't worry though. As the comic assures us, "the big cats' quickness is matched by the Batman's thought-fast reflexes!" He catches both ocelots in a bed sheet and swings them at the thieves to knock them out. "That should stun the ocelots enough.... ...to keep them out of action a while!" he exclaims! Catwoman escapes, but he knows the cat will go to find her, so he trails the cat..... by walking along half a foot behind it in the middle of the street. And it leads him to a warehouse with Catwoman, standing atop a bunch of bags. She tries to whip him, but he just grabs the whip and tugs on it to knock her over. Batman wins! And it turns out the cat wasn't following Catwoman! It smelled catnip! Catwoman was standing on a pile of catnip bags! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Oh, coincidence! You're priceless!
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...*takes cigerette out of mouth*

That's the new Bat-movie.[/strung-out British rocker accent]
 
Has anyone here read Batman Confidential? Is it supposed to be any good?

I read about it and it sounds like they're trying to mold Burton's Joker with Nolan's Joker. It appears that they've taken a lot of elements from the Nolanverse to illustrate some of Batman's early adventures.
 
So, at the core of this is a betting game pitting good against evil. Who's betting a revelation at the end where a surprise villain has bet on Batman and ends up raking in the bucks?
 
Zombipanda said:
So, at the core of this is a betting game pitting good against evil. Who's betting a revelation at the end where a surprise villain has bet on Batman and ends up raking in the bucks?
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I wouldn't bet on that.

It's morrison, when do any of his stories ever have a reasonable or rational ending.
 
I love the idea that The Imagination is the Fifth Dimension.

And The Joker was perfect in this issue.
 
Did that ending just reveal Jezebel as a villain? If so, lame.
 
Ultimate Houde said:
I think it was more of someone replaced Jezebel with this impostor, so your world is even more ****ed up Batman.
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That seems rather unlikely.

It looks to me that Jezebel is squarely a bad guy, maybe the Black Glove. Whether that works or not is going to be dependent on how it's explained in the next issue.

I noticed a major thread going through this issue has been Bruce Wayne's childlike naivete. Bat-Mite taunts him for not figuring out his identity (and it's really so simple), Joker teases him for having such a naive understanding of psychology. It's all about that root idea, "Criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot". Well, no, Bruce. They really aren't. Mostly they're regular folks who have been twisted by circumstances, and even when they're not, they're still far more complicated than that. For that matter, Jezebel kicked off the whole motif, in that brilliant little speech in the Batcave where she calls him a little boy who never grew up, Peter Pan with a dark, scary mask. There's a recurring theme here that Jezebel has kicked into motion - the idea that for all his brilliance and tactical genius, Batman is too short-sighted to make any significant difference in the world. He's really just a little kid hiding behind his emotional trauma, cloaked behind all his toys and gadgets and his mask of pain. Is Hurt's posing as Thomas Wayne indicative of this too? Mind games implying that Thomas Wayne would not be satisfied with the route his son took? Even more important, wouldn't Thomas be disappointed?

I think there's two possibilities. Either Jez is the Black Glove, and we'll get an explanation of why and how in the final issue (and this explanation will likely be the bombshell that kicks Batman's life into a tailspin) or she's another one of Hurt's actors who's been implanted into Bruce's life. The possibility that she's an imposter Jezebel who's been switched out just doesn't even register for me. At all.
 
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