Part 1: Batman & Son
Part 2: Club of Heroes/Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul
Part 2.1: Devil-Bats & The Bridge to RIP
Part 3: RIP
Part 4: The Missing Chapter/Last Rites/Final Crisis
Part 5: Batman Reborn
Part 6:Blackest Knight/Batman vs. Robin
So when we last left our intrepid heroes the enigmatic Oberon Sexton, who had been assisting Dick & Damian in their fight against The 99 Fiends, revealed himself to be none other than The Joker, but before we get to that cliffhanger we are treated to some Frazer Irving art depicting an....alternate...version of what happened with Bruce Wayne's parents were murdered.
Nice way to play with a classic Bat-image by having it be Bruce & Martha Wayne who end up dead rather than Thomas & Martha. Grant, and his various artists, do like to play on some of the classic themes of Bat-canon as I will touch upon more later.
So we also departed the previous arc with the knowledge that Dr. Hurt/Thomas Wayne/El Penitente was on his way back to Gotham and we catch back up with that story, as well as see some twisted backstory (paying Joe Chll to kill the Wayne's(?), him saying "now you'll never tell" over Martha's corpse, & in Black Glove gear pouring champagne over a demonic cat-masked woman (Catwoman allegory?) in the midst of a S&M orgy that is done in red & black colors for example), and see him returning to Gotham, claiming to be the long thought dead Thomas Wayne to the media.
Gordon & Dick discuss the Joker, Mexican Train, Pyg, 99 Fiends, El Penitente connections in a rather relaxed fashion that would NEVER have happened between Jim & Bruce. It all loops back to the first arc with Professor Pyg though & his whole viral narcotics scheme, to which Dick pontificates if the antidote they found in Pyg's lab was just a "trojan horse", concealing the true virus...meaning a whole lot of Gotham has been infected and are totally unaware. Gordon, as this chatter continues, realizes that he just may be afflicted...
Oh yeah, and Damian is now alone with The Joker. Remember how I said Morrison liked to invert classic Bat-stuff, while here's another example:
Yup, Robin's got the crowbar now.
Turning the tables on "Death in the Family", Damian lays a beating on Joker with the crowbar, just after the clown mutters "You sound just like...like him..." (him=Bruce-Bats) to himself, and while this beating commences, things start to fall apart, symbolized by the dominoes from the beginning of the story tumbling. The flying Batmobile is blown up with Dick & Gordon in it, a legion of Dollotrons descend on the wreckage, the 99 Fiends descend on what I presume is Blackgate to unleash:
Probably the first, and only, time the twisted Professor calls anything perfect. I wonder if there's any significance to the fact that Hurt is a "Doctor" and Pyg is a "Professor"...
Alfred resets the clock that, sometimes, seems to be set to the exact moment the Wayne's died (not sure if that's still the case). Damian is still laying a beating on The Joker, looking to assault the truth out of him, and shockingly it works as Joker confesses to using all of them to get at Dr. Hurt & The Black Glove. Problem is that no one, Damian included, believes a word that Joker says, expecting every things to be a swerve, misdirection, or lie. Kind of plays into Dick's comment to Gordon in the previous issue that Joker's biggest joke would be to get them to take him seriously...
A simple scratch from Joker's envenomed fingernails doses Damian with Joker toxin, turning him into, as Joker says, "A smiling Robin! A laughing young daredevil! That's the way I like it!". In fact Joker is so amused by how well he played Damian he thinks he might be the funniest Robin yet!
I totally dig that rictus scene with Damian in an impossible looking bridge induced by his muscles all tensing up under the influence of Joker juice, but then it's topped by this completely disturbed scene...
Seriously, between this and the infamouse dance sequence, Pyg may take the cake for most disturbing character of the last decade....
So Hurt now has the Bat-Coffin in his hands, outlines to Senator Vine (who I thought he may have killed previously) exactly what Pyg's story is (former circus performer who ate light bulbs & nailed his private parts to wood apparently), and shoots a hole in a pumpkin. Okay...
The Dollotrons surrounded Gordon & the unconscious Dick Grayson as the Batmobile prepares to explode and the abort codes aren't taking. So we started this all with the creation of a new flying Batmobile so of course it must be destroyed before we're through...and as it goes kaboom we are informed that this is "day 2", meaning one more day until the eclipse & Dick's head getting shot off.
Pyg apparently injects himself with Botox as Hurt amps him up for his "performance" before the media, the mayor (who I still think is somehow in cahoots with Black Glove and Gordon did mention him being under investigation last issue), and "the cream of Gotham's underworld royalty". Pyg's response: "Je Suis Showbiz!" or "I am showbiz!" Oh yeah and then he does this...
Pyg's viral addication is beginning to take hold on Gotham while Dick is out of it for a few hours after the explosion. He wakes up under Alfred's care, with a call from The Joker, who now has Damian in his possession, and who also provides information that something is going down with Gordon in, of all places, Crime Alley. Ya know...the place where the Wayne's died...
It looks as if Pyg & Hurt are roasting Gordon like a pig on a spit while Gotham, and more specifically Senator Vine, watch on. Now remember, since Joker has killed the rest, Vine is the last surviving member of the Black Glove save Hurt himself, so when Vine pulls a golden domino out of a popcorn box...
Grayson descends into the chaos, fending off Dollotrons as Gotham begins to tear itself apart under the influence of Pyg's drugs, and attempting to free Gordon. The commish, tempted by Hurt with the offer of more drugs, hits Batman in the head with a fire extinguisher, leaving him at Hurt's mercies... "Your knights have fallen and the board is mine", he screams at the fallen Bat. As for The Joker, he's sitting in The Batcave (indicated by the oversized Joker card in the background) with a nuke at his side & Damian tied up, face painted over with a clown smile.
Away from the cover and onto the interiors. The Joker, in full Oberon Sexton gear (fully pointing out that this is just another incarnation of his super-MPD), is dancing with a corpse in a wedding dress, talking to a coffin in which he has placed Damian (the 2nd person he's buried alive so far), and talking about how Dick's head is on the "devil's chopping block" (Devil=Hurt). What is Robin going to do to save his "brother" from the most evil man on Earth as Joker calls him?
Isn't he cute in the make-up & nose?
So finally the story itself catches up to where we started a few issues back as Hurt "returns" as Thomas Wayne, strolling into Wayne Manor where Alfred meeets him and the giant block letters let us know that this is DAY 3; the day of the eclipse, the day Dick eats a bullet. And, as I just learned, the last panel on this particular page (#6 of issue 15) is from the painting "The Triumph of Death"...
News reports scream of riots & quaranite in Gotham City as Pyg's virus takes hold, "Thomas Wayne" begins his move for control by going on the news claiming to know how to save Gotham, and Joker leads Damian (still tied up) through the Garden of Death at Wayne Manor.
Some more Joker wordplay that has multiple layers of meaning kicks into effect here as Damian says pawn, he turns it into prawn, he talks about "Big Mike. God's Top Gun. His Head Banana" while eating a banana. A little bit of homework tells me that "Big Mike" is a type of banana, "God's Top Gun" is a reference to Archangel Michael who led the armies of Heaven against Satan in Revelations, and the Joker continues that biblical theme by likening the banana to The Fall.
I tend to think of Morrison's comics in the same vein as good movie; nothing that makes it in a panel/scene is accidental or without purpose. Keep an eye on that banana peel is all I'm saying...
Gordon is dressed up like a Dollotron while Pyg slams what I assume is a bottle of liquor while rambling about some various imaginary doctors. Damian appears on the scene as Gordon begins to fight off the addiction, kicking Pyg, and causing an accident that throws him from the van.
Pyg, still conscious, rambles on, saying "Bless the snaile. The double is two, the deuce is snail horns, the snail is the devil". Given the Devil reference I assume he means Dr. Hurt, also using the Thomas Wayne name (two names?) but I don't really grasp the snail reference unless he's talking about Hurt being slow???
Damian attempts to take on the 99 Fiends on his own, only managing to get himself captured just in time for Dick to get shot in the head! So that's why he was shooting pumpkins, to figure out just where to shoot Grayson so as not to kill him immediately...it was target pratice!
Hurt smashes the horse on the mantle, the one that served as a sign through the years from Bruce to Dick & Damian that led them to the secret passageway, and offers Damian a deal. He will save Dick in exchange for Damian's soul...and here we have the deal that ish #666 referred to but with some differences. One, Damian said he was 14 when the deal was made and he's still 10 when this is going down. Two, in #666 Devil-Bats is still around, but at this time the man who had that identity, Michael Lane, was Azrael. Three, Damian in #666 said he made the deal to save Gotham's soul, not to save Batman's life.
That being said, #666 only serves as a possible future for Damian, one that could have happened if events had occurred a certain way. I believe that those events are occuring in a wholly different fashion now, potentially changing the mechanics of how/why Damian takes on the cape & cowl in the future, and that is something I will have to address once more when I look at #700 shortly...
Anywho, Damian tells Hurt that "You're a man who lived too long. We know who you are. You shouldn't have come back here". So the dynamic duo have figured it out definitively but the comic book hasn't caught up to them yet I'd say...but that's what Bond-villain monologues are for and of course Hurt provides us with one as his henchmen remove Thomas & Martha Wayne's picture from the wall.
Hurt again mentions the "hole" in reference to Damian's soul, explains how the Wayne's took him in & showed him kindness, and in exchange he took Thomas' face, smeared their names, destroyed their painting, and now looks to desecrate the name of Batman as well by becoming one himself, an evil one, with Damian as his Robin.
There's a whistle which is the lost-langage of the Miagani Tribe (the ones that worshipped Barbatos), the Bat-Coffin opens for the first time in 100 years (according to Hurt), and inside, along with a batarang/signal is a note & all it says... "GOTCHA!", the same words Bruce said right before he was Omega Sanctioned into time by Darkseid. Hurt is shocked, and as for Dick & Damian...
Hurt is freaking out, the 99 Fiends break into the scene, Dick and Damian smile as the former Robin says "I don't make plans, but I know someone who does. Devil...meet Bat-God"
So how the hell did Bruce get from being blasted by Darkseid's Omega Beams to standing inside Wayne Manor ready to kick Dr. Hurt's ass? Well that my friend's is a story for the NEXT blog as I look at "Batman: Return of Bruce Wayne" and Batman & Robin #16!!!
But before we wrap up here, largely because I intially couldn't seem to fit it anywhere else, I need to look at the story in Batman #700 Morrison wrote that was included in the "Time and the Batman" HC along with "The Missing Chapter" and a Fabian Nicieza Bat-story.
So this was a rather interesting look at three different eras of Batmen (well rather like 6 but more on that in few) as Morrison does a multi-angled tale with Bruce, Dick, and Damian all wearing the cape & cowl at various points. All three tales center around a Professor Nichols and his Maybe Machine which apparently induces something he calls "time hypnosis" which lets the user see "...visions of how things might have been". Nichols is a perfect example of Morrison's love for using characters & stories from the 40's & 50's and molding them into a modern context, placing them in true continuity.
The first story with Bruce & Dick (as Robin) is set in the past, and as you can see from the image above, in a look straight out of the 60's, the "New Look" era as it's called, complete with the faux-Mad Hatter (NOT Jervis Tetch, rather a guy who impersonated him for several years in the books). This guy was sane, just really like hats, and certainly not the potential pedophile that Tetch sometimes is portrayed as.
The thing I find the most interesting about a look at this era of Bat-history is, not surprisingly, The Joker. It's been noted several times over on numerous websites how The Joker changed during the reign of the Comics Code from a psycho murderer to a more "fun" villain and I suppose this is Morrison actually writing that personality change into continuity over the course of the first 3rd of this story.
He does jump from a giggly mess to a sweaty, shaky mess to a sadistic guy channeling Heath Ledger as he threatens to "...put a big cheeky smile on that baby face...", talking about Robin. It's also cool how Morrison actually puts a time-stamp on this story as Joker looks through his Jokebook (allusion to Batman's Casebook?) and mentions how he might look into "Joker fish". FYI: check out "Detective Comics #475 for that one.
So he smokes Fear Gas from a pipe, gives Robin a hit of it, but in the process Batman uses the distraction to free himself and lay a whooping on the villains. Not sure why Bruce gets so pissed when Riddler calls him Caped Crusader but he certainly won't do that again...
Gordon bursts in with the cops following a tip-off from Professor Nichols himself (very curious since he stated earlier he was only expecting Bats & wouldn't have made a chance to make this call being surrounded by villains and all), and Robin wonders at the paradoxes of time travel that come along with every story of the sort. What would happen if The Joker had accomplished his goal of stopping Batman from ever coming into existence?
For that matter, now that I think about it, that pretty much implies Joker suspects Bats identity & what birthed him...which is basically what we know from "RIP" amongst other stories, it's just that by then he doesn't care, believing Batman to be the true face and anything else a mask.
Off to the present day with Dick now in the Batman role & Damian-Robin as they return to the same scene as the previous chapter, Prof. Nichols basement lab, only now he's an old dead man. In fact he's about 20 years older than he should be according to Grayson, but let me take one step back real quick like before we move on to point out the little differences...
Seriously could you ever see Bruce doing that? I mean it is very likely he would remember all that information, but extremely unlikely he would actually talk to the officer in the same fashion as Dick. Probably one of the reasons Gordon said his cops preferred him to the other Batman...and I've got a sneaking suspicion about Officer Bailey's kid but that comes back later in this story.
Damian off-handedly mentions "no case unsolved tonight", Dick mentions how he was hoping to contact Nichols to help find Bruce (essentially giving me a chronological reference for when this story takes place, between B&R #9 & #10 I'd say, and then we head to Park Row.
As is well known this is the place where Bruce's parents were killed, and now Dick is bringing Damian here to commemorate the anniversary in Bruce's stead. Dick lays down a black wreath, claiming that's what Bruce does every year, but I could swear that he's been depicted putting down two red roses most times. This anniversary is also the reason for the "no case unsolved tonight" comment earlier...
Some bad stuff starts to go down which gives us a wonderful little throwback to the first issue of "Batman & Robin" (oh yeah, Frank Quitely is drawing this section which I forgot to mention, Tony Daniel did the first):
Dmian & Dick run into Lone-Eye Lincoln, the guy who Bruce almost bought drugs from back in "RIP", and he agrees to keep his business quiet for the night in exchange for Dick fending off...The Mutants...a reference to the gang that runs shit in Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight" in case you don't know. BTW, it also seems there's a one-off panel during the Pyg-induced drug riot in "Batman & Robin" that shows Lincoln helping people in trouble. I guess his genorousity stems from this moment...
Dick & Damian do some hero-work around Gotham, break-up a villainous auction being led by the faux-Hatter (now Hatman), where he's trying to sell The Joker's Jokebook (after already selling Red Hood's guns & Kite-Man's kite collection). They break that up, Damian of course brags about all the reasons he should be Batman instead of Dick, which leads Grayson to point out the story behind the "Locked Room Killer" as they are referrring to Prof. Nichols death.
For some reason Damian's comment about Dick's "...insane leaps of logic..." and Grayson's "It'll all make sense one day" somehow seem like Morrison doing meta-commentary on his own writing...or maybe I'm just looking for things that aren't there. Apophenia I believe it's called, something The Joker mentioned to Bats in "RIP"...
So it's a dude named January Damian is in pursuit of and he has seeded the skies with Joker Venom, creating rain that infects Gotham's population with a non-lethal variant of the juice. Again we see Commisioner Barbara Gordon allowing her to reinforce the idea that she hates Damian just before Damian uses his father's satellite program Brother I (the one that helped create "Infinite Crisis") to take out (read "kill") some Jokerized/Venomized monsters in cop uniforms.
Damian gets to his destination, January, and finds this:
A man who looks like an even more insane version of Two-Face sits with Professor Nichols (the 80 year old, laser hole in the chest version) at his side & a Jokerized baby on his knee. This bizarro Two Face reads like a conglomerate of multiple Bat-Villains with the use of Joker Juice, Monster Serum, the coin, & calendar dates, except he's not good at it. He thought he kidnapped a twin but Damian informs him he screwed the pooch on that one.
Damian takes him out, is approached by the Carter Nichols from the Bruce-Bats story who tells him he needs to go back in time to tip-off the police, as well as drop off his old man body in the Grayson-Bats story. Damian seems to have some memory of what's going on here, based on his comment of "That door was...locked..." and "I can't let you...kill yourself.", sound more like his kid-self than his uber-bad ass persona. He also drops some names when he contacts Commish Gordon, informing her to tell Warren & Mary McGinnis their baby's safe, then reading the note from Nichols that repeats something Riddler said earlier, "What can we beat but never defeat?"
In case you are unaware, that baby is none other than Terry McGinnis, the Batman of Batman Beyond, which turns Morrison's story in this issue into a new creature if you ask me. Follow me for a moment: IF "Batman Beyond" continuity is intact as it happened in the TV show & movie, then both Terry McGinnis and Tim Drake were infected with Joker venom (see "Return of The Joker" for more info on Drake), which is quite interesting to me. Still, in true Beyond continuity it is Bruce who mentors Terry, but it would seem more likely given this panel:
I imagine it's now Damian serving as the mentor in Morrison's official Bat-Continuity, although still Bruce Wayne in DC Animated world. We are then presented with multiple looks at Batman thru the ages...
Brane (from the year 3000 & Batman #26), maybe another Brane (from the year 3050 & Batman #67), and the DC One Million Batman (created by Morrison for the DC One Million mini-series)....what is it that we can defeat but never beat?
Two things: Time and The Batman...
Next blog: A whole lot of time and Batman!
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