Is the Morrison run better without the Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul Crossover?

[Flash Gordon]

The Nicieza issues weren't too great but I enjoyed the event. I remember I almost skipped it but the Morrison issues and the Dini issues were real firm and solid good comics.

[nepenthes]

It'd be nice to get a numbered, identical spined, boxset called 'Batman & Damian Saga by Grant Morrison' or something with everything in exactly the right order.

It's mind boggling that DC have not done this yet. Like they actually want to confuse people.

Also I'd call the whole thing Batman Forever

[t hedge coke]

It's mind boggling that DC have not done this yet. Like they actually want to confuse people.

Also I'd call the whole thing Batman Forever

We'll buy all the varying editions, and when new editions offer more of it in a same-looking format, we'll buy that so it'll look nicer on the shelf together.

If they offer a complete set, in the same format, at the same time, we'll own it and have little need to keep buying the same comics.

It's in their financial interest to keep staggering them.

[JBatmanFan05]

I know FC is part of the run and I'm always down for a re-read of FC, so I always include it in run re-reads, but I do rather like that R.I.P. The Missing Chapter kind of makes it so you don't actually have to read all of FC if you don't want to.

Yea, but "kind of makes it" is a good way to put it. You still have to read 682 & 683 in the run and those don't much make sense (to newbs or others) without Final Crisis. I think it'd better function as substituting for FC if Grant intended The Missing Chapter to read right after RIP, but I don't think that's where he intended those to be read, and thus they're more IMHO just a cool post-facto "secret origin" for the Return of Bruce Wayne arc.

[Minerboh]

It would be better without RIP and Final Crisis.

[Claude]

It's mind boggling that DC have not done this yet. Like they actually want to confuse people.

Also I'd call the whole thing Batman Forever

Batman And Robin Will Never Die, surely?

And I partially agree. You'll have issues about what to include and in what form - do you intersperse issues of "Batman And Robin" with "The Road Home"? Is "Resurrection Of Ra's Al Ghul" required?" *- but it's bizarre that they haven't included things like the issue of 52 that's frequenty referenced earlier on, with Tim suspecting Bruce wants to retire and Bruce undergoing Thogal.



*For my money, "yes" and "no" respectively. "Yes", mix up the issues of those two series - I haven't read it like that before, and I already have perfectly nice trades of those issues together. Why not do something different? And "No" in that not only is "Resurrection" notably of poorer overall quality than the other stories being collected, it also has a pretty jarring characterisation of Damian when taken with the rest of Morrison's ouvre. It's most enjoyable as a seperate, optional entity in it's own right - like the other Dickbats stories, Battle For The Cowl, and the Tomasi "Nightwing" run.

[C_Miller]

It would be better without RIP and Final Crisis.

RIP is kind of the lynch pin for the entire run...

[t hedge coke]

It would be better without RIP and Final Crisis.

Would you also lose the lead ups to RIP? And, if so, what are you left with for the first year or two of comics?

Or, do you mean that the lead up should still be there, but then just cold drop it after Batman's heart attack and pick up with Batman and Robin's first issue?

[Minerboh]

Would you also lose the lead ups to RIP? And, if so, what are you left with for the first year or two of comics?

Or, do you mean that the lead up should still be there, but then just cold drop it after Batman's heart attack and pick up with Batman and Robin's first issue?

The Batman And Son was terrific, the same goes for the Black Glove. I also liked The Batman And Robin and Batman Inc arcs. I also found Ra's Resurrection a pretty nice read.
RIP and FC were nonsensical and extremely hard to read.
If RIP was executed differently, maybe it would be more attractive to me. Something like the most recent Endgame.

[t hedge coke]

I like most of the non-crossover "extended riff" periods, like Battle for the Cowl or Road Home well enough, but I'd never stick them in a Morrison-Bats reread, because it bogs it down and sometimes nearly undoes the magic for me. Damian's death is so good, the followup is so strong in Batman Inc, that adding in other people's comics that came out the following month just... waters it down, and it slows the momentum, for me, of the story at hand, which is pretty much one bad night from thereon out. If I did stick those issues in, they'd have to come after Inc finishes, and by then, well, I'm done with the Morrison reread, so that's it's own reread (this is very scientific).

But, even interleaving B&R and Return, to me, slows down the momentum of each comics' own story. It interrupts the arc of Return and the special concerns and interests of Return, the progress of that mystery (even though there, like an anti-RIP, we actually know the complete answer to the mystery that Bruce is solving - his identity - and possible don't even realizing he's solving another problem - how to deal with Hurt - simultaneously). It would stretch out the last arc and of B&R, which, to me, reads pretty elegantly as a piece.

It's cool for a channel-flipper (and we know Morrison is a channel-flipper), but I'm not when it comes to tv or comics. I pretty much pick something and stick with it. Return and B&R have clues that go back and forth, but I think the central mysteries of each comic can be solved just fine without even reading the other. And, they don't take place simultaneously, because most of Return doesn't take place "now."

Resurrection of Ra's seems like it is part of the run, though. It doesn't interrupt anything else, Morrison wrote (part of) it, and he co-plotted or plotted it, depending on which source you consult, and it adds, to me, in a basic introduction and repetition of themes we'll see later, themes and techniques we didn't even know we should be looking for.

Maybe that's why Morrison-Bats fans were so ready to dismiss it, at the time. It felt like an intrusion, and interruption from Hurt, not part of the bigger Talia story or that the techniques of immortality and bodyjacking in Ressurection would dovetail with those of Hurt and enlighten. There were clues to what was "really going on" with Hurt right in front of us, and at the time, they didn't register.

The Batman And Son was terrific, the same goes for the Black Glove. I also liked The Batman And Robin and Batman Inc arcs. I also found Ra's Resurrection a pretty nice read.
RIP and FC were nonsensical and extremely hard to read.
If RIP was executed differently, maybe it would be more attractive to me. Something like the most recent Endgame.

In all earnestness, I can't really think of anything nonsensical in RIP, which is pretty straightforward for a mystery that we (and Batman) don't have the clues to answer. But, thanks for answering. That makes more sense, to me, than if you'd wanted to Hurt thread out of the whole story or something. (Not that some don't, I'm sure.)

[Kingcrimsonprog]

The first time I read Batman RIP, which I was given with no context and not having been reading that many Bamtan stories before, it was really baffeling and awkward and jarring and barely enjoyable. It totally flows now that I've read the whole morrison stuff and read online dissections and reviews and everything, but I do think its fair to say that it is a messy confusing read.

Check out the amazon uk reviews. Other people have said similar things.

[JBatmanFan05]

I like most of the non-crossover "extended riff" periods, like Battle for the Cowl or Road Home well enough, but I'd never stick them in a Morrison-Bats reread, because it bogs it down and sometimes nearly undoes the magic for me.

I half agree here. BFTC, Road Home, etc do not belong in any Morrison collection or re-read. I don't even like them (unlike you) and don't include them.

Not everything is part of Morrison's run. I agree on the Requiem stuff too for Damian's death...not a part of the run. DC of course tries to make you think everything is part of every successful big name run, but we know better.

And, they don't take place simultaneously, because most of Return doesn't take place "now."

Some of them is definitely taking place simultaneously, and we know that because Morrison would, for example, stick BatGrayson & Robin in ROBW and in that one instance, Damian wonders if they should have left Joker alone with the police. Definitely indicates some simultaneity of RoBW and B&R.