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.

Batman, Batmaaan, and robiiiin

Here and in the comments, we got the shit ain’t no-one else got. Read on!

Annocomment is free after the jump

Let’s annocommentate!

PAGE 1

PANEL 1

Amy: ‘What is it with these Crime Coven people and their obsession with stories for kids?’ What is it indeed? Perhaps it has something to do with the rogue logic of fairytales and nursery rhymes, their criminal physics? Alice in Wonderland as topology, a map of a world overturned, where reason and meaning begin their steady descent into the abyss, Cole’s ‘hole in everything’.

Fairytales also speak to our primal condition, a preverbal world of gods and nightmares. Maybe the Crime Covens see their work as an attempt to return mankind to a purer state, unrestrained by ego and superego, culture, law and society.

Shit, they sound pretty cool, don’t they?

Oh, whose side are we all on?

Click for more! more? MOAR?!?

Here’s some of my annotations that I didn’t put up because I was too busy writing a script for my new Young Heroes in Love series that’ll be hitting the shelves in…uh, oh, I don’t know, let’s keep it positive, sometime over the next three years.

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Bob: This is not only the best issue of B&R yet, but the best single issue of Morrison’s batman run by some margin, and as dense and full a piece as he’s written since Seven Soldiers #1, with which it shares many links and referents, both deliberate, accidental and incidental.

Zom: Tan’s a nice chap, some of us around here were quite keen on his work, but if you ask me thank God for Cameron Stewart: Batman & Robin is back at long last. This isn’t my favourite issue and I’ll get into some of the reasons why later, but it’s a bloody good one.

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Annocommentations for issue 1 can be found here and here

Interview with Cameron Stewart can be found here

And so we go at it again, better, stronger and much, much, much later than you could ever have imagined.

Onwards with the annocommentations, which, if you’re visiting us for the first time, you should understand as not being much like conventional annotations…

Are you DEK EYE? Find out after the jump!

When you laugh, when you cry, here comes Mickey Eye! AGAIN!!!

(Part 2 of these annocommentations can be found here)

Words that you might have seen used rather a lot elsewhere in relation to this comic:

Mad
Crazy
Insane
Weird

All fine words I grant you, but sadly they all too often help to close down critical discussion rather than open it up. Hopefully we can do a bit better than that.

When you laugh, when you cry, here comes Mickey Eye!

We’re back.

Round 2

Fight!

BOOM