Mindless Ones

It’s only just occurred to me that we’ve been gipped. I went in expecting a three issue contest of wits and fists between Dark Damien and the Cartwheeling Crusader and what I got was a lot of stuff in caves, and secret passages and wotnot.

Of course the reason why I’m not complaining is because the whole thing turned out great anyway, with the last issue a serious contender for best issue of the run so far, at least as far as exciting plot beats are concerned. A doubly impressive feat when you consider that Morrison pulled it off without the pencil-pyrotechnics of Quitely or Stewart. Not to do the art team down, their efforts certainly contributed, memorably on a couple of occasions.

But enough with the preamble and on with the awesome sauce.

First, here’s something Bobsy thought was awesome:

“With last night’s re-read, a sexiness in this issue became a lot clearer – there is the Slade fisting thing [‘Slade… wearing me like a glove’]… but Dick also pins Damian to a tree and shocks him in the heart. Damian then begs for more. Damian’s confession to Talia then becomes a weird coming out scene. Slashmungous.”

Thanks, Bob.

The 99 demon chaps: C’mon, they’re totally bloody great with their symbolically laden demonic clubgear cum costumes and their flamethrowers and guns and black dogs (hellhounds) and the feeling that maybe they actually are from the fiery pit. That’s just how demons might look in a Batverse that likes to keep its occult elements shrouded in a +1 heavy cloak of ambiguity. Like Miller’s mutants before them, these guys are reminiscent of one of John Carpenter cult-gangs, but with better stylists and more Jedwood.

Amy: Bobsy mentioned in one of our email sessions that the 99 fiends is a fantastic idea for a Gotham gang, and I have to agree. I’ve never been that interested or convinced by gangs of everyday hoods following psychos like black mask, and certainly never very scared of them. But by providing the fiends with a raison d’etre, by personally empowering each and every one of them, by turning them into a cult/massive pop band, Morrison succeeds in ramping up the threat level very nicely, and most importantly makes sense of them as a unit.

Zom: And I love how all the criminals and most of the demons are wearing domino masks as if that’s the only way anyone will take you seriously in this town. It’s camp and silly on one level, and yet it feels absolutely right – the absurdity of it and all those dead white eyes being just this side of wrong in a good way.

I feel I should point out that last year I wrote an astonishingly entertaining Heroic Hype piece on the Batcave. A staggering work of heartbreaking genius that you really – really – owe it to yourself to read if you haven’t already done so, and if you have you should maybe – actually, definitely – read again. (You’ll probably cry). I argued that the Batcave is the heart of the Batmythos, that it should be spooky and mysterious and heavy with the weight of the aeons. That is should be a story generator, rather than simply a storehouse for wonderful toys, and that things wot aren’t wotted should lurk down there in the dark.

Typically Morrison went one better, he found a way to do all that and then some. We got secret passages and lost chambers, bat-demons, millennia of hidden history, and the Batcave as the ur-site of the myth. We got the Batcave that lived up to its story potential, rather than the Batcave as box to be ticked, or bruckheimeresque fantasy. The logical and very awesome indeed culmination of all of these ideas is of course the Batcave as mystery waiting to be solved by the world’s greatest detective team.

I would ask Chris Eckert to write an article on how Morrison has swiped my ideas, but come to think of it I wish more comic book writers would pay attention to my quiet brilliance…

Amy: And mine.

The casual spite of “you look like something a dog threw up, Slade”, followed by the ironic understatement of “Oh, and did I mention the 100,068 people you killed in Bludhaven?” perfectly conveys Dick’s utter contempt for Deathstroke. This isn’t Johnsian dialogue, he’s not simply ranting and raging, he’s expressing his deep dislike for the man: in my petty idea of an ideal world you get to insult people you don’t like, you’re free to indulge in irony and sarcasm when you speak to them. There’s also the simple fact that Grayson is largely unconcerned that he’s beating on a guy who’s in his sick bed. Admittedly he doesn’t take it too far, and one gets the impression that its his own decency and desire to have a fair fight and not the machine gun wielding ninjas standing behind him that stay his fists, but, by having Batman beat up an invalid, Morrison leaves us in no doubt that there’s some real hate in the room. Fella gets extra bonus points for presenting an arch-supervillain, who’s killed thousands of innocent people, entirely lacking in gravitas (bedbound, weak, the target of abuse): Grayson’s beyotch.

Lights blinking in the darkness, a red glow, an evil parent, a good son, a shattering revelation, a profound temptation, the birth of operatic conflict. It could be Luke’s confrontation with Vader in Empire Strikes Back but it isn’t, it’s Damian and Talia. Much has been made of Robin’s closing dialogue, but there’s a reason why it hits so hard, and it’s not simply because his final words bring the weight of myth and tragedy to bear, or because this is the moment where he demonstrates that his loyalties lie with the bat-family, or because in a way this is him expressing his deep love for his mother, after all, a certain Detective is perhaps her greatest foe. No this moment, and all its constituent elements work so well because Talia showed him his replacement – the kind of rejection that would kill most people – and he stood there and fucking took it, blinked back the tears, and stepped up. This is Damian at his most hardcore.

Poor little guy.

Amy: I do enjoy Talia’s twisted justifications, especially the stuff about wanting Damian to feel no guilt. In Talia’s mind remote controlling Damian really was an act of mercy. She had to kill Grayson if her son was ever to replace him, and she found an expedient way to do it, but most importantly she didn’t want to upset her little boy. She wanted to take the situation out of his hands while still in some way reminding him why she was doing it, for him, because of him and what he is, and then let events take their course. If things had turned out another way, if Deathstroke had decapitated Grayson with the Slade-spade then, who knows, maybe things would’ve gone her way. Damian’s been on the brink for most of this run, perhaps he would’ve given in, accepted his powerlessness in the face of his destiny.

“At least that’s how I remember it”

Talking of Morrison’s brand of is it or isn’t it magic, that Bat totem: lovely, just horrible enough. It needed to be understated, ragged, and primitive. It needed to look like something which would frighten kids at night, in the dark of their bedrooms, but when the lights go on it’s revealed to be… well actually something quite nasty but obviously not a real live devil, because you know there aren’t any real live devils are there, mummy? Of course not, darling, it’s just a statue of one made out of skinned stag and giant bat sitting beneath a picture of a black sun, so that’s all right then.

“Alert the Justice League”. This is Batman, it’s time for the big boys. Batman time is big boy time. No fucking silly urban vigilante nonsense over here.

Amy: Morrison loves wicker gates [Zom: what’s a wicker gate?]. It’s all very nightmarish, very lynch,very Svankmajer – secret rooms reached by secret crannies in the shadows of your house where things go wrong and demons live.

Yes we are. Batman, Robin and Alfie do their Three Muskateers impression under the watchful eye of the bat-demon-gargoyle thing. This is a moment that we’ve all been waiting for this past year, the bit when these guys fully acknowledge that they’ve become family, and that they’re the world’s premier crime fighting team. They have a job to do, a job that involves people like the Justice League (big boys). It’s slightly over the top, it’s chock-full of wanton momentism, and it’s all the more great because of it. Good old life in the Batcave.

On the subject of this moment being the culmination of the title’s major subplot – Damian’s integration into the bat-family – it strikes me that one of this title’s inherent strengths has been its ability to tell a fresh and satisfying story with a character focus. As we all know, superhero books do character notoriously badly mainly because you can’t change all those licensed properties much, but by getting rid of the central character and replacing him with an odd trio ensemble, one of whom isn’t saddled with decades of continuity, Morrison has been able to have his Batman and eat it. Where Damian is concerned character growth is possible, and through Damian we can get a better look at what makes those older characters tick, which is why it amazes me when I hear from people that they don’t like Damian, because when all is said and done Damian is one of the few titular characters capable of growth in superhero comics. I suppose some folks are just more concerned with whether he is actually straightforwardly likable. I’m not, I think likability is overrated, I don’t demand that of characters or indeed real people – I just want things to be interesting.

Amy: This sequence is a powerful reminder that we’re reading a team book, something Morrison’s previous batman books absolutely weren’t. Looking back, the Bruce Wayne who marched to his ‘deaths’ against Dr. Hurt and Darkseid was an incredibly lonely figure, but, for me at least, this is something that only became readily apparent upon the advent of this one-for-all panel, where dick, Damian and and Alfred consolidate the family dynamic that was always there right from the start but was hidden behind lots of sulking and infighting. It seems obvious to me that only dick, a naturally social and happy being, could’ve got batman to this place and I’m interested to see where we go from here. Perhaps part of Morrison’s project with his mega-run has been to resurrect the bat-family, not as a loose description of all the bat-themed gothamites, but as an entity drawing its inspiration directly, if not exactly replicating, the sixties books. Is part of Bruce’s healing process providing him with a genuine community again? And does this outcome surprise Morrison as much as it surprises me? Shame there’s no dogs…

And look at that, we didn’t even talk about the Joker…

Tomorrow: The Return of Bruce Wayne