Batman: The Grant Morrison Odyssey: Level 8

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!!!


So that big murky Batman-lookin' shadow has arrived at Wayne Manor!!! But how they hell did he get there you may ask? Well look no further than this blog to answer that question and, ideally, fill in the last of the gaps that have been lingering since "RIP" ended. Who is Dr. Hurt really? What did the Omega Effect do to Bruce? What is the story with that Bat-Coffin? And where does Darkseid fit into all of this? Theoretically all those questions, and more, will be covered in this latest edition of my long-running Grant Morrison/Batman series. So let's get this bad boy started!

When we last left Bruce in "Final Crisis/RIP:Missing Chapter", he had arrived inside a cave with a dying old man inside, his memory rapidly fading away, using his last instincts to record a message across time for Superman, laying out some cave paintings of his bat-symbol, Wonder Woman's symbol, & the Supes-Shield.

The beginning of "Return" drops us into a prehistoric landscape where a rocket ship has crash landed amongst the people of the time. Besides the odd visual of a rocket in prehistory, the other thing that's immediately noticeable is that the skies are red a la "Final Crisis". Check it out:

So what I'm thinking is that the events of "FC", as pointed out in ish #6, are bleeding through time and this is part of that ripple effect. One of the things that always bugged me though is just what that rocket was since, ya know, it was the Omega Beams that transported Bats through time. And while I now know the answer to that query, with the help of some other annotations I've perused, I will leave it lie for a minute.

So the cavemen are obviously not speaking perfect English, their language a broken version I suppose would be most accurate description, but they are easy enough to understand. There's an "Old Man", a "Da-Man", they are discussing the "shining-cart" which is "same as brought down the fire in Old Man's Story". I suppose that is a reference to Metron delivering fire to a young Anthro at the beginning of "FC" and also teaching him the symbol that was used to prevent Anti-Life. Anthro would then be the old man Bruce sees die at the end of "FC/Missing Chapters", the same Old Man the cave people (Deer People?) are referring to. They also seem to be scared of the Blood Mob, their Blood Chief being a man they refer to as a devil.

The Deer People find tracks leading to a cave that is filled with bats and...

The cave people, obviously in shock from his strange man's arrival, respond rather calmly even with Bruce's garbled (at least to them) speech. "Wayrameye" translates to "Where am I?" for example...

So we learn the names of the other men in the tribe besides Old Man and Da-Man; there is also Giant, Boy, Surly, Giant, and...how apropos...Joker, who laughs, drawing a "RRRR" from Bruce in response. Cute...

Man smells death in the cave from whence Bruce came, while Bruce heads off to investigate the rocket ship. Man finds the body of Old Anthro while Bruce discovers a shattered Bat-Signal, a pile of dust, and a wholly intact Superman cape. Why I didn't make this connection months ago I will never know, but I'm glad I found someone to steer me in the right direction to answer the question of the rocket, right back to "FC":

Yup...that rocket, sent out by Lois, Jimmy Olsen, Captain Marvel, & Supergirl was loaded up with memorabilia from Bruce's present, and likely due to the hole Darkseid's fall let in time & space, the rocket went through time during all the chaos and ended up here.

Man emerges from the cave with Anthro as well as a necklace belonging to a White Fawn (looks a lot like a certain white pearl necklace from Bruce's personal history) and the tribe proceeds to bury Old Man under stones. Giant is annoyed that the stranger doesn't teach them something like "shining ones are supposed to", Joker (I think) labels him "Man of Bats" due to the bats who preceded Bruce's emergence from the cave I imagine...

There's some insight into the tradition of the tribe as Man now is in the position of Old Man and must pass on the oral history of the tribe to Boy (who is in the process of trying to become Young Man), but before anything of that sort can happen, Blood Mob attacks!

Bruce leaps to the defense of his new "family" on instinct but the odds are too great, Man dies, Bruce gets a hand up on the Blood Chief, but the numbers again prove too much and the Chief, whose grasp of language is far better than the other cavemen for some reason, takes the white necklace, and prisoners, while Boy watches from the bushes.

The Blood chief, with a giant bat mounted on a pike, announces to his tribe that he has brought them gifts AND labels himself "Chief Savage", solidifying the notion that he is indeed Vandal Savage, the Cro-Magnon who gained immortality & enhanced intellect from radiation, leading the Blood Tribe. He's got Bruce, he's got the rocket, and is going to kill the former at sun rise. Why not now? Who knows...maybe he thinks the Man-God/Sky Man is weaker in the daylight.

Bruce is restrained, hands and feet bound, and left laying out in the elements with some hungry dogs and the freaky Giant bat looking over him. The bat seems to come to life, Bruce experiences some visions:

And awakes to find a prehistoric version of Robin in "Boy", his face painted like a domino mask & rocking the utility belt, as you can see above, as well as a shield painted with a bat logo. Bruce & Boy escape, with Wayne instinctively finding/taking penicillin from his belt, and leaving the scene until morning. Savage emerges from his tent in the AM, ready to "kill a god and eat his heart", only to find his dogs dead, the giant Bat gone and...

Bruce leaps into action against Savage, decked out in Bat-regalia, while Boy, declaring that The Deer People are now The Bat people (the eventual Miagani tribe presumably), also joins the fray. Bruce uses all the tools at his disposal in the utility belt to defeat Vandal, reclaims the white necklace as Boy makes note that something is happening to the sun (thinking that Savage had angered it). Bruce heads towards the sun, in mid-eclipse, Boy following behind with Blood Mob in pursuit...

They leap, hit the water, but only Boy emerges from the falls. The Blood Tribe turns on Savage, thinking he made the sun go away, and as he retreats, Superman, Green Lantern, & Booster Gold appear in the sky, aware of Bruce's situation as we know from "Missing Chapter", tracking the Omega Radiation through time. Supes doesn't hear Batman's heartbeat in this time, but what we do know is that "...if Batman makes it back to the 21st century on his own...everyone dies", at least that's what Supes says.

Cut to Bruce underwater, pulled from the depths by a woman as he says "Where's the boy", she calls Bruce "Master Demon" which he fails to notice it seems because something else has their attention:

Bruce fends off this octopus-thing with a sword (note the dead body at his feet) but wakes up to this woman reciting gibberish with a ferret/familiar on one shoulder, and dangling over the other shoulder, the Wonder Woman & Superman sigils. Now I suppose that means there is some potential connection between this woman and the Miagani tribe upon whose caves Bruce initially drew those symbols. Crazy to think that they persisted from prehistoric times until this time frame that hasn't been quite identified yet.

Morrison has always had a thing for sigils and the power they could potentially represent and I suppose the idea that these symbols, the ones of DC's Trinity, persisting through time for centuries gives them a power unlike any other.

As for the story, Bruce can't remember his name again...only able to recall a "W"...and this women seems to be a little more aware than your average bear because she senses that "...a great dark god as set his hand upon (Bruce)".

The Time Masters team (a loosely tied in mini-series that seemed to be more "Flashpoint" build that "Return of Bruce Wayne" connected) hit Vanishing Point in their continued trace of Omega energy. VP is essentially located at the last moment of time before universal heat death and essentially contains all known history in its archives, which are managed by a Bio-organic Archivist, apparently something common in the 64th Century.

The archivist lays out one concept of how time works, something familiar to anyone who knows Morrison's work with it's multiple timelines, time happening simultaneously, hypercube time, things living in that time with "scale and depth and dimensions we can only begin to imagine", so sayeth Rip Hunter. The archivist shows a projection of a "hyperfauna infestation" that looks suspiciously like the creature Bruce fought in the beginning of this chapter. Supers sets his keen eyes on the timelines, looking for the Omega trail, needle in a haystack.

Something that could be major, or minor, the Archivist mentions Space A & Space B....Bat-Might from "RIP" claimed to be form Space B & there was mention of Space B in Morrison's "Animal Man" run too...just a lil' side note. Actually now that I'm looking it up, it's a much bigger theme in Morrison's work as the Sun-Eater from "All Star Superman" travels through Space B, Rip Hunter fought Mr. Mind in Space B in "52" which Morrison had a hand in, so it's safe to say Grant loves Space B. I guess it's just all part of this Hypertime thing...

Back to Brucie, or whomever he may be, right now still acting as a detective of sorts in a very Puritanical looking setting, pulling impaled bats off the doors of churches, looking for the culprit. It seems the local women are trying to frame the woman who helped Bruce out earlier...oh and by the way it seems he has taken on the name Mordecai. Sound familiar? That's one of the people from the Wayne family portrait collection a few blogs back, the one that Damian pointed out looked a lot like his father. What a perceptive lad...and we also met a man named Malleus, and a Flemish painter named Van Derm is also mentioned. He was the guy who painted Mordecai's portrait that hangs in Wayne Manor in the present day...

So remember how I said note the dead body? Well I'd say it's safe to say that amnesiac Bruce has assumed the identity of said corpse, who just so happened to be his own relative Mordecai, and is finding a common bond in the woman, named Annie, as they are both lost & alone.

So we see Martin Van Derm making that portrait of Mordecai, noting Wayne's heavy scarring from his "...defense of God's creatures", to which Mordecai simply states his memory is hazy after being waylaid en route to Gotham (the first time it's referred to as such). He insists that Van Derm draws the book into the sketch so Bruce can remember it and what it contains. They are interrupted by Malleus who mentions a Bristol Bay (another Gotham name that persists to present day) and a dragon sighting in the area. Mordecai leaves his book with Van Derm & heads off to investigate...

A witness says he saw the 7 headed, 10 horned dragon feasting on men until the bats came out and ran it off. Bruce rocks his detective skills some more when they find a dead body, Malleus makes note of a coming eclipse which sets some gears spinning in Bruce's head. Safe to say that the dragon is the hyperfauna from the beginning of this chapter...

Bruce seems to be getting some memory back, remembering that Annie decked him out in dead man's clothes, she leads him to the caves of the people who were there before, the Miagani, the Bat-people. Bruce recollects that he's been in the caves before, deduces that Annie is responsible for the death of the real Mordecai via her summoning of the "dragon", the dragon that bursts forth out of the water in the cave.  She talks about her gods being "gods of the wheel of time and the never-ending world", "old lords of the land and the sky"....making me wonder if she wasn't connected, either consciously or un-, to the New Gods, Darkseid, etc.

Annie flees only to get nabbed by Malleus & his crew who find the WW & Supes sigils (perhaps burying their existence?), and he also mentions that it is "Gotham Town" at that moment in time to give you an idea of the size. Malleus crew set fire to everything while Bruce battles the "dragon", realizing something is wrong.

Meanwhile at Vanishing Point, The Archivist says "Annie" as he encases the Time Masters crew in a bubble...

In the panel that follows that I couldn't find an image of The Archivist drops his mask to reveal that it's been Bruce all along, telling the group "You'll all just have to trust me" as he takes the time sphere and leaves them behind while Supes attempts to explain how Bruce is now a walking Doomsday weapon.

Malleus has Annie hung but as the noose is placed around her neck she cries that "...I know your name, Malleus" followed by...

So Malleus was another Wayne all along...and Annie is the 2nd person to curse a Wayne as Vandal Savage did the same while being exiled from the Blood Tribe. Bruce enters the water once again while Annie casts her curse "until the end of time", and the text becomes experts from the journal...presumably the one Mordecai left with the Van Derm's, but the writing is likely that of Martin's. Included in these closing moments is a panel of an old man handing over a book while seated in front of the portrait of Mordecai. Much like the way Man was to pass down the Deer Tribe's stories to Boy, Martin is likely doing the same to his offspring.

As for Bruce...

PIRATE TIME!!!

Chapter 3 opens with a flash to the "gotcha!" moment of "FC" just as Bruce get blasted with the Omega Sanction only to wake up on the beaches (the accompanying journal entry by Jack Valor states 1734 but Blackbeard died in 1718 so this writing must be a recollection), to find Blackbeard standing over him, accusing Bruce of being The Black Pirate.

As someone who hadn't read James Robinson's "Starman" before this, I had no frame of reference but now I can point out that the original Black Pirate was Jon Valor and he was hung for the supposed murder of his own son Justin, and cast a curse on the town that would become Opal City to haunt it until his innocence is proven. That's a story in Robinson's excellent "Starman" series if you're curious...

Blackbeard wants the Black Pirate's treasure hoard hidden in Gotham COUNTY catacombs and wants Bruce to show him the way, the way only a ghost knows according to 'Beard. Almost forgot to mention that Bruce has a little flash to his rebirth as Mordecai with Annie...

A cowl is found in the drink, assumed to be Bruce's Black Pirate disguise (which would be an appropriate cape & cowl analog), forcing 'Beard to threatening death on a Jack Loggins who was crew on the ship as well. Loggins offers to lead 'Beard to the treasure, obviously this kid is more than he lets on, further evidenced as he details the history of Bristol Bay where they currently travel. It seems the last of the Deer Tribe joined the Bat-People in the caves, becoming the Ghost-People. Bruce, for his part, busts out some detective skills on Jack's appearance to put his social status in place.

As the group enters the cave, you can see the paintings of the WW, Bats, Supes, and New Gods sigils on the wall, the ones that prehistoric Bruce slapped on there as a marker of his presence back in #1. Something prompts Bruce to whistle, something in the depths of memory perhaps, and some bat-fletched arrows fly out of the walls, and in the walls around them..

The Bat-People are indeed living like bats. Loggins references Jon Valor's death a hundred years prior, Bruce drops some more science on how the methane from the bat-droppings killed people so everyone need douse their torches. A random boot (Bruce's?) sets off a spark though and the pirate's all catch fire right near the underground waterfall (the same water from Bruce's Puritan encounter with Hyperfauna?).

In present day, Dick & Damian search Command-D where Bruce was held captive by Darkseid while Red Robin debriefs the Justice League in a moment that I, as a huge Tim Drake fan, find to be awesome. He lays out how they followed the traces Bruce left in time (I like how he grudgingly calls Damian "Robin") via Bat-symbols in various forms that all tracked back to the cape/cowl/antlers relic Dick found during their search of the manor as covered back in Part 6 of this blog. And for some context as to when this takes place relative to Grant's story in "Batman & Robin", Damian makes a comment about getting back to The Joker, putting this moment somewhere before Dick's hotel room confrontation with "Oberon Sexton" I imagine.

Back to Pirateville as Jack Loggins confesses his true identity as The Black Pirate, Jack Valor, to Bruce while conversely Bruce tells him how he remembers it being 1640 only yesterday, that he thinks he's racing through time for some reason. 'Beard lights his...beard...on fire, presumably to scare off ghosts in the cave while Valor passes the cowl to Bruce. The pirates, thinking there's some conspiring going on, approach Bruce who "falls" off a cliff into the water only to return looking like a badass:

The fight with 'Beard breaks out, Bruce is repeatedly referred to as a ghost by him during it, and the outcome is never in doubt as Bruce defeats 'Beard soundly. Valor references the Miagani language being that of the whistle, hence Bruce's whistle that triggered the trap earlier, and then they force the pirate crew to go jump in a lake...seriously.

Valor introduces Bruce to the last of the Miagani tribe living in the caves, stating they claim direct descent from The First Boy (Boy from Chapter 1) and it seems they have learned to communicate via whistle to herd the bats.

So it seems that, inadvertently, Bruce is the inspiration for the Man-Bat stalactite statue that Dick finds in his searches of the Wayne Manor catacombs in present-day, Bruce IS Barbatos, but that's not the only secret waiting in the caves. There's still something that, if removed, will bring the "all-over" upon us. The "all-over" was mentioned in chapter 1 by the Deer People and I took it to mean a crisis event, and as for what that sacred item is:

The very same thing Tim Drake was talking about a few pages earlier...the cape, cowl, boots, and utility belt with an eclipsing sun painted over them. As for Bruce, he seems to again be experiencing some residual memories as he realizes he wore this clothing, mutters to himself about Miagani, Annie, and Man of Bats.

He & Valor leave the cave, Bruce telling him everything he can remember in the process, entrusting Valor with some important task, almost making him Robin-like in his own rite, before Bruce again disappears into the water under an eclipsing sun. Elsewhere 'Beard makes the joke about Gotham being "born under a black sun"...

Valor tells of his ensuing years pirating and how it was the meeting of a girl that finally settled him down and allowed him to complete his journey on behalf of "the ghost" as he refers to Bruce. He meets the Van Derm brother & sister in Gotham Town who instruct him to place his papers within the Bat-Casket we know from the last few ishs of "B&R" which he say also contained an old book and "something more of which (he) cannot speak". And as his story closes, he speaks of hearing bells tolling, "the bells of the All-Over"...

It's another time jump, this time to two men referencing Judge Solomon Wayne & his deceased brother Joshua as they stare upon his mansion, the one purchased from the Van Derm's, where they are set to meet someone. The panel as they walk in features a familiar card hand:

The 8's & Aces, the Dead Man's Hand, the hand The Joker was dealing in "RIP", except his was red and black, not straight black. And the man dealing the hand...

None other than DC's Wild West bounty hunter, dealing himself a Joker card of course, Jonah Hex. Looks like it's time for Bruce Wayne to visit the old west...

So I was looking to put this all in one post but as I reached this point I realized it was going to be a really long read that way thus I am breaking it up into two parts. The second half will cover the remained of the "Return" mini as well as Morrison's final issue of "Batman & Robin". 

Batman: The Grant Morrison Odyssey - Phase Four

Well this is going to be an interesting one for me to take one because, unlike the previous blogs where I took everything on in the order it was published, I am going to make an attempt to take this one on in the chronological order it took place....which is a total trip considering it's spread out over three different collections, "RIP", "Final Crisis", and "Time and the Batman".  I said in the previous blog that "RIP" was kind of the close of the first arc of Morrison's larger story, and these stories are the reason I said kind of.  I felt differently after I finished up though, but I'll address that when we're all said and done with this installment.  So first let me get the obligatory links out of the way, and then we shall get this bad boy started!

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

Just like Bruce, the reader dives right into this story at the point where Bruce's part in "RIP" ended.  A bit of a trip considering that this is issue #701 and that particular story ended with #681.  In-between we had the "Last Rites" story (more on those in a bit) as well as the adventures of Dick Grayson & Damian as Batman & Robin for over a year.  See what I mean about how reading this in chronological-story order can be difficult?

So where we last left Bruce he was apparently consumed in the fiery crash of a helicopter manned by Devil-Bats & Dr. Hurt (who may or may not be Bruce's dad Thomas).  Unseen in this particular crop of that image above is the "Days to Omega: 30" countdown which (given that this was published post-Final Crisis) tells the reader how far in advance of that fateful story these moments are taking place. It's a useful tool considering how much of the question floated around at the time of when RIP & FC took place relative to one another.

The narrative is once again written in the form of a casebook log, intriguing given that we know how this all ends up, leaving a question of just when/how this was written, as well as giving us insight into the mental state of Bruce following the chaos of RIP.  One of the paragraphs also gives us a time stamp, informing us of the duration of the story as Bruce laments "I tried not to think about the last five days--wandering the streets of Gotham, deranged, poisoned, deceived."

The title page also provides some focus with a story dubbed "The Hole In Things" which is just what Dr. Hurt referred to himself as, and the image of the bat also laid over with the gun & pearl necklace that are synonomous with the murder of Bruce's parents.

Bruce emerges from the water sans cape & cowl, but of course he has a spare in his utility belt, he's the goddamn Batman after all!  He's met....in a nice touch...by the hooker from "Batman & Son" that he gave a WayneTech business card to, and she informs him that she has taking a job as a receptionist, that something as simple as Bats remembering her name helped changed her life.

Bruce arrives home, Alfred...black eye and all...waits for him, and we get some more insight into just what happened in "RIP".  Bruce's bout of insanity was due to him miscalculating the dose of Joker Anti-Venom & he confirms that both he & Alfred suspected Jezebel Jet's involvement in the whole scenario.  Still, no rest for the wicked as Bruce takes a sub to the depths of the harbor in search of Hurt or Devil-Bats, and speculates on Hurt's words, "I AM THE HOLE IN THINGS...THE PIECE THAT CAN NEVER FIT."

It was a nagging statement, one that put some spectre of a supernatural nature over Dr. Hurt and his identity.  It was something Bruce couldn't shake, something that haunted his dreams as he recovered from the drugs he'd been dosed with by The Black Glove.  Bruce wanders the halls of his own home as if a stranger, referencing how Hurt found some hidden room apparently behind the picture of Thomas & Martha, a room he promised his parents to never enter, and felt obligated to apologize for as he broke that vow.

Inside the room, scrawled across the walls in...blood maybe...was the name "Thomas" and one word writtten over the top: "Barbatos".  The pages of the casebook here allude to a "sickness at the root of the family tree" or "a worm at the foundations"....and as a long-time Batman reader may remember, the name "Barbatos" initially popped up in Peter Milligan's "Dark Knight, Dark City" story from 1990, a story where a late 18th century cult in Gotham tries to bring the demon Barbathos to life.  It was recently reprinted and looks like this:

Go buy it...great story, especially if you're a Riddler fan. Anyway, it's after the revelation of this hidden room that things get really interesting/confusing/complicated as the events of "RIP: The Missing Chapter" dovetail into the events of "Final Crisis" with Alfred's statement to Bruce that "...there's something I know you'll want to see." With 27 days until Omega, the skies have turned red (DC's surefire sign of a crisis-level event) and Superman contacts Bruce about someone killing a god (in this case Orion of the New Gods).  It's an interesting look into Bruce's thoughts via the casebook notes as he states "Super-people. I've worked so hard to gain their respect, they sometimes forget I'm flesh and blood."

As he prepares to leave, Bruce informs Alfred of Hurt's last words to him....that the "next time you wear (the cape & cowl) will be your last"....as the casebook pages framing the panels question the identity (devil or dad) of Hurt.  Alfred hands him the cowl, discussing the rumors & allegations about the Wayne Family circulated into the press by The Black Glove, promising to sort it all out when Bruce returns...which we all know when this was printed never came to pass.  En route to the scene of the crime, Bruce reflects on the whole in things being everywhere he looks, a "trap I was so sure I'd escaped was locking into place all around me".

With that last panel of #701, and the first page of #702, we crash headfirst into "Final Crisis" and pages begin to overlap.  Let me state that I am not looking to address every detail of "FC" because, quite frankly, one blog isn't big enough for that.  Rather I will look at the events & elements in "FC" and how they pertain to Batman's larger story. It's too much to address the whole ice cube tray/miracle machine stuff on top of Bat-stuff.

So the first page of #702 shares space with pages of FC #1:






























Then pages #15 & 16 (ish) of FC #2 happen as Bats examines the corpse of Orion alongside Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash (Wally West), and Alpha Lantern Krakken. The Alpha insists the "backwater" technology can't possibly determine the cause of Orion's death while Batman insists that it was via gunshot wound. Watching Bats stand up to the GLC's internal affairs division is quite amusing btw...

John Stewart finds the bullet in FC #2, gets attacked, then in the 2nd & 3rd pages of #702 we see Bats investigating the bullet while the casebook blurb reads "...I'm relying on you to hear this".  Based on the page included on the left, it is safe to assume that the "you" in question is Superman.  The only question is what is he supposed to hear?

The next page of #702 showcases Bats essentially solving the question of how Orion died. He details it to Wally-Flash, how a bullet fired through backwards through time took the life of a New God and was embedded in concrete 50 years before its own creation. "Wow"

The next several pages of #702 overlap with FC #2 including these two pages, the left from Batman and the right from FC, interesting to me because it actually feels like each page contains 1/2 of a conversation between Bats & Supes.

The importance of this bullet, the way Bruce ties it into his own parents' murder, to every murder in history, is demonstrative of the way Morrison frequently looks at time...how it all takes place simultaneously, how it's all connected, how it continously births itself, the way this first bullet has birthed others.

He wraps Bruce's entire abduction scene in two different perspectives.  The straightfoward depiction in FC #2 as he realizes that Krakken has been co-opted by Darkseid and that an evil New God is essentially riding piggyback in the Alpha Lantern's body...remember that.  The depiction in #702 is done with similar art but with captions via the casebook, questioning if the attack was when "the box" opened up and how, at the moment when he was sucked into the Boom Tube, was when he "saw the shape of the trap that had been waiting for me since the day I was born".

The next page of #702 mirrors another page in FC #2 as Bruce, now the prisoner of Darksied's minions shouts to "Warn The Justice League! Warn Everyone!" and now the third collection, the "Last Rites" portion of "RIP" enters into the picture.

Now this story technically came out immediately following RIP and as such was an odd venture through an odd world.  Part flashback, part dream, part induced fantasy world, this two part story reads like Morrison finding a way to reconcile every wierd Batman story, and every depiction over the decades, into one.  We see possible outcomes if it had been something besides a bat crashing through the window that fateful night: a mothman or a snakeman for example, or as Alfred speculates, Owlman, Catman, Pigeonman, and others.  This is a jumpy, jumbled overview of the past, tied together by Alfred's frequent moments of second-guessing Bruce's decisions. 

A moment in Professor Milo's lab, memories of Dick joining the team after his parent's death, more speculation on what if Batman & Robin existed in the world of Hamlet, the original Batwoman factored into continuity for the first time since before Crisis, discussing the ever-shifting personality of the Joker, the moment of introduction to Dr. Hurt & the Isolation Experiment...and then we begin to discover that all is not what it seems...

The Lump? Quick Wiki search tells me he was another Jack Kirby creation, a foe of The New God Mister Miracle in the 70's, who Morrison has brought back for the purpose of hiding in Batman's memories as Alfred (hence the second guessing) and allowing Darkseid's minions to essentially stripmine Bat's memories.  It's an cool story convention as it allows Morrison to explore any story in Bat-continuity that he sees fit as it can all be memory.  That's why we see the original Batwoman's life & death, the real first love of Bruce's life Julie Madison, the "death" of Alfred, as well as the various (sometimes contradictory) takes on the bat-villains throughout time.  But there was something about Hurt that shook up the scenario it seems...

Bruce questions the connections between chemicals and crazy people, there's a moment of Adam West/Burt Ward-esque interaction in his memories, Joker returns to crazy, Dick becomes Nightwing, something Alfred says as he discusses a story he wrote about a world without Batman makes Bruce aware that things aren't right.  The path of memory then takes a turn into that world as Thomas Wayne stops Joe Chill from murdering them, Martha dotes on Bruce, he goes off to college, a Joker-esque attack goes down in Gotham, and a cutback to Darkseid's minions tells us just what is going on...

They are farming Batman's memories to fuel an army of Bat-Clones to "fight and die in the name of our Dark Empire"!  What a way to leave off the issue...and jump into the next issue with this...

The night of Damian's conception I suppose; followed by Bruce fighting Ra's, fighting a shark, fighting a werewolf, then getting it on with Talia once more, only to cut back to that "if Batman didn't exist" world that the previous chapter turned into.  Bruce tells Alfred about chemical racketeers killing a circus boy's parents, the joker killer torturing the boy, and Bruce feeling he could have saved him. Elements of truth filter thru The Lump's lies as Selina Kyle plays a role as a women who stole from Dr. Bruce, the well Bruce fell into as a child appears, a dog named Ace, and the odd skeleton in circus clothes...

The discovery of the bones sends The Lump into a frenzy and true memories filter through, taking us on a quick tour of Batman's past...picking up with Bruce meeting Jason Todd, his death, Barbara Gordon's shooting, in the real world the clones are killing themselves, Tim Drake finding out the secret, Bruce figuring out that the dream-Alfred isn't who he seems to be and The Lump responding by playing up horrible memories.  Bane breaking his back, recovery, fighting AzBats, the Earthquake, Hush, Jack Drake's death, culminating in a back-and-forth between Bats & The Lump...

And the revelation that it is the memories from all these traumatic experiences that truly motivates Bruce, and how it is too much for even these clones to handle as they claw their own eyes out.  Bruce realizes the chemicals he kept talking about were his brain's way of telling him he was drugged unconscious, the Lump lays dying in Bruce's mind (potentially taking Bats with him) but it is one final set of memories...the desert experience during 52, Thogal, the discovery of Damian's existence, the events of RIP....those serve as The Lump's fuel as Mokkari further points out how awesome Bruce is by asking the question "What kind of man can turn even his life memories into a weapon?"

The next page ties this story into "Missing Chapters" as this conversation takes place in both books:

I suppose it's more appropriate to say "Missing Chapter" ran into "Last Rites" since the latter was published first. A panel of the following page overlaps with the title of #702 as Bats studies the bullet in the Bat Cave, the Lump goes on a rampage in the Evil Factory which creates another tie to the story in "Missing Chapter". Before that jump I just want to point out how the captions that close out "Last Rites" belong to the true Alfred as he gives a fitting eulogy to Batman.  His comments that "...I can see him now in the grip of implacable forces, innumerable foes. Somewhere without hope..." seem especially poignant considering how we know Bruce ends up after his coming confrontation with Darkseid.

Bringing us back to where we left off in "Missing Chapter" as The Lump is decimating the lap and a semi-coherent Bruce, back to communicating via casebook captions, realizes they have done something to his mind. He express that there are "holes in his awareness and they seem to be getting bigger", and none of this could possibly be written in the moment so the question is still when did Bruce put this all to paper?

 Bruce is finding "the hole in things" everywhere, he finds the God Bullet, loads it into a gun, flashes back to the moment where Gordon asked him why he chose an enemy as old as time back in "Batman & Son", and he enters the chamber of Darkseid, running us back into Final Crisis #7 with a text bridge...

As with the fight against Krakken, the next few pages showcase the same material in different ways. The "FC" perspective is straightforward with dialogue rather than any sort of internal monologue, culminating in the "gotcha" right before the Omega Beams strike Bats down.  The "Missing Chapters" side of things provides us with the casebook excerpts, Bruce's thoughts obviously reflecting on this events from some other point, as he questions how many times this scene had played out, speculates on the "thousand extra layers of meaning" in the myth playing out in front of him.  FYI, Morrison tends to look at comic books as today's form of myth in case you haven't read any of his other work...it's a frequent theme.  Hell it's what the whole of FC seems to be about...

The "gotcha" (which felt odd in "FC") doesn't seem quite so out of place in the "Missing Chapters" take on events as it falls in line with the casebook blurb of that moment.  Batman fires one single shot from the gun using the God Bullet, and it represents the culmination of the very first moments of Morrison's Batman-run and a plot point that was brought up many times over, "Batman doesn't  use guns".  Harley & Joker both pointed it out in reference to the false-Batman who shot Joker, Batman himself points emphatically how he doesn't use guns everytime it's brought up, and here we are...in the closing moments of his life...he makes his once-in-a-lifetime exception and without it Darkseid could not have been beaten.

Those three images sum up the "Death" of Batman moments, but it's not the end of the story thanks to "Missing Chapter".  In the closing pages of this we finally discover (given that this came out over a year after the death pages) just what happened when the Omega Effect struck Batman.

Darkseid references an Ancestor-Box containing a "hyper-adapter" and tells the reader just what Omega Sanction does, creating an unbeatable "life trap" using history...essentially dumping the victim into increasingly terrible realities until they can figure out how to escape them.  The only person shown to have figured it out previously was Mister Miracle in Morrison's "Seven Soldiers"....

Bruce figures out that the trap, the box closing in around him, is time and Darkseid essentially froze him in time and spun centuries around him.  We see Bruce looking at the "Barbatos" wall in Wayne Manor (#701), observing bats flying out of  the well on the Mansion grounds & realizing his parents will die (#673), see the "funeral" from Neil Gaiman's "What Ever Happened To The Caped Crusader?" story that came out post-RIP, and Bruce seems to put things together with talk of "the grave, the well, the cave, the missing portrait"...

There's the image of Willowood Asylum which, after doing some homework, I found out was the place pre-Crisis where Bruce's brother Thomas Wayne Jr was locked up! So is Hurt that Thomas Wayne? Is he Daddy Thomas Wayne? Or something else?  The next lines of text seem to indicate just what he may be as Bruce states that Darkseid's fall created The Hole In Things (which is what Hurt claimed to be).  Does that make Hurt an incarnation of Darkseid or a human body in which he resides like Boss Dark Side or Turpin?  That last panel ties into "Time Masters" somewhere along the line, sending Superman, Rip Hunter, & Green Lantern Jordan on the search for Bruce Wayne through time, and also answers the question of where this last casebook was jotted down.  It was Bat's last act before he lost his memories in the fog of time, a bread crumb left in the past for Superman to find, and it is this final act that brings together "Missing Chapter" & "FC"...

The cave painting is left behind along with the recording of the final casebook entry and Bruce walks out into a world that is obviously prehistoric, given the apperance/death of Anthro that takes place in both #702 & FC #7, and walks straight into the "Return of Bruce Wayne" mini-series.  The thing I really dig is how both tales end on such similar lines..."But the fire burns forever" and "It never ends".

Man this reads completely differently when taken in this chronological order like a lot of the elements from Final Crisis make a lot more sense with the "Missing Chapter" included.  Previously it just seemed like a huge jump from the close of "RIP" and the exploding chopper to Batman doing forensics on the Orion crime scene to getting abducted by Darkseid's minions.  With the gap filled in via this reading, and the exact results of Bats taking the Omega Sanction laid out, the way in which we get to "Return of Bruce" is also more understandable.

Don't get me wrong...there are still a great deal of questions unanswered even with this take on the material, after all it wouldn't be a Morrison book if that wasn't the case.  The primary question is of course how Bruce will return to "life", and of course we still don't have a definitive answer as to the identity of Dr. Hurt, if he's even still alive, nor idea of the overall significance of Barbatos in this larger tale. 

As for non-Bruce questions: what fate will befall Gotham in the absence of a Batman? Who will step up to the mantle? Well we all know Dick Grayson & Damian assume the mantles of Batman & Robin and that is where we will begin our next chapter of this lengthy tour of Morrison's Bat-Verse!

Batman: The Grant Morrison Odyssey - Chapter Three

This is it...or at least the start of it...what is it? The culmination of the 1st chapter of Grant Morrison's multi-year Batman saga.  Why do I say the start of it?  Because as it panned out over time, "Batman: RIP" served as a lead-in to Bruce's role in "Final Crisis"  BUT there was also the "RIP: The Missing Chapters" that came out after "FC" BUT bridged the gap between the end of "RIP", dovetailed directly into the beginning of "FC", then back into a couple issues of "Batman" that detailed some of what happened while Bruce was captured, then back into "FC" then straight into the beginning of "Return of Bruce Wayne".  And this is all broken up between the "RIP", "Time and The Batman", and "Final Crisis" hardcovers.

Yes it is just a tad bit exhausting if you're trying to read it all in some semblance of a chronological order, which is what I am attempting to do, and was easy for my "Batman & Son" HC blog, but made more difficult with "The Black Glove" HC because of how the "Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul" HC took place in the middle of the two stories contained in that.  Hence why I divided it up into Part 2 and Part 2.1.

So how have I decided to handle this? Well I think I'm just going to address the actual "Batman: RIP" story itself here and not the full contents of the HC, since the latter half takes place DURING "FC", and save that, "FC", and "Time and The Batman" for the NEXT edition of this rather lengthy trip through Morrison's Bat-World!

After that equally lengthy preamble, let's get this mother started!!!

"RIP" essentially started in a one-off book, DC Universe #0, that essentially served as a jumping off point for that, "Final Crisis", and some other major events in the DCU.  As it pertains to Batman & Morrison's larger epic, as you can see from the picture above, it played heavily off the black & red themes that were present in "The Clown At Midnight" prose issue, as well as using the "Red and Black, Life and Death, The Joke and The Punchline" material from that issue as well.  This whole scene is actually very reminiscent of "The Killing Joke" meeting between Bats & Joker, something that didn't really occur to me on my first reading of that issue but hit me later on.

The two other main things from this ish that play into the larger story are the Dead Man's Hand Joker is dealing. Some quick wiki-research taught me that this was allegedly the hand Wild Bill Hickok was dealt before he was gunned down, only it was all black suites.  Joker here is playing off the whole red/black motif with his cards, his way of telling Batman he's going to die I suppose. And the other main point is a line from Bats to The Joker that I think plays heavily into Joker's actions later on in "RIP".  Bats says to him "Someone's hunting me. I can feel it. Someone who thinks they can do YOUR job better than you".  Trying to bait the Joker perhaps? Play on his sense of ownership towards Batman maybe? 

That right there is the first scene the readers sees when beginning "RIP" proper and suffice it to say, besides continuing the red/black theme, it's quite impossible to discern the figures in the Batman & Robin gear. Batman is obviously addressing some question the reader isn't privy to, and won't be for some time as the sequence that starts on the following page introduces us to a hunchback looking man whose first lines of dialogue pertain to him killing a doorman, following by a disembodied voice (save for a hand and eyes) essentially telling the hunchback, addressed as M'sieur Le Bossu, it's cool because it will all be very thoroughly covered up, "We are operators at the highest level", as the eyes say.  The next page:

We get to meet Dr. Hurt, the modern day version, for the very first time, and feast our eyes upon the "Club of Villains" speculated upon in the "Club of Heroes" arc.  Although none are named, save Dr. Hurt, and none have been seen before save El Sombrero, you know that these are the very same villains (Charlie Caligula, Scorpiana, etc) referred to by The Musketeer, The Knight, The Legionary, and the other heroes in that tale. You also know you're in for something bad when Hurt welcomes La Bossu to the "danse macabre" or dance of death. Another quick wiki-check and I get a whole new appreciation for that term in reference to this story:

Artistic genre of late-medieval allegory on the universality of death: no matter one's station in life, the Dance of Death unites all. The Danse Macabre consists of the dead or personified Death summoning representatives from all walks of life to dance along to the grave, typically with a pope, emperor, king, child, and labourer.

For reasons that become all too clear in later chapters of "RIP",  this is the perfect description for what The Black Glove is all about.

We take a slight detour into the world of a weird, obviously drugged out guy in a green vulture mask attempting to kidnap a family, and the humor in this scene to me is that the parents are far more freaked out than the kid, especially when he gets a visual on something that causes him to say, "Dude. You are so dead." What is he seeing you may ask? Well it is the highly anticipated, long awaited debut of the brand new Batmobile first eluded to in Morrison's very first issue!!!!

Bad ass huh? Curious how Bruce says it's not how he envisioned it though, also funny that this "test drive" with Robin is his idea of recovery time after dying for 4 minutes. The Batmobile prevents Green Vulture guy from running over an innocuous homeless man who simply says "You have a very kind face".  The dynamic duo heads home to Wayne Manor, lamenting(?) the lack of criminals in Gotham, while Bruce de-cowls as he strolls through the halls of the manor and into the arms of...

Pretty heavy stuff right there, Bruce making out with Jet in half-bat regalia, while the story cuts back to Robin questioning Alfred on the previous women in Bruce's life. It's actually kind of nice to hear references to Silver St. Cloud and Sasha Bordeaux, it's a reminder to me how much the Bat-World as a whole (not just Grant) has generally acknowledged its continuity as one large story.  A few years ago I did a read-thru of every issue of "Batman" & "Detective Comics" from just after the Original Crisis through...well I think it was through "Face the Face"...and I was amazed at how much it all read like one ongoing story that frequently flowed, logically, from one part to the next even with different writers. There are obvious exceptions (like what happened during the 1 Year "post-Infinite Crisis" gap to Harvey Dent & Jim Gordon), but overall it's an impressive feat.

Anywho, Robin also readdresses the whole Thogal issue that keeps popping up lately and expresses his fears to Alfred about the effects that that, the Isolation Chamber experiment, and this 4 Minutes Of Death experience may have had on Bruce's mind. Alfred, ever the cheerleader, but also in this instance I think the voice of Morrison, rallies off the credentials of Batman and why he is so damn good at what he does. Still,  he also sees through Tim's fears and realizes there is something more to this all: Damian.

Tim asks if there was a paternity test, Alfred tells him that Bruce wants to deliver the results himself, leaving Tim to ponder the reality that "The son of Satan is my brother?", doubly amusing given the context of what came before, Issue 666 specifically, where Damian-Bats alluded to his own deal with the devil for the soul of Gotham.

Bruce visits his parents grave with Jezebel, he tells her that he's connecting the dots on something big, and she produces a mystery of her own, a black enveloped letter that reads "The Black Glove extends an invitation to Miss Jezebel Jet and Mister Bruce Wayne. The theme this season: Danse Macabre."

Cut to Arkham Asylum and a black, red, and white scene of utter death as blood stains the walls, dead bodies litter the floor, a news reporter on TV rips his own mouth into a joker-smile, and then we see this...

The last few pages were nothing more than The Joker's bloody interpretation of a Rorschach test as administered by some doctor, but not just any doctor, because as you can see in the last panel when the lights cut out, he informs Joker that he is indeed Le Bossu (in disguise?) extending The Black Glove invitation to The Joker. Then, as the first chapter comes to a close, we get our first clear look (at least in standard art) at the newest incarnation of The Joker, the "Clown at Midnight" or "Thin White Duke of Death" as he has been labeled:

Chapter two starts off with a violent bang down in the sewers of Gotham (Grant likes putting Bats there doesn't he?) as he, somewhat out of control (at least to the point where he doesn't realize he's been stabbed), is taking down a presumed felon while hollering "Who is the Black Glove?" in front of Gordon and the GCPD. Gordon points out that the only Black Glove they can find is references to that movie brought up in the "Club of Heroes" arc.

Back at the cave Bruce, dripping blood all over the place, is trying to connect the dots just as much as the reader is. Is there a connection between the movie & organization of the same name? Are John Mayhew, Dr. Hurt, Mangrove Pierce tied together in anyway? We know the movie is about two innocent lovers corrupted by a group of super-rich gamblers...could that be Jezebel & Bruce? One of the Black Casebooks is missing, Bruce refuses to let Alfred tend to his bleeding shoulder, and all Alfie is trying to do is inform Bruce as to Tim's state of mind regarding Damian.

Over to the villains of the piece as the plot the downfall of Batman, starting with a close-up on the red/black of a roulette wheel, connecting The Black Glove to the idea of gambling. El Sombrero, the death trap master, is perusing blueprints to an unknown building while Dr. Hurt is pontificating on the aims of the Glove...and what is most interesting about that is his claims that "No one knows him better than I do.", and how he refers to Batman as "our boy". It could just be a statement of ownership, giving the Black Glove power over Bats, or it could be something more given the familial claims made later by Hurt.  Also, in this speech, Hurt confirms that the little knife wound Brucie got was loaded with "Librium" that will somehow make him more susceptible to the trigger phrase he implanted back in the Isolation Experiment (a possibility Batman showed concern for after his fight with Devil-Bats). FYI, Librium is a brand name for an anti-anxiety drug frequently used to treat alcoholism but when overdosed can lead to somnolence (difficulty staying awake), mental confusion, hypotension, hypoventilation, impaired motor functions, impaired reflexes, impaired coordination, impaired balance, dizziness, muscle weakness, and even coma.  Not good for Batman...

So back in the cave where Bruce is bringing Jet for the very first time and he begins to explain to her that The Black Glove invitation is merely a trap, starts to tell her (in a somewhat paranoid fashion) about the perceived connections to Mayhem, Dr. Hurt, and how they are "closing in on us". Jet doubts him, she mentions how some people perceive him to be mad....

...and on the side we cut to Jim Gordon busting in on the Mayor's office as news begins to seep out of a sordid Wayne Family history involving Bruce's parents, Alfred, drugs, booze, adultery, Mayhew, Pierce, Marsha Lamarr, and claims that Thomas Wayne faked his death after having Martha murdered.  I never thought of it before, and I didn't really look for it in the earlier HC's, but as I read this I start to wonder about how "above the board" the Mayor of Gotham really is, after all, Gordon stated way back in the beginning of this that the corruption in Gotham goes all the way to the top. I wonder if there's a track record of this for the Mayor?

 Back to the cave where Bruce and Jet continue their talk while someone parachutes out of a helicopter. This conversation can be taken in several ways, one definitively given how the story unfolds, but in the moment it feels like Bruce's girlfriend expressing her fears about him, but simultaneously undermining all of his work, exposing his fears, and truly playing off that "enhanced susceptibility" perhaps.  The shots of the Robin outfits (including a Stephanie Brown memorial which I thought never existed), the various trophies in the cave, Jet mentioning her father over a shot of Thomas Wayne's Bat-Costume in a glass case, it all feels like toys and she caps it all off, by asking, "What if you're not well?"

In that panel above, Bruce responds exactly how I would suspect, by questioning everything, including Jet. Pointing out how The Black Glove would use everything, including Jet & her doubt, against him. He tells her about the meeting with the Joker, the Dead Man's Hand, the "H.A.H.A" the Ace & 8's symbolized, and she spins it into the one possibility that many a fan-boy theorized as this all unfolded, that Bruce Wayne himself is The Black Glove. She turns the rationale into a psychological one, the young boy inside Bruce raging at his life being sacrificed for Batman's quest, and this is probably the most in-depth any author has ever deconstructed Batman/Bruce Wayne!

He attempts to show her the Bat-computer, with screens full of the "Zur en Arrh" tags that have been floating in the background since the beginning of "Batman & Son", but all Bruce sees is static while Jet can see it perfectly.  Then the moment happens, the second she speaks the words on the screen, it all goes to hell...

And if that face on the screen looks familiar, it's because it popped up during the Devil-Bats arc right before "RIP", go ahead and go back at my write-up, I'll wait.....

......

.....

..

Okay good, now that that's out of the way, the Cave is broken into, exposing that The Black Glove obviously knows that Bruce & Batman are one and the same, and we are left with Jet being surrounded by thugs while Alfred, returning from actually watching "The Black Glove" movie ("The bleakest filmgoing experience I've ever had the misfortune to endure..." he says), is assaulted in the mansion as it burns...

Man that cover is trippy....

So we start the next entry into this saga with a really weird collection of images, the Bat-Radia, a multi-colored monster distorting Bats & Robin, one panel depicting the Black Casebook (specifically the "Robin Dies At Dawn" entry) to give us some reference point for these odd images, and then another panel of Batman & the old Batwoman running from alien-like creatures. The next page reveals that it is indeed Tim Drake perusing the Casebook, presumably the volume Bruce said was missing last issue, and it is truly the text within the book that is intriguing.

This is Bruce's way of rationalizing the insane things he witnessed throughout his career, and on a parallel track, Morrison's way of reconciling the crazy stories from the past into continuity. All of this weirdness, these strange experiences, the things Bruce forced himself to experience, they all appear to come from one motivation and it's revealed in this quote, "I don't want to know what goes on in the Joker's head. I have to know". Bats is, in his own fashion, as obsessed with Joker as the clown is with him...

Tim is suddenly set upon by two members of the Club of Villains, unnamed to this point, but they are Pierre Lunaire & Swagman....enemies of The Musketeer & Dark Ranger respectively, and one thing I enjoy about Morrison's take on Tim Drake is how strong he is. In the page right before the two above, Tim's interest is suddenly caught by something off-panel leading to the motorcycle bursting forth, and although it's a bit hard to discern in the panel, Drake actually ramps his bike AT A TREE in order to force Lunaire to release his hold with the garrote!

Back to Gotham City, and Bruce is awoken in an alleyway by a very familiar looking homeless guy who is muttering "...maybe that's how it is on the planet of the little bat fairies.." as he walks into the story. Honor Jackson, as he identifies himself, begins to kick the unconscious body of Bruce until he takes a good look at his face (the one he called kind previously), and recognizes the de-cowled Batman, stating he "never forgets a good turn".  Bruce stumbles to his feet with Honor's help, but flashbacks to what happened between issues start to kick in...

Aside from the red/black motif of memory, the big question this evokes is why Dr. Hurt thinks Bruce should remember him? Is it just because of the Isolation Experiments or is it something more, that familial connection that seems to linger in the air, and is expressly stated later on? Whatever the case, Hurt injects our hero with Crystal Meth & Heroin before dumping him in the streets (and apparently undressing him from costume into street clothes as well).

Nightwing is beset by other Club of Villain members, in his case the minions of Charlie Caligula (The Legionary's arch-foe) & Scorpiana, while Robin takes a food break (wtf???) in the middle of his escape from Kraken to inform Grayson of what's going on and demanding he meet him at Checkpoint 5.  Maybe Tim thought he had escaped pursuit and was hungry...

Back to Bruce as he & Honor make their way through Gotham, stopping for Honor to buy drugs apparently, fending off an assault, while Bruce tries to recover some sense of identity.  He actually uses some detective skills to try and solve his own personal riddle, showcasing that even with no sense of identity these traits are so innate to his being that he can't help being the world's greatest detective. Honor gives him a "treasure", something he refers to as his best friend, but now it's broken but if Bruce fixes it, it will be his best friend too.  Honor tells Bruce he has to make a choice with a clear head... "You can fall...or you can rise".  Sitting on the riverside, with a tear in his eye, Honor tells Bruce he's never done anything to be proud of, but if he knew he could save one life, that would mean something...then he vanishes.

It gets odder as Bruce meets the man Honor told him to, a Lone-Eye Lincoln, only to find out that Honor died yesterday, "...blew a hundred bucks on smack and went out like a king", that $100 obviously being the money Bruce gave him after the near-accident with the Batmobile.  And where does this little meeting take place...

Yup, Park Row/Crime Alley, right where The Wayne's were killed...

Robin hits Checkpoint 5, no Nightwing to be found though because he's been drugged following his off-panel confrontation with Scorpiana, tossed into Arkham Asylum, labeled as Pierrot Lunaire, and is now under the watchful eye of the in-disguise La Bossu.

But what about the other man who was left hanging at the close of the previous issue? What about Alfred? Well we finally get an answer to that question as Dr. Hurt, now adorned in Thomas Wayne's Bat-Costume, toasts "crime and The Black Glove" alongside the rest of the Club of Villains. They have co-opted the Bat Cave as their base, they aim to do the same to Gotham, and now Hurt has taken the identity of Bruce's father (or has he simply reclaimed his own ID?).  Alfred sits, beaten & bound to a chair, forced to listen to all this, as Hurt states that perhaps "When Batman has finally seen the error of his ways, we may allow him to return, broken...perhaps as my butler."

Muttering "Zur en Arrh" to himself, Bruce sews something...his voice changes, he reveals that Honor gave him the Bat-Radia we saw on the first page/first panel of this chapter (but it's a broken radio), and he stand revealed, in another of Grant's throwbacks to old Bat-continuity, as The Batman Of Zur-En-Arrh with Bat-Mite at his side...

The left one is the Tony Daniel Zur-En-Arrh, the middle is the Original from Batman #113, and the right is from the "Brave & The Bold" cartoon which I included just because I thought it was so cool that take made it onto television...

Chapter Four kicks off with utter insanity as Zur-en-Arrh Bats goes nuts with a baseball bat in  hand and Bat-Mite over his shoulder as he prowls Gotham looking for answers. He discovers a bit about Le Bossu, talks to stone gargoyles after beating up thugs masked as ones,  and the gargoyles ramble on about slow-vision, the grids of Gotham, and how "people make the city and the city makes the people". The grids, once Bats is able to see them, show up as a checkerboard, continuing a theme of Morrison's run thus far, or as Bats describes it, "A checkerboard. A blueprint, A machine designed to make Batman". Meanwhile Bat-Might ("Might" is how Bats says it which is interesting) warns Bats of a tracking device that, as it turns out, is lodged in his teeth...and this being Batman, he just rips it out with a knife.

After a brief fight, Bruce hides out inside the ruins of The Majestic theater where Might drops some knowledge on us simple folk, allowing Morrison to bring the original Zur en Arrh story into logical continuity, explaining it as a hallucination induced by a Professor Milo's Gas Weapon. Milo, as it turns out, comes from a story way back in Detective Comics #247 & also appeared in Morrison's "Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth" graphic novel...

Essentially these two pages are the info-dump explaining just wtf is going on with Batman right now, and what this whole Zur-en-Arrh deal is.  Doctor Hurt, discovering the info via the Isolation Experiment, used the words as a trigger phrase to essentially shut off Batman. But being Batman, the most prepared human being in existence, he used that same phrase as a trigger for a back-up identity in the case of a serious psychological attack such as this: the Batman of Zur-en-Arrh.

Robin, still on the run from Swagman, puts in a phone call to Knight  & Squire, explaining the situation to them on voice mail, prompting them to  "...put in a call to the lads" as The Knight phrases it, the lads being the remaining members of The Club of Heroes.

Zur-Bats catches up to King Kraken & Charlie Caligula, prompting Charlie to shout "BATMAN IS DEAD", a moment that flashes me back to the very first page of "RIP" and the "Batman & Robin will never die" proclamation.

Gordon, with red shirted Ensign in tow, hit Wayne Manor, presumably to discuss the accusations against Bruce's family that have surfaced, and I must say that in one panel, Morrison does just enough to give the other cop, Bill, some character so it actually has a minute amount of resonance when his skull gets pierced with arrows on the next page after he finds El Sombrero's calling card.  Meanwhile, in the Batcave, Dr. Hurt...parading around in his own Bat-Costume...lets us all know that Arkham Asylum will be the site of the big showdown, and, while continuing to claim he is Thomas Wayne, accuses Alfred of being Bruce's father.

I really dig this scene because one panel both Morrison's dialogue & Daniel's art show the fierce loyalty Alfred has for the Wayne Family.  The look on his face of rage and disgust equals the content of his words even while Hurt smiles away, drunk on the desire to "...ruin (Bruce) in every way imaginable. Body and soul".  In a nod to history, Hurt also reveals that Robin has been promised to The Joker...and that the breaking of the Bat is scheduled for midnight.  Midnight seems to be a theme of its own in Morrison's Bat-run too. "The Clown At Midnight" story where Joker was fixated on breaking out of Arkham at exactly that time, the first chapter of RIP being titled "Midnight in the House of Hurt", and now breaking Bats at midnight.  There could be others, I would have to go back and investigate.....
...
...
...nope that seems to be it!

Zur-Bats captures Charlie, tortures him it seems, pointing out all his flaws, his desire to be The Joker, and threatening him with the Bat-Radia, still seemingly a broken old transistor radio. But what is interesting about this sequence, the reason I choose to include the page above, is Zur-Bats description of himself in the middle panel, "I am what you get when you take Bruce out of the equation" as Charlie screams "What's that thing behind you!", making me think that he somehow can see Might (even though Might is not drawn here).

The noose tightens as Arkham is prepared, Doctor Dax is definitively revealed as Le Bossu & his minions assault Jeremiah Arkham, the red/black flowers from the Joker prose issue are introduced, the floors are painted red/black, and The Joker stands revealed as being at the center of The Black Glove's plan...their maitre, or master/host. The shit is about to hit the fan...

"The Thin White Duke of Death", a reference to David Bowie & The Joker, is the title of this penultimate chapter of "RIP" and in the first few pages we get a direct correlation between the story of The Black Glove movie & the villains of the piece. It is indeed a group of the richest people gambling on human lives, and in this case, the triumph of over good over evil in the form of Batman. The table is set to look like the roulette wheel at its center, all red & black, surrounded by monitors, and even the wine is red in juxtaposition to the black clothes of those in attendance.

Le Bossu professes his evil inside to The Joker who simply grins, his bullet scar/third eye making it all the more eerie, and as Bossu dons his hunchback mask, Joker's yawn tells the exact tale of how he feels about this whole charade.  Bossu has to put on a mask and change his appearance to be a monster, The Joker just is...

Might reminds Zur-Bats that he can't run at this speed all night, while The Joker greets El Sombrero in his own fashion. A fight breaks out on Arkham grounds between Zur-Bats & the various henchmen, disks labeled red & black fly at the reader, then finally...the doors of Arkham are reached. One problem, Might can't continue the journey, "I'm the last fading echo of the voice of reason, Batman. And reason won't fit through this door."

For some reason that one panel of observation really amuses me...but I guess that is how these sundry rich folk see Batman, while Dr. Hurt continues to espouse big words and hyperbole about if "...the ultimate noble spirit can survive the ultimate ignoble betrayal?", then Sombrero, noose around his neck, crashes the party from above courtesy of The Joker.  Hurt is unfazed by his arrival while Cardinal Maggi (the only BG member named thus far) and crew look terrified.

Back to Wayne Manor as Gordon tromps through the gallery of pictures, with focus on the portraits of Silas & Mordecai Wayne (the latter looking a lot like Bruce BTW), and the Commish makes the acquaintance of Talia Al Ghul & Damian, who she doesn't hesitate to introduce as Batman's son.  Damian's "Mother I want a Batmobile" line made me chuckle...

Sidebar, this whole sequence is yet another moment in Bat-history that makes me question if Jim Gordon is willfully ignorant or just chooses to turn a blind eye towards the Bruce/Bats connection. He is in Bruce Wayne's mansion, which has been booby-trapped all to hell, and just happens to run right into Batman's son & his occasional love interest, and doesn't bat an eye? Really? I tend to think of Gordon as a man who knows the truth in his heart but prefers to ignore the uncomfortable reality of it...

Back to Arkham where The Joker has essentially taken over the situation; his horrid smile on all the monitors as Zur-Bats searches for both he & Jezebel.  Interesting thing to me is how she liberally screams "Bruce" the entire time, in full earshot of The Joker, and on monitors that The Black Glove members are watching, with little care to protecting his identity. It's no surprise The Joker shows little interest as he as often stated that Batman is real, whoever is under the mask is fake, but this may be the first time Joker has so blatantly borne witness to the identity of the man under the cowl.

The Joker taunts Batman the whole way with lines like "the real joke is your stubborn, bone deep conviction that somehow, somewhere, all of this makes sense!", and as Zur-Bats finally comes face-to-face with his tormentor, The Joker utters four words that seem random at the time,  but given the pay-off in a few pages, make sense... "love really is blind".

I like how Joker slits his tongue in twain, it may seem extreme to some, but given the expression "speaking with a forked tongue", it makes sense that he would commit this crazy act while claiming to know who Dr. Hurt is & the reason he hates Batman.  Also, I dig how the whole "Batman shot The Joker" moment from the beginning of this comes back, primarily Zur-Bats insistence that "Batman doesn't use a gun"...

Joker continues to verbally berate Zur-Bats..."You think it all breaks down into symbolism and structures and hints and clues. No, Batman, that's just wikipedia." or "...there was some rabbit hole you could follow me down to understanding?", Le Bossu stumble through the halls of Arkham with his face now disfigured courtesy of The Joker, and it all comes to a head as the red/black petals begin to fall on a confined Jezebel.  Suffice to say Bruce should have taken heed to her first name also meaning a shameless or immoral woman...

Jet's been a part of this all along, playing Bruce from jump street apparently, which is readily obvious in the Batcave dialogue between them.  She was indeed undermining Bruce's confidence in his mission, and the joke that is always the same & is always on Bruce...well I suppose that is how untrustworthy the woman in his life always prove to be.

The last chapter opens with Bruce straight jacketed and locked in a coffin with the the dialogue looking handwritten, as if from the pages of a casebook.  There's also a loop back to The Book of Changes and the specific quote Morrison  had I-Ching drop in the "Resurrection" arc.

Flashback, in red/black/white, to the aftermath of the Thogal experience in Nanda Parbat and Bruce's realization that something was wrong in his mind..."a scar on his consciousness" as he calls it, where something was hidden, forgotten about, the "Zur en Arrh" trigger, and this is the moment where Bruce begins to create his emergency personality, his back-up OS essentially.

The rest of the Club joins the party, saving Robin from the combined assault of Swagman & Pierre Lunaire, Bruce continues his flashback to post-Thogal, and we discover that this assault on him started, at least, as far back as this experience.  The Black Glove stands around the grave while Joker places a bet on the wheel but when Hurt informs him he can't because he's not a member/memberships full, well Joker snaps the neck of the General to open up a spot. Joker's bet: double or nothing that Batman crawls out of the grave, intact, and hunts them all down.  His proof is the broken radio, Bat-Radia, that has been in fact hiding a micro-transmitter that, when activated, overrides Arkham's security and puts it in the control of the Bat-Computer.  Heh, even crazy Zur-Bats was cognizant enough to whip this up...

Flashback to Nanda Parbat, Bruce's revelations (not surprising) that he carries antidotes to poisons he's not immune to, that he is fully prepared to take on this "dark master", and that in Thogal, he "hunted down and killed and ate the last traces of fear and doubt in (his) mind."  And the dialogue/casebook entries that lead to him fighting his way out of the burial...well that is...inspiring...or maybe awe-inspiring is better...

The Joker tells The Black Glove why they will/have failed, and sums up a lot of what they tried to do with Batman in one word: Apophenia.  Looked it up and it is defined as the experience of seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data.  Is Joker saying that is what a lot of the red/black, checkerboard, flowers patterns may have been in this whole story?

My other particularly favorite moment from this sequence is Joker sliding a joker card into Dr. Hurt's pocket while stating "devil is double is deuce my dear doctor. and joker trumps deuce".  If Dr. Hurt is indeed who he later claims to be, then The Joker could be seeing something...or rather implying something...that the rest of us don't get, at least not yet.

Then the moment comes when Batman,in his true uniform courtesy of BG, finally confronts them, tell Jet that he was onto her all along, ever since she said "I want you to know I understand", and proceeds to lay bare her story. Her "father" was a member of the BG who won Jet & her mother in a bet 20 years prior, Jet applauded as his enemies cut him up & made her the leader, and Bruce is now in possession of the one thing Jet places value in: a letter from her imprisoned mother.  In fact, the classic moment is when he decides to completely undermine her confidence by saying that his love for her was faked, "Love? Congratulate Alfred on the acting lessons!"  A lot of readers took this at face value, and took issue with how illogical the statement seemed given that he professed his feeling about Jet to Alfred even when she wasn't around to witness it, but I believe it was said as one last jab at her heart, the same way in which she took jabs at him in that Bat Cave conversation.

The Club of Heroes, alongside Robin, have stopped the violence in Gotham and reveal that everyone connected to The Black Glove movie is either dead, insane, or missing, and the urban legend surrounding it is that the Devil himself put a curse on it. Damian gets to drive his Batmobile finally, runs Joker off the road with it, "killing" him for like the 3rd time since Morrison took over (which upset a lot of people that he was so handidly dismissed after all this but come on, it's The Joker, it's all set-up for his next appearance), and Batman is in pursuit of Hurt.

Another bullet to the  Bat while lays out the plan, how the BG stemmed the tide of crime in Gotham to undermine Batman's reason for existence, littered "Zur en Arrh" on the walls of the city, drugged him, tried to break his mind, and all of it was done by a man claiming to be Dr. Thomas Wayne, Bruce's father. Bruce should have died alongside Martha he claims but Chill lost his nerve, Thomas' death was faked, he became Hurt, but Bruce refuses to believe.  Rather he thinks Hurt is Mangrove Pierce, a point quickly refuted by Hurt as he states in the last panel above how he skinned him alive & wore his face (as seen in the "Club of Heroes" arc).

He claims to be the hole in things, the enemy that has been there since the beginning, and tells Bruce how has has desecrated the name of the Wayne Family in the media, but a deal (with the devil?) is put on the table: Bruce joins the BG and it will all go away. I think we all know how that gets answered...and Hurt curses Bruce as he attempts to depart..."The next time you wear (the cape & cowl) it will be the last!"

The final entry in the Black Casebook (so described by Bruce himself) ends with him questioning if he "...found the Devil waiting for him, and was that fear in his eyes?" The escape 'copter containing Hurt, Devil-Bats, and Bruce explodes, going down in Gotham Harbor, leaving this somewhat iconic image behind...

But the story isn't over yet...Talia sends her Bat-Ninjas after Jezebel Jet and that ends with her presumed death while we get a "6 months later" page (like the "6 months earlier" blurb that followed the B&R can never die page in part one) where we learned Cardinal Maggi has died while Le Bossu attempts to torture and kill a cop until the bat-signal shines through the window, presumably bringing us back to that first B&R image.

We close our tale with the following image:

Another perspective on that fateful night that birthed Batman is actually a touching conversation between Bruce & his father, and in the light of what Dr. Hurt claimed, it's a nice memory to visit, of course in the black/red/white motif that all the flashbacks in "RIP" took place in.  And is there any connection between "Zur En Arrh" and "Zorro In Arkham"? I feel like there could be...

So in conclusion of this story, I think I enjoy it so much more now than I did initially.  That's not to say I didn't like it when it was originally printed, but picking up on all the disparate plot threads the preceded it, and seeing how they continue on to this day adds a whole new layer to Morrison's Bat-Saga.

In "RIP" we see a meeting of the Jezebel Jet story, the Club of Heroes, the Three Ghosts, Clown at Midnight, 52, and we also have the stage set for a lot of future tales as well.  The true identity of Dr.  Hurt is still unrevealed, will Hurt's proclamation of "next time, last time" come true, and if so who will take up the cowl in Bruce's place?  Is Damian's future indeed that of ish #666? See, in reading this, it is blatantly obvious that Bruce did not die at the end of the story because he was the one penning the final entry into the Black Casebook that provided the framework for this final chapter of "RIP".  Still it was kind of disappointing in the moment because we all expected some epic death scene to close out the story, and to be honest I was a little let down back then as well, but given the material that has come out since, this just makes me excited to reread the continued saga of Batman, as told by Grant Morrison.

And you know that I actually found most irritating about "RIP", and it reflects more on DC Direct actually, is that given the sheer number of new/original characters presented in this story via the Club of Heroes/Villains/Black Glove, not to mention the totally different takes on the standards with Zur-En-Arrh Batman & "Clown At Midnight" Joker, that not one damn action figure was released from "RIP"! I so wanted a Zur-Bats with Bat-Might, to build my own Club of Villains & Heroes, and most importantly, a crazy forked-tongue Joker!!!

Next time: "RIP: The Missing Chapters", "Final Crisis", & "Last Rites"...and reading them in a chronological fashion is going to be a fun experiment!