Grant Morrison's Batman Debuted Ten Years Ago

[Rikdad]

Everyone's personal experience may differ; I for one am blown away by the notion that a decade has passed since Grant Morrison's run on Batman began (and three years since it ended).

It's impossible to try to do justice to seven years of comics in a few pages, but here is my look back at a run that changed the way comics work and drew me, personally, in much further than I could have anticipated.

http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2016/09/r...atman-run.html

[The Lucky One]

Oh man, don't say that. It's impossible, see, because I remember buying the first issue at my LCS, couldn't have been more than... four years ago? Five?

One of these days I'll have to give Morrison's run a fair chance. I remember reading the first arc and thinking this kid being dragged out of Elseworlds was irritating, and oh look, Grant's doing that thing he does where he soups up an existing villain so much (dozens of ninja Man-Bats) that you can never take the "baseline" version seriously again. I think the last straw for me was the issue with Damian as Batman in the future killing people, and I just thought, "Nope, I'm out." Only other issue I read was the first half of "Leviathan Strikes."

But everyone raves about it so much, and I like to think that in a decade (guh) I've matured and become more open-minded. If they ever release it in omnibus format, I suspect I'll give it another shot.

[t hedge coke]

I'm doing a big reread in honor of it, and compiling a readalong for the Comics Cube, of things that stick out to me now, versus at the time. Helicopters! Badguys with helicopters! It is, overall, an incredibly toyetic run, and rereading, it's inordinately apparent to me, again, that Morrison is one of the best commercially-minded writers in superhero comics. It's going to stay in print for ages. Every hero gets a shining moment. Every hero gets special vehicles. The villains all get mad playsets.

For the record, in the dark, cursed future that will never come to be, and characters are fighting hard to avoid in the comics, Damian only kills Lane in Batman#666. He's framed for the other murders by Lane and Dr Hurt. And, he's distraught, in his own fashion, at having killed Lane, mentioning right then, that he swore to his father he'd never kill (again).

[JBatmanFan05]

I'm in the midst of re-read. I bound it all, binding B&R, RoBW, and 700-702 and The Return according to artist Chris Burnham's preferred reading order.

Such a great read. So many big and small questions remain. You can always go back and notice new things and think about new things.

I don't expect DC will ever quite collect it correctly (despite my numerous emails to them)...they'll perhaps leave out the Res of Ra's 2 issues (which is fair, but technically leaving stuff out) or Final Crisis (can't really totally leave out and if partially include...how?) and will likely have weird ordering for B&R, RoBW, and 700-702 and The Return.


But great article rikdad!

[Rikdad]

Lucky One… This particular set of comics aside, it certainly is hard to believe that it's been ten years.

I say this at more length in my review, but I feel that very distinctly, the first issues of the run were not the best on an issue-by-issue basis. In fact, I quit reading the run at one point about seven issues in. Then I picked up one issue in a comic book store, thumbed through it, saw that something huge was going on, and grabbed the couple of issues I'd missed in order to catch up.

Roughly speaking, I think the architecture of Morrison's first run, the Batman issues from #655-683 was groundbreaking and amazing, but the issues themselves were not always the best until about #672. That turned around and the issue-per-issue quality was great most of the rest of the way, even if the next ~four years weren't as original in concept.

If I hadn't picked up that issue – #672, probably –*and seen how there was a larger, amazing design in progress, I would have missed out on an amazing run. My impressions of the issues before that were similar to yours.

[FluffySheep]

I've not read Morrison's run yet (I'm still catching up on loads of stuff) but I noticed earlier that this was on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Batman-Robi...grant+morrison

It's good timing for me as I can get all the Batman and Robin stuff in one book. I'm looking forward to getting this and the other Morrison Batman books.

[Deffinition]

by far my favourite run, so good

[K. Jones]

I actually got into Morrison's run late. I started reading about it during R.I.P., of course, and that was in 2008, when the run began in 2006. At that point I think I was working in a factory, sleeping on a friend's couch, and reading about it when I got out of the graveyard shift. And R.I.P. had actually just about finished already, though it wasn't much work to backtrack to run and catch up on it. And everything I was reading about Final Crisis made me want to really get into the DCU and comics, because before that I was more the casual Batman reader, who'd really read and focused on like, the "Year One" collection type early stories - Year One, Long Halloween, Dark Victory, that sort of thing. And Hush, and Under the Hood.

I can't remember if the whole of R.I.P. was out when I started backreading the whole Batman run, but I was caught up and onboard and eagerly awaited the "Last Rites" Final Crisis issues as they actually came out, along with FC itself, and the Superman tie-ins (Morrison's run hooked me on current Batman comics, but also a lot of the cool promotions at the time - cool concepts - hooked me on other books, like all the stuff Johns was doing with Lantern and Superman, and catching up on Rucka's entire oeuvre.) And I was right here furiously speculating in the months where we waited to find out what was up with the new "Batman and Robin" book. But that was 2009! Three years after the run began, only seven years ago, and the year before I went back to art school and also found myself just becoming a voracious reader of tons and tons of comics.

Honestly, it's less wild for me that Morrison's run began 10 years ago than it is that I finished art school four years ago already. Phew! Where the hell did that time go?

[AJpyro]

I'm halfway through the Morrison run and its been a neat ride. But I am not diving back into FC.

[Pohzee]

I recently picked up Morrison's entire run in trade. I was underwhelmed by Batman and Son, loved The Black Glove, and liked R.I.P. Then I started Final Crisis... What a total mess: I'm now taking a break with Morrison's run.

[JBatmanFan05]

I recently picked up Morrison's entire run in trade. I was underwhelmed by Batman and Son, loved The Black Glove, and liked R.I.P. Then I started Final Crisis... What a total mess: I'm now taking a break with Morrison's run.

For those that don't dig Final Crisis, and it can be difficult for newer readers, I do think you can sort of skim read it for Morrison's Batman...I'd say you basically read the Darkseid and Batman parts, get a feel for how Morrison thinks of Darkseid (clues: Lovecraftian evil, the idea of evil, the god of evil, a good bit of Grant negatively opining on the idea of the Christian God.....this opining on the Christian God is even further clearly spelled out in Morrison's Nameless for Image that came out this past year).

[Rikdad]

t hedge, I love your mention of helicopters. Another type of flying machine that appears, repeatedly, in the background of Morrison's run is blimps. This goes way back to Detective Comics #33: "The Batman Wars Against the Dirigible of Doom." Engelhart brought back the wacky gizmos from Fifties stories during his run on Detective and Morrison picked up much of the same. In fact, Morrison's very first issue was titled "Building a Better Batmobile" which obviously used the car as a metaphor for the series as a whole, and he returned to that in #676 when Batman said of the Batmobile what Morrison intended to say about his own story, that it turned out differently than he had envisioned it. Then, the Batman and Robin title began with the Batmobile showing extensive modifications. Gizmos are definitely a big part of Batman lore!

Issue #666 originally rubbed me the wrong way, but I found it a great pleasure to re-read. It has a lot of Dark Knight Returns in it. I reviewed that, specifically, here, years after it was published, when its ramifications had played out with the passing of time: http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2010/01/b...to-future.html

[Rikdad]

JB, thanks for your comments. I know we discussed this run extensively back when it was still happening, and into the 2009-2010 era. I recall that we agreed very closely on which portions of it we liked and which portions we thought didn't work so well.

I discussed the reading order and my take on it here:

http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2013/05/g...ing-order.html

DC's publishing order had at least two accidental glitches, in publishing the last issue of Batman and Robin before the last issue of Return of Bruce Wayne, when they definitely took place in the opposite order; and, in publishing the great Batman-Joker scene in DC Universe #0 before any of RIPwhen it surely took place after Batman #676. Moreover, the RIP crossover in Outsiders had facts that flatly contradicted Morrison's story; i.e., Superman and Green Arrow visit Wayne Manor and determine that Bruce is missing whereas Morrison said that Bruce walked right from the helicopter crash back to Wayne Manor. Surely Superman wouldn't have declared him missing when he was only taking a little while to walk home.

Honestly, reading it all in any correct order could be a huge challenge that I doubt many people who collect trades will pull off; you more or less have to know the story already to make all of those decisions correctly…*or check my reading order, or those that others have posted.

[JBatmanFan05]

I discussed the reading order and my take on it here:

http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2013/05/g...ing-order.html

Certainly a more helpful order than many, but I will always disagree with this part: (as far as a primary what-Morrison-intended reading order, maybe you could read it that way as a "I've read this run a few times" secondary order)

Batman #701
Final Crisis #1-7 (especially #1, 2, 6)
Batman #702
Batman and Robin #1-9
Return of Bruce Wayne #1-5
Batman and Robin #10-15
Batman #700

My opinion from another thread was:

Time and the Batman TPB has references in it that make it inappropriate to read before B&R, nor did it come out then. People want to force Time and the Batman TPB right near RIP, but it's not correct at all. Morrison knew he was well past RIP and did explain some RIP things but also you could tell he decided not to just gap fill (which I'm sure he thought would be boring and not worth it) but actively tied 700-702 to B&R and RoBW, what he was doing at the time.

I'm an ardent defender of Chris Burnham's order: (and not really at all because Burnham offered it, but because it makes so much sense)
BR 1-9
B700
BR 10
ROBW 1
BR11
ROBW2
BR12
ROBW3
B701
B702
BR13
ROBW4
BR14
ROBW5
BR15
ROBW6
BR16

I know you had these reasons for why 700 is where you have it ((1) Because it felt to me like an encapsulation of the Dick-and-Damian Batman and Robin, and then a transition to Damian's future. (2) It had Professor Nichols' time machine, and ROBW #5 showed us Nichols at an earlier point.), but I definitely do think in terms of encapsulating or celebrating this or that or the Nichols stuff, it's definitely for me much more about where the "Present" takes place with Dick and Damian and you can tell its perfectly placed before B&R #10's ramped up shift toward the end.

[Lhynn]

Forget about it.