Hell, maybe someone will take over for Morrison soon at retcon his retcon.

Batman: Rebirth, anyone?

OK, my Geoff johns love-fest is over.

I, like you, can’t tell whether I really got it or not. Was Jezebel the main evil? Or, was the Joker?

Did the Joker orchestrate everything with the Black Gloves little society of stupid supervillains? Because, I can’t believe Jezebel or the Sombrero or anyone else in that idiotic group of people I’ve never heard of and don’t care about at all because they’re pointless one-shot villains was smart enough to put it all together. And, the Joker’s suddenly alright with someone else killing / destroying Batman? When did that happen? Isn’t that what his whole issue with Hush was about?

I got that the tiles and the rose petals — the mix of black and red — was a reference to something early in the series where the mixture of the two produced Joker’s neurotoxin. And, I think that Bruce was succumbing to it, based upon the twisted grin that I think was on his face.

But, in actuality, the art was so bad, I couldn’t really tell at first glance if it was him, or Jezebel, or the Joker that was grinning in that panel and I’ve stopped caring enough to go back and try.

And, honestly, I think that’s the major difference between Morrison ‘killing’ Batman and Brubaker killing Captain America: I cared when Cap died. Batman is my favorite character. He’s the character that I got into comics with. He’s the character that, even when I wasn’t reading any other comics, I continued to read. But, Morrison’s story has been so pointlessly bad that I’ve stopped caring whether or not Bruce died, or if he were simply ‘broken’ or whatever.

And, that’s probably the most tragic part of this entire story.

I think what we’ve got here is somewhat similar to what’s happening/happened in Spider-Man. One side of fans embracing change while another can only see the bastardization of their favorite character. Just like some Spidey fans yelled “He made a deal with the devil for WHAT?”, some Bat fans will yell “Batman got taken down by WHO?”

I have to also note that I am vehemently against the “Thomas Wayne is Evil” angle, as well as the “Martha Wayne is a coked-up sloot” angle. Let’s leave them alone, huh? You can write good storied with shocker moments and, my favorite, the “oh, snap!” final panel of an issue.

Seriously, you can do it WITHOUT bastardizing the past and re-writing history so it fits your plans. You can make subtle changes to the past or, even better, just add EXTRA information to the past stories we all know and love to provide new backstory to pave the way for your new plotlines.

Ask Geoff Johns.

Oh, and Stephen…Batman will always come back, eh? Wasn’t everyone saying that Steve Rogers would be back in the suit in Brubaker’s Captain America title by now? I mean, what’s the holdup?

~Ding!~
You, sir, win a cookie. I kept thinking that Jezebel Jet (a “jezebel” historically being a traitorous figure, and ‘”jet” black’ speaks for itself) would turn out to be SOMEBODY FAMILIAR in disguise. It was just too fake a name, even for a comic book. That, or that the gap in my memory had gotten really large and somehow I missed out on finding out that Bruce had his “Lois Lane”…. THAT would make the TV News I figured, so I was counting on the former…

I think this is an example of different viewpoints. For example: I despise the current Amazing Spider-Man book, but it always seems to sell out.

P.S.- Since Hush just plasticaly remodeled his face to that of Bruce, could the “that’s not Batman” comment in this issue be true? Could Elliot convince himself he’s really Bruce Wayne and from the start this was never Bruce fighting the Black Glove?

I was iffy on it when he started off with Damien and the ninja manbats and stuff, but I figured I’d read Batman for almost 20 years at that point, so I’d stick with it.

Then, he pitched Batman R.I.P. and I hated everything about the entire premise of it. The poor execution — from the story hints he’d dropped, to his not even bothering to tell other Bat-book writers what he intended to do so that their stories could make sense in context with his, and with the aforemetioned ‘Continuity doesn’t really matter!’ crap he’s been peddling — has only made it worse.

If you take more than a year to tell a story, it’d better be a damn good story and there ought to be a lot of good pay-offs along the way. Unfortunately, Batman R.I.P. is a massive pile of suck that has only occasionally managed to even cross the threshold into mediocre, and it’s still at least three connecting flights from ‘good’ with only one more issue to go …

Ninja manbats? Dumb.

Damien? Stupid.

Potentially resurrecting Thomas Wayne as an jackhole criminal mastermind? Assinine.

Hinting that mother Wayne was a drug addict and that Alfred might actually be Bruce’s father? Insultingly idiotic.

Introducing a love interest that we’d never heard of before and having her gain such significance in Bruce’s life over the course of just a handful of issues that she can manage to not only break Bruce’s psyche but hide the fact that she’s been the main villain all along? … well, I’ve run out of synonyms.

I remember vaguely something about Morrison claiming this would be the ‘last Batman story’. Even if it isn’t, I’m feeling more and more like it’ll be my last Batman story.

Don’t get me wrong … I’ll still read whichever other Bat-titles remain unaffected by this (Detective, so long as Dini and Nguyen are on it) but, with the economy doing what it’s doing, I’ve been looking for books to cut back on and anything touched by this taint are quickly rising to the top of my cut list.

And while I may be the lone voice decrying the Morrison Batman, I will also be the lone voice, when I review ASB&R and tell you how good it is. :D