Batman - The Grant Morrison Odyssey: Finale 2

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
Part 7: Batman & Robin Must Die!!!
Part 8: Return of Bruce Wayne Part 1
Part 9: Return of Bruce Wayne Part 2
Part 10: Batman Inc. Part 1

We left our intrepid heroes, Batman & El Gaucho, as they broke out of the wheelchair bound El Sombrero's death trap. We join them in mid-interrogation as Gaucho, rocking those Shock-Nucks, lays into Sombrero, demanding to know who he works for.  The villain's response: "The greatest of them all...", Batman pulls Gaucho away to pursue Scorpiana, and we jump back in time to Nazi Germany on the next page.

Essentially we get a crash course on the origins of Otto Netz/Dr. Dedalus in one page from his Nazi scientist origins searching for Oroboro, running on the belief that "He who finds this treasure will be the master of the world".   Hitler passes on a walking cane to Netz as appreciation for his efforts, the panel above depicts him finding that snake eating its own tail as he is captured by soliders...as he planned apparently.  He mentions his intent was always to exploit his new masters, he wears a cloak of smoke, talks about how he studied the pattern made by his masters (whomever they may be).  He notes how he was secluded in Argentina but emerged to head up Spyral, a United Nations agency, the same one that Kathy Kane & El Gaucho (as Agent 33) worked for.

Dedalus has operated under several alias over the years apparently; Agent-Zero, Daddy 8-Legs, Sleipnir, The Spinner.  Aside from the zero, two of those are very spidery references while Sleipnir is a Norse mythological beast, an 8-legged horse ridden by Odin. Very arachnidesque with it's 8 leggedness...

We are now back in The Falklands and Dedalus' island in the present day as he talks to his caretaker-type guy, rambling on, imagining the caretaker's death via poisoning (digitalis aka foxglove) that he injected into the guy's apple.  It seems to be 2 panels of wishful thinking (or perhaps time distortion since Knight mentioned that back when we were first led to the island) since the guy is still alive one panel later.  Anyone's guess I suppose...

During his ramblings, the old man mentions how he was trapped on the island before he could destroy civilization but "...I have made a ring around the world...a noose...a hangman's noose..." which is essentially the shape of oroboro.  Dedalus passes his caretaker guy a note intended for his daughter, who we learned was Kathy Kane, who has been dead for an undetermined amount of time.  It would seem he would be aware of this but it may just be a case of Dedalus' apparent alzheimer's/dementia.  As for what's on the note, it's looks like a drawing of oroboro...its 3 colors too in case you're wondering.  That number coming back again...

The Hood hits the island, meeting Batwoman in the process, hitting on her of course.  He works for T.H.E.Y but I have no idea what that acronym means and the story certainly doesn't enlighten us. He's a British superspy, Batwoman knows who he is, and as they are busy bonding, there are several little blue scorpions creeping up on them. 

Hood mentions the three marines that were killed as they were on their way to the island as a war between the UK & Argentina is ready to pop over the land.  He mentions the Knight's team from the 80's getting wiped out when they tried to go after Dedalus, Batwoman knows a lot about what is going on here, about some ultimate weapon, some power source capable of replacing oil & nuclear energy.  Oh and Hood mentions someone called "Matron" several times which I forgot to mention....one paragraph earlier...

So for the first time Batwoman meets Batman and I love his response to her question....to be accurate though, it isn't their first meeting, just the first time Bruce has met her as Batwoman rather than in her civilian guise when he helped her with a mugger.  Check out J.H. Williams III "Elegy" story for that...it's awesome.

Some racism gets bantered back and forth between the British Hood & the Argentian Gaucho, actually it's more just Hood being a racist and Gaucho getting pissed.  He calls him Zardoz which is an apparent reference to a Sean Connery film and a character I guess Hood feesl that Gaucho looks like...decide for yourself:

That's just creepy.....

The fight is broken up by Scorpiana, Batwoman's dad gives us more background on her abilities in one panel than Morrison had given us in the several years since her debut, "A-list assassin...bionic fight enhancements...plus-speed reflexes...", Batwoman is unimpressed...

She recognizes Scorp's fighting style as similar to the Batwoman imposter she fought in the Ghost Train, we learn the dead Marines were psy-ops who were killed and replaced before their tour of duty on the island.  Gaucho helpfully points out that everyone here is tied to Kathy Kane in some fashion.  Is she the Maestro that Sombrero mentioned in the previous issue?

Batman creeps up on Dedalus and his caretaker, and the old man creepily recognizes him as "the time voyager".  Okay, so how does this guy immediately have an inkling of the ordeal Bruce Wayne had just experienced in "Return"????  Is he a time traveler????

Gaucho, Batwoman, and Hood walk the island and discover the remains of Knight's team, particularly the corpse of Iron Lady, meaning no one has cleaned up this mess that went down in the 80's! Gaucho connects the dots between Dedalus being Spyral Agent-Zero and mentions how all the agents were told he was dead when Spyral was shut down. 

Batman chases the caretaker guy into the lighthouse, he tells Bat's he is in Dr. Dedalus' maze of death, shows off a weapon constructed from the hammer of Mr. Albion of the 80's team that assaulted the island.  Dedalus made it into a meta-bomb...the caretaker dies, digitalis after all, so I guess he was poisoned, but before he dies, what are his final words?

"Hail Leviathan."

Batwoman & company stumble on Dedalus, who has apparently been replaced by a fake, playing a tape recording presumably of the real Dedalus' voice.  The fake recognizes the voice, rewinding and replaying the tape, while Hood's inner monologue reveals that he was sent by T.H.E.Y to infiltrate Batman Inc for whatever purpose. 

Gaucho apologizes to Batman for never telling him about Spyral & Kathy Kane, Bats basically tells him whether he wants it or not, Gaucho is now part of Inc.  Bats confirms this old man is a fake, the real deal monitoring the situation via these crazy looking goggles.  Dedalus is somewhere else, talking to some hooded figure who is likely the true force behind Oroboro.  He mentions several countries (Argentina, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, England, & France, "a ring around the world") and most of them have Batman Inc reps already.  The exceptions being Hong Kong & Australia...although the land down under has been represented in the past by Morrison with the character of Night Ranger from the Club of Heroes.

We head over to Africa where Leviathan has a school essentially brainwashing kids into their service, and Batwing is checking in on them.  Interesting note about Batwing, he's kind of another case of Morrison pulling from history in that Batwing is very reminiscent of a character from #250:

So we jump from Africa to a group of laborers who are apparently criminals operating under the name Joe Average and The Average Joes.  They are looking to expand their criminal franchise and hire some strange looking guy named Nero Nykto to do some underworld PI work for them.  He offers them up evidence and that provides the framework for our story. First off we get the tale of the "Emoticon-Man" who "...chose to take his grievances directly to Wayne's door...."

Bruce Wayne is being interview by a newswoman named Mercedes about the Batman Inc, addressing the questions of whether or not there have been multiple Batmen in the past, of the original Batman's death, when a group of masked gunmen (whose masks are indeed emoticon symbols like "^_^" or "0?0") come down on what I assume is Wayne Tower.  Bruce's response:

So cool...

I guess these are the finished products of the suits Bruce had Lucius Fox put together in "Batman: The Return" for him & Damian...definitely similar to the Bat robots in "Kingdom Come".

Bruce, Dick, and Damian clear Jim Gordon of a murder charge with some typically badass detective work, then Bruce heads to the cave with Red Robin to introduce him to his new team: The Outsiders.

In the exchange prior to that panel, Tim mentions something Bruce told him that Bruce says is only for Tim to know.  It's good to see this considering how awesome Morrison portrayed Tim Drake in the "Return of Bruce Wayne" mini, and really shows the bond between the two.  Tim's mission is now to take over the Batman Inc. stealth team for undercover international work...

Bruce then gathers the collective Bat-Family and fills them in on Leviathan, on their reach into Mtamba in Africa, and then decides to tell them what he experienced when he was lost in time.   Just them though, not us, we don't get to hear what he has to say.  I must note how odd it is, but refreshing, to see Bruce open up like this...to see that his experiences did change him.

When it boils down to just Dick and Damian in the cave Bruce loses the cape & cowl, we learn that people are buying into this Batman Inc by buying shares in Wayne.  The Joker is in deep security lockdown at Arkham following the events of "Batman & Robin", and Bruce is now dinking around in chat rooms & on message boards, essentially putting out more white noise as to Batman's identity; essentially using the internet to put out even more absurd rumors and heresay about Batman.  I think we all know that it's perfect using the internet to do that, I mean look at the amount of "facts" on Wikipedia...I say after using it frequently to fact check stuff on this blog.  Oh and in the little visual we get of the website Bruce is on, Morrison digs into some more ancient Bat-material with a mention of "Victims Inc." which was from Batman #217.

Bruce tells Dick & Damian everything he knows about Leviathan, off panel of course to leave us all wondering, and Dick wonders how the future that Bruce saw turned out (if it's anything like the future we saw in ish #666 in which Damian was Batman it certainly wasn't good).  Bruce says it's like a dream now, fading, but he knows something big & bad is coming and not everyone is going to survive.

We jump to Bruce looking to Alfred for some war advice which he delivers in a chess metaphor during a game Alfie wins.  Jump to France where Nightrunner pursues some felons, then back to Nykto & Joe Average as they peruse his files on Batman Inc.  He informs them that Nightrunner was in pursuit of of "Les Stereotypes" who were transporting child slaves.  Back to Paris where Bruce & 'Runner stop the slave runners, open up the truck, and find...

Blood soaked little kids carrying knives and scissors with a headless body, amongst other corpses, in their wake.  F'n creepy...

The story jumps over to Hong Kong where Cassandra Cain, now known as Black Bat, is working as the Inc operative, and also gives us the tie to the country when Dedalus mentioned it...

She stops the heroin trade going down, following a lead on Jimmy Song who it seems Bruce believes was going to be receiving the children, then we hop over to Australia (the only other locale not covered by Inc at the moment the old doctor mentioned it) where we find Bruce with Dark Ranger, on the heels of the slave ring's clients.  Bruce swears Ranger in to Inc in a now familiar fashion...

Nykto informs the Joe's that Batman tattooed "child molester" on the client's foreheads, mentions Bats may have been in Africa, and we see a quick image of that with Bats, Batwing, and surprisingly Spydra & Traktier from "Batman: The Return", dismantling the training facility we saw before.

Then check out the lower panel on the middle right....

Bruce is putting someone under the guise of Wingman, the guy who turned traitor back in the Club of Heroes arc, and insists his identity remains a secret. Mystery man calls him Bruce so it is someone who knows the secret, leaving the possibilites still wide open....my personal hope in mystery scenarios is always Jean Paul Valley...or at least it was until Geoff Johns had his dead body walking around as a Black Lantern in "Blackest Night".  I mourned...

The bottom panel is pretty intense as well, essentially stating that Bruce is building his own Oroboro-esque machine, but this one is a bat instead of a snake.

Back to Nykto as he reveals himself to the Joe's as his truth identity...it's Batman ya'll!  Nero Nykto translates to Dark Night after all...

So intense!

We go into space, a satellite of some sort, where Dedalus watches the Earth, mentions how the FIRST battle formation is made of 500 agents, the youngest being 18 months?!?!?  Leviathan has some serious issues pertaining to children!  The African school, the truckload of bloody kids, the statements from "Batman: The Return" ("In the name of all that is pure and true, strong and young..."); serious child issues.

Cute mention of the Dark Knight becoming a god (pre-Final Crisis rumors & one Nykto put out there to the Joe's too), the skull-chinned leader of Leviathan seems unconcerned, Dedalus says the first 500 are trained to imitate a virus, "Infiltrate. Contaminate. Destroy" and I'm wondering if the space station they are on is the same one where Lord Death Man was contained.  Then we get this awesome last page...

All of Inc in one page plus a Clayface cameo in the Bruce panel! And that words means "imagined figure of the night", appropriate for Batman Inc for sure.

We head over to the reservation where Man-of-Bats & Red Raven are helping out their people in anyway they can, whether it be handling black mold or drug problems, they are going door-to-door offering assistance until they find a woman, dead from overdose, with a baby on the floor watching cartoons with either food all over himself, or urine/feces from neglect.  I'm leaning towards the latter...

So apparently Man-Of-Bats is a doctor in his civilian identity which I didn't realize but now makes perfect sense considering he is the one who removed the bomb from The Knight's innards in "Club of Heroes". I just didn't catch the off-handed remark by Knight calling him "doc" while the operation was going down...

So unlike Batman, Man-of-Bats identity is public knowledge and he still finds time to be a doctor when he's not on patrol.  Nice counterpoint to Bruce Wayne's existence...

He and Red Raven head out looking for the Redz Gang who are doing bad things in the reservation area, Raven whines about not feeling/doing anything important ("In a year I'll be too old for the Teen Titans).  They find Sam Black Elk who I find is the son of the villian Bats & Man of Bats fought way back in Man's first appearance in Batman #86.  The son likes kicking dogs and dealing drugs....

Yup, don't do those things...

He finds something he believes to be drugs on Black Elk but the cops who arrive mock him, noting the "drugs" taste like spearmint candy, causing Red Raven to leave, and they toss Man-of-Bats in the back of the squad car.  Raven heads to the Bat's Cave and I notice for the first time that their truck has a Bat-Logo painted on the side, Batman meets him there and informs Raven that he & his father have been targeted by Leviathan.

Back in the cop car we disover that the new cop is in fact a Leviathan agent, that Sam Black Elk's father at some point is the one who exposed Man-of-Bats identity, and that Sam is also Leviathan! Even though he is older, this is still the child of a major figure in Man-of-Bats life that is Leviathan.  He stabs Man, saying that "Everywhere the standard of the bat rises, it will be chopped down.", which to me says that there is definitely something personal between Leviathan & Batman.

Surrounded by the Redz Gang, Man-of-Bats stands tall, ready to fight, but is saved by...

How cool is Batman riding horseback?

Man-of-Bats takes a bullet saving Red Raven, Raven takes one tending to his father, we learn Man-of-Bats was in Iraq, Raven is okay because he was wearing the Ghost Shirt which is apparently bulletproof.  Red Raven gives his dead some blood, Batman offers the full support of Inc but Raven honestly tells Bats it won't help the problems they are trying to take care off on the reservation. 

Bats informs Raven that the "spearmint wafers" were indeed mind control agents, likely the same ones given to the kids involved in the child slavery ring...another attack on kids having the drug taste like candy.

Man I dig that image....

Now we jump to Internet 3.0 which Bruce also mentioned in "Bats: The Return" as he is playing host to some sort of corporate meeting within its confines.  Of course everything goes to hell immediately with the skies turning Crisis red and zombie looking terrorist-viruses invading the program.  Good thing Internet 3.0 has anti-virus software preprogrammed in the form of: 

Digital Batgirl!!! Well at least Barbara is getting to step into the role somehow, and it also gives Bruce an opening to become Digital Batman as well...but still maintain his Bruce avatar at the same time.  That's serious mental work I'd imagine..

Oracle realizes that one of Bruce's guests had to have brought the virus into 3.0 with them in order for it to have gotten through the firewall, she also mentions Batgirl & the UK finishing school for evil introduced in "Batman: The Return", and drops three words that seem to keep repeating throughout Inc: mazes, webs, and nets. 

The investor crew run around in virtual Wayne Tower as the Mutation Engine takes over 3.0 and begins to mess with the situation.  It transforms a woman who "...sacrificed her handicapped daughter to a nursing home..." into a dog (more parent/child issues) for example.  Batgirl figures out which of the people here carried in the virus, a Mr. Tanaka who created a video game called "Judgment in Hell City 666".  Perhaps that's what this scenario is with Gotham being portrayed as hell of course...

That's the image of Tanaka transforming into the virus but the "all your files are mine" line just makes me think of "all your base are belong to us".  Virtual Batman & Batgirl, along with the other investors, gain armor & weapons, Tanaka attempts to flee, repeating what Sam Black Elk said about the standard of the bat, before Oracle shuts it all down.

Oracle discovers that Tanaka's goal was to launder the moeny he stole from the investors through a certain small African country, Mtamba, which Bruce says is the land of Jezebel Jet, the missing-since-RIP ex-girlfriend of Bruce who was in bed with The Black Glove!  Bruce think he's found the answer to who is behind Leviathan...

Time for the wrap-up but first a quick backstory for the unfamiliar! What is contained in this oversized book was supposed to be issues #9 & #10 of Inc. but for whatever reasons they were severely delayed, the new 52 happened, and this book came out AFTER the DC-wide reset that was "Flashpoint".  So it is interesting to note that this book is marked right off the bat as taking place PRIOR to that event, allowing Morrison to wrap up the Batgirl/Finishing School story (since Stephanie Brown doesn't exist in the DCnU yet) that was teased in "Batman: The Return" and referenced by Stephanie as having happened in a pre-new 52 issue of "Batgirl".  It also lets Grant give some closure to what happened in #8 with the Jezebel Jet revelation...

So we start this final part of our venture in the UK, more specifically inside the Finishing School...

The blonde one is Stephanie Brown with a noose around her neck, a circle, an oroboro, a ring around her throat...and all those girls are wearing replicas of Kathy Kane's Batwoman outfit too.  Jezebel & Kathy Kane involved here??

The other girls of the school accuse Steph of being Batman's daughter which is funny considering she, along with Barbara, are the ONLY members of the Bat-Family not adopted/blood-related to Bruce.  He adopted Dick, Jason, Tim, and Cassandra at various points and Damian is his actual son...

Steph and another girl get sent to the principal's office, the other girl busts out a picture of the missing gymnast mentioned many issues back by Batwoman, and informs Steph that she too was trained at the school & selected to test the Leviathan technology.  This girl knows that Batwoman got her and someone named Miss Delicias who I assume is Scorpiana since that's the only other person who have seen Batwoman "get" (plus there's a Scorps pic on the wall).  As to the identity of this girl Steph is talking to, well she is the daughter of The Highway man, one of the UK villains introduced during "Batman & Robin".

The headmistress/master of the school, nice and shadowed, learns about Stephanie's father (The Cluemaster), the girls take target practice on pictures of Supes & GL, they fight it out on a soccer field, Steph & Jolisa make the cut which brings us to that opening scene with the noose.  We also get the reveal on who the mystery headmistress/master is:

Johnny Valentine from the Kane Kollosal Karnival chase scene with Batwoman, aka Janosz Valentin aka The Son of Pyg!  So does that mean that Prof. Pyg was also tied into Leviathan as well as The Black Glove/El Penitente or is it just happenstance that his son would fall into the same trappings?  Sorta like Bruce & Damian Wayne...more parent/child stuff...

First he stigmatas himself, then brings out those spearmint drug wafers, turning this into a f'd up form of communion I'd say, especially considering the girls take the wafers in the same fashion in which one can take communion (no hands, just use your tongue...that's dirty).  He also has a table full of lethal beauty products which is along the same lines as the weapons the Kathy Kane Batwoman used in her original incarnation.

Steph changes into her fighting togs after using those weapons to escape the situation, Pyg Jr. and his "Death Girls Of Leviathan" give chase only to find the "skin" of a gardner hanging from a tree.  I think we all know what comes next.  Batman jumps out of a tree, takes out Pyglet, heads into the Headmaster's office while Steph is held at gunpoint by Jolisa who's all "Hail Leviathan"...

Batman confronts one of the teachers, finds out that Pyg wasn't the headmistress/master after all so I go back and take a look and what do you know, the shadowy figure has fingernail paint on. Doesn't mean it COULDN'T be a guy...

So the blonde chick pulls a crossbow on Bats and...

Steph is a bad ass in her own right which makes me miss her Batgirl series rereading this book...

We jump over to an investigation of Sivana's diamondy thing Catwoman stole back in issue #1 as Bruce & the very Morgan Freeman-esque Lucius Fox discover just what it is.  A photonic crystal that "... interacts with light & other forms of energy in ways unknown in nature", Lucius says it could potentially make someone invisible.  Sounds like a handy tool for Batman...

Bruce shows Lucius the picture he confiscated from Dedalus' caretaker of the oroboro-esque shape which Lucius identifies as a Brunnian Ring.  Bruce, using that super deductive brain of his, connects the symbolism of a perptual energy source to the perpetuating ciricle that is the oroboro, the endless loop.  Bruce also gets another look at the Bat-Robots we saw a few issues back...

Bruce, Dick, Tim, and Damian fighting side-by-side for the first time, searching for Jezebel Jet who they believe to be behind Levithan, and standing in a circle in their order of appearance. Also I may note, the number 3 pops up again with 3 Robins, and more father/son stuff with them all being the children of Batman.  If only Jason Todd could play nice with others...

Batman ends up in a room with Dedalus, appropriately introduced with "Come into my parlor, Batman" which would end with "said the spider to the fly" if completed.  The Doctor, whose real name is Otto Netz, and has a daughter with the last name Webb, has used spider references on many occassions since his debut.  He tells Batman that the gas he is breathing is mind-eroding, possibly why Batman thinks he has done this before, and mentions how Lazlo Valentin, Professor Pyg was a former Spyral agent, who cracked when exposed to the gas, finding his salvation in drugs and do it yourself surgery.  I am now asking myself if there is any connection between The Black Glove and Leviathan with all this mind-control gas & chemical experimentation, makes me think of Dr. Hurt's experiments.

Scene switch to Mtamba, Jezebel Jet's home, where Batwing and several unidentified hero-types are operating on a mission and Batwing finds out something important:

Things aren't what they seems with Jet, Batwing says she's not in charge, and the bat wings moment harkens back to the end of "RIP" when Talia sicked her Ninja-Bats on Jet.

Back to Bats in the maze of Dedalus, the gas seems to be playing havoc with Batman's memory, his sense of time, it's all just Netz baiting Batman deeper into his maze/web/labyrinth. 

We cut to The Hood hitting on a woman then jumping on her computer to send a message to Oracle about Leviathan being "An inescapable interrogation facility sailing international waters, answerable to no laws".  Behind him a mustached man enters the room (the Matron?), talks about them both being double agents, and then:

...Dead Hood...

But it transitions right into this pivotal moment in Bat history except Bats is cradling the Netz dummy.  Then he sees this...

The Prof. Pyg structure wearing Martha Wayne's pearls (ya know the ones that have been in circulation since the dawn of time according to "Return of Bruce Wayne") which he rips off the barbwire mommy.

Tim, Dick, and Dmian fend off their attackers only to find out that they are in fact Nightrunner and Dark Ranger under the influence of the mind control.  So between whatever happened to Batwing, Hood being shot, and now this, it seems that Leviathan has struck a mighty blow against the Inc.

Batman finds the center of the maze only to stumble upon ANOTHER tape recording and the skeleton bones of someone.  The recording apparently is a fan of The Dark Knight movie as it says "Recordings cannot be bargained with. Netz cannot be reasoned with." which is basically what Alfred says to Bruce when they are in the Bunker talking about The Joker.

Bruce gets sucker punched in the back of the head by El Gaucho, the double agent in fact & name given that his number is "33", then a bomb blows out the hull of the tanker they are apparently on.  In space, on the same space station we saw the Headmistress & Dedalus on before, The Outsiders team have boarded only to find Lord Death Man roaming around free as a timer counts down to zero and the place blows up with Halo, Looker, Metamorpho, Freight Train and Katana on board...

Batman crawls towards a map of the world, marked with the locations in which Batman Inc operatives work, Oracle puts the Robo-Bats on-line, Dedalus mentions how "she told me he like puzzles" which of course presents the question of who "she" is...Jezebel presumably.  Also there are three chalk mark outlines on the ground around Batman, likely representative of the 3 dead Marines....

Batman himself questions the "she" and actually mentions Kathy on his own as well as Jet.  Gaucho actually ends up saving Batman, making him a triple agent (MORE THREE'S), but to no avail as Dedalus stabs him in the throat with a blade hidden in the Hitler cane, then proceeds to electrocute Batman to death.  Gaucho tries to help but dies, bleeding out from the neck as Bats crawls to hit the button (Oroboro shaped of course) that will stop the meta-bombs Dedalus says he has ringing the world.  The only thing that saves Batman; Damian, in a very difficult fashion...

Damian broke the main rule, he killed, yes it was to save his father, but he killed nonetheless, and that pained look on his face tells the whole story.  The Bat-Bots raise the Leviathan, we get a single image of a shorter-haired woman sitting overlooking the ocean, talking to the Matron, and talking about oroboro.  Oh and how she'll send flowers because "he hated flowers".  If this wasn't intended to be Kathy Kane, the original Batwoman, I would be absolutely shocked...

On the freighter the Wayne family searches and it seems Gaucho may yet live as the blade missed his carotid artery barely.  Bruce mentions his visions of the future, "The world in flames...two headstones...Kali the destroyer...Jezebel Jet's revenge...", Tim completes the message Batwing sent out, that they found Jezebel's body, missing one thing, and something about an eye, the eye of Gorgon which is a star in the constellation in Perseus also call Algol...Al Ghul...Demon's Head...

And the one thing Jet was missing:

What this image doesn't show is the red Batphone (from the West/Ward TV show) next to the head which rings and Bruce answers...

Saddest face ever...

The scene turns to what is obviously Gotham as we see a Park Row street sign and the abandoned Monarch Theater (now being turned into a restaurant according to the sign).  The voice on the other end of the phone tells Bruce that a 1/2 billion dollar bounty has been placed on Damian's head, that
"We are now at war, as I promised", and ask the mask is removed, the voice becomes immediately familar to both Dick & Damian.  The face behind Leviathan:

Talia Al Ghul with "Fatherless", or whatever he is called, from "Batman: The Return" at her side.  All I can say is that I figured it out only a few panels before the reveal because of the "We are now at war, as I promised" line. It was that quote on my original reading that told me just who Leviathan was, and also blew my mind that it was based on one panel all the way back in "Batman & Son":

As I wrote in my very first part of this blog series regarding "Batman & Son" Pt. 3 -

There is obviously more to the Damian story than this, and reading closely I can see the foundation of Leviathan being laid out by Talia in the two panels on page 101 where Talia states "Then it's war. And you're responsible...For people like us, the world is the gameboard, and nations are pawns."

With mother, father, son, we've got our significance to the repeated usage of three's.  We have had the continued usage of children and parent/child issues throughout Inc. in the form of the Pyg family, Bruce dumping Damian on Dick, the larger Bat-Family, and the usage of kids as assassins within the Leviathan organization.  It also makes sense why the mind control agent has been turned into candy essentially.  This has all been a commentary on family, and now Talia has done whatever she could to take away Bruce's family throughout this story.  He still has Dick, Tim, Damian, and Barbara but most of the Batman Inc. family has been put down. 

I just have to wonder if this is another case of organic storytelling and it just turned out this way OR if Morrison has had this plan for over 5 years.  If so then that means all the Black Glove/RIP/Dr. Hurt stuff was really just the sideshow and this was the main event all along.  We have just been reading the establishment of Damian as a hero serving as fuel for Talia's motherly rage towards Bruce.  He took her son away, he is the reason Damian isn't following the Al Ghul plan, and now the whole world will pay for Bruce's perceived sins. 

There are a few lingering plot holes...like the identity of Wingman, who the other woman sitting at oceanside was, the fate of all the Batman Inc members who were assaulted/shot/blown up, and that last page does say it will be continued in 2012.  That is true, the release date is set for May 23, but DC Comics is in a whole different world now due to the New 52.

So the big question is just how that will affect the culmination of Morrison Bat-Story.  Will it?  Maybe it won't require any changes to what he had planned but with certain Bat Inc. characters (Stephanie Brown & Cassandra Cain in particular) not seeming to exist in the new world yet who knows.  I just can't imagine there NOT being some fundamental changes made...

Still, I for one cannot wait until May to see where this story goes.  The saga of the Al Ghul family has always been one of my favorite points of the Bat-Canon, largely due to The Animated Series where Ra's was my favorite villain beside The Joker, which I saw long before I read any comics he was featured in.  Damian has evolved into one of my favorite characters over the years as well and since I certainly foresee this being a story very much about father/son issues, I am very intrigued. 

So well this may bring my Morrison odyssey to a close as it pertains to my blog world, the door is a little over a month away from being kicked wided open in the actual comic book world.  This has been one long, strange, interesting, confusing, and educational journey for me in these last few months of rereading the Morrison Bat-Library and I hope I've offered some insight for anyone reading this as well.  I am most certainly taking a long hiatus away from anything connected to Grant Morrison, and will likely give Batman a break too just not right away.

Because the idea I have for my next blog is Bat-connected but also likely the most tangentially related blog I will ever likely do.  Suffice to say something in the Bat books has sparked some non-comics curiousity in me and I want to explore it.  Here's a tease...

As always, if you want to throw me a little financial support, click on the link to my Amazon Store on the left side of the screen, order something from there for yourself or someone else, and I get a small percentage...really small actually.  Or if you're feeling generous, buy me something from my wish list! I will love you always if you do...