Comic Book Review – Batman by Grant Morrison Omnibus Volume Two

Batman by Grant Morrison Omnibus Volume Two (2018)
Reprints Batman #700-702, Batman and Robin #1-16, and Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #1-6
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Tony S. Daniel, Frank Quitely, Scott Kolins, Andy Kubert, David Finch, Philip Tan, Cameron Stewart, Andy Clarke, Frazer Irving, Chris Sprouse, Yanick Paquette, Georges Jeanty, Ryan Sook, Pere Pérez, and Lee Garbett

The Grant Morrison run of Batman is not a perfect thing. The transition from the first chapter to this second has got to be one of the clunkiest, with desperate attempts to try and mesh Morrison’s intentions with their story with Dan DiDio’s editorial edicts. This is why the first three comics reprinted here focus so much on trying to take the death of Batman we see in “Batman RIP” and the death of Batman we see in “Final Crisis” and have them make a single cohesive narrative. In my opinion, it is a big mess. However, that leads to one of the best parts of Morrison’s run, Batman and Robin. The side story of The Return of Bruce Wayne? Eh, I’m not the biggest fan, but it does coherently tie up the Doctor Hurt storyline that began in the first volume.

Batman #700 is a story that takes place in the past, present, and future, with three different Batmen investigating a mysterious scientist whose death occurred under impossible circumstances. Morrison uses this to reintroduce lost elements from Batman lore, particularly more of the silly Silver Age concepts, including a rare usage of the original Mad Hatter. The story’s opening is classic Batman (Wayne) and Robin (Grayson). This is followed by the present day, where Dick Grayson has taken the mantle of Batman while Damian Wayne is his Robin. The final part features Morrison’s future Batman, Damian Wayne. There are also three epilogues showing the futures of Batman Beyond and Morrison’s own Batman One Million from his JLA storyline. They also drop a super obscure reference to Batman 3000, a character who appeared in Batman #26 (1944), where a descendant of Bruce Wayne fights against a robot uprising in the future. This is an excellent combination of art and writing, with so many great pencilers & inkers getting their work featured here. This doesn’t seem long ago, but Batman celebrated its 900th issue a month ago.

Then comes Batman #701 & 702, titled “RIP: The Missing Chapter,” where Morrison attempts to create connective tissue between the two simultaneous deaths of Batman. When it appeared that Batman was killed in the exploding helicopter with Doctor Hurt, he swam to safety…despite that same comic showing us Grayson & Damian as Batman & Robin at the end…Then we have Batman captured by Darkseid’s chief geneticists, Simyan & Mokkari, as he is assaulted by their psychic manipulations. This reveals to us that Bruce Wayne did not die but was sent hurtling through time from Darkseid’s Omega Beams and found himself in the prehistoric period of humanity. I don’t quite buy that this was the intent because the pieces fit together awkwardly and don’t make for a strong story. 

Regardless this leads to my favorite chunk of Morrison’s work on Batman, Batman, and Robin. By having Dick Grayson leave behind his Nightwing identity and become Batman, you immediately have a new take on a familiar character. Then with Damian as his Robin, it’s made even more enjoyable. Damian is different from Tim Drake, who had been Robin until now. While Tim is a clever detective that shares mutual respect with Bruce Wayne, Damian is cocky & arrogant. He doesn’t think much of Grayson, but that changes over time, and Grayson is immensely patient with his ward. I particularly enjoyed Alfred during these sixteen issues, who has a whole new outlook on the war against crime now that two new people are in the driver’s seat.

The first arc of the series is titled “Batman Reborn” and centers on establishing this new crime-fighting duo. It also introduces a new addition to the Rogues Gallery, which has made it into other media venues. This is the bizarre Professor Pyg. He is Lazlo Valentin, a chemist who has created Dollotrons using his unique concoctions. Brainwashing chemicals are used to erase the person’s sense of self. Then a mask is affixed to their face, unable to be removed without ripping away the flesh, leaving them all identical frazzled red hair. And then, regardless of gender, they don purple dresses and follow the orders of Pyg. He’s a particularly twisted villain in that his behavior is so grotesque. Pyg has a penchant for taking off his shirt, revealing his overhanging belly, and then gyrating and dancing provocatively. I like the Morrison-shaped villain who truly is out of his fucking mind so that his methods and dialogue are chaos. He cannot be understood because he has detached himself so distantly from humanity that Pyg has become something else.

The second arc of this series is “Revenge of the Red Hood,” which might confuse someone unfamiliar with Batman lore at the time. Jason Todd, who had served as the second Robin and was murdered by the Joker, got resurrected in 2005 when Judd Winick wrote the book. Winick is one of the worst writers DC has ever handed so many titles to. I don’t think he has good ideas and can’t even execute his terrible stories decently. Regardless, Jason Todd was back and had to be contended with. Initially, he was set up as a villain, which they should have stuck with. During a storyline called “Battle for the Cowl,” where Grayson became Batman after Bruce’s death, Jason was one of those competing for the title. 

In Morrison’s story, Jason created a costume that combines elements of Batman and the Red Hood. The Red Hood was the identity the man who would become the Joker was acting under when he fell into a vat of chemicals that turned him into the now classic (and certainly overused) villain. Jason even recruits his own Robin in the form of one of Pyg’s not-fully converted Dollotrons. In the previous arc, Pyg had attacked a criminal in his employ, turning him into a mindless slave, and then tried to do the same with his daughter, Sasha. Sasha had the Dollotron mask applied but was saved before she was thoroughly brainwashed. As Pyg and the more significant problem were dealt with, Sasha was left suffering in a hospital, where Jason approached her to be his sidekick. As Scarlet, she is his partner in crime, a crusade against evil that ends in the executions of criminals rather than just their arrest.

I prefer this take on Jason Todd as a mentally fragile & often violent man. His personality post-Crisis in the 1980s was also as someone who wanted to go harder after criminals, which put him in conflict with Bruce. You add to this that he died and was brought back to life via a Lazarus Pit, the chemical bath responsible for Ra Al Ghul’s immortality. The pits are known to warp the psyche of those who use them, so making Jason a murderous anti-Batman would be the way to go if the editorial insists on keeping him around. Instead, they have turned him into a Punisher-style vigilante, which I hate. Morrison’s story pits the vastly different ideologies of Grayson & Todd against each other, and I really enjoyed that.

This story arc also introduces Oberon Sexton, aka The Gravedigger, a masked mystery author from the United Kingdom. Of course, it’s someone we know under that mask, but I won’t spoil it here. I’ll say it’s a character that Morrison writes better than most, and he does some very interesting things with him here. Another new villain who doesn’t get to do much but is an intriguing figure is introduced, The Flamingo. We get some backstory on this flamboyant foe, making him a truly terrifying figure. That’s one thing I like about Morrison’s additions to the Rogues Gallery, they are almost horror movie villains with intensely violent desires. 

Then we have “Blackest Knight,” a storyline that teases the return of Bruce Wayne. Batman ends up in London, teamed up with Squire. An abandoned mine in the country houses a Lazarus Pit, making it a valuable target for local gangs like King Coal and The Pearly King of Crime. The mysterious new Batwoman is also there, and she teams up with the two others to take down the criminal cartels after them. She tells them they should not try and bring back Batman, only to find out the Knight, Squire’s partner, had already placed the hero’s corpse in the waters hours earlier. 

This is another story where Morrison retroactively reveals something “kept from us” during the Final Crisis storyline. You won’t be surprised to learn that it isn’t Bruce Wayne’s body, mainly because there’s a mini-series collected in this book called “The Return of Bruce Wayne.” We get a Bizarro Batman who goes toe to toe with the new Batman and Robin. It’s a fun three-parter where Morrison gets to indulge in some UK-based superheroes, something I knew they love to do. Morrison was responsible for the base concepts of almost every international hero introduced in the year-long mini-series 52, and they have always wanted to make the whole planet Earth of the DC Universe feel populated with a diverse variety of heroes & villains.

“The Haunting of Wayne Manor” is up next; the title refers to a similarly named story from back in the era of comics where they designed a shocking cover first and then wrote a story to go with it. Damian Wayne, the rightful heir to the Wayne fortune, takes over his father’s company at only ten years old and is quite good at it. Being raised in a tube and conditioned to be a near-perfect human has advantages and disadvantages, as we learn all too well with this character. Meanwhile, Batman is working with Oberon Sexton on the deaths of many prominent millionaires across the globe. They are all linked to The Black Glove, the organization behind the chaos caused during “Batman RIP.”

Finding out the body in their possession was a fake leaves Batman, Robin, and Alfred convinced that Bruce Wayne is still alive somehow, and they go to Wayne Manor to investigate. During this time, the Dynamic Duo lived in a sub-sub-basement of one of the Wayne properties. As they explore the abandoned mansion, clues emerge from moments in the Wayne family’s past, hinting that someone is trying to communicate with them from the past. We also learn that during Damian’s recovery with his mother, Talia, after receiving injuries in his fight with the Red Hood, he was implanted with a mechanism that allows Talia to control her son remotely. She turns the controls over to a villain with a history with Dick Grayson forcing Batman to fight his Robin. Meanwhile, Doctor Hurt and The Black Glove arrive to stop our heroes from saving Bruce.

This leads to “Batman and Robin Must Die,” where a classic Batman foe returns while Doctor Hurt appears to somehow be a resurrected Thomas Wayne, not killed in the alley with his wife like Bruce had always believed. But that gets cleared up in the pages of The Return of Bruce Wayne, which begins with the titular hero living among cavemen during humanity’s prehistory. Nicknamed Man of Bats by these primitives, Bruce finds himself in conflict with future immortal villain Vandal Savage in his early days. The Omega Effect that sent Bruce back here continues to plague him, making him jump to the exact location in space but at a different time. 

Bruce finds himself where Gotham City will eventually be built, but on his second jump, it’s still an early American colony plagued with fears of witches. The next jump has him living among pirates searching for The Black Pirate’s treasure buried in a cave on the shore of Bristol Bay in Gotham Town. The next jump sees Jonah Hex riding into Gotham, hired by Monsieur Savage to hunt down a troublesome “ghost” plaguing his operations in Gotham. There’s a jump to the 1930s, where Bruce acts as a private detective investigating rumors of debauchery within the Wayne family. While all of this is happening, we have a parallel story involving the Justice League trying to figure out how to bring Bruce back to his proper point in time. The Return of Bruce Wayne serves mainly as a direct sequel to Final Crisis, complete with an ending that parallels that mini-series. It was really convoluted and not always in a good way. I’d like to know what people think of the final issue in this mini-series and if they think Morrison delivered a coherent wrap-up.

Then it’s back to the pages of Batman and Robin, where Bruce Wayne returns as Batman, and the Doctor Hurt story arc is resolved. I found the big finale to be very satisfying, with lots of action and characters having so much to do. The cliffhanger that leads us into the third and final volume next week is Bruce Wayne’s formation of Batman Incorporated, a global network of vigilante heroes fighting crime on a larger scale than ever before. We’ll also look next week at how Dan Didio did Morrison dirty with the New 52 reboot, which made this Batman run so much more complicated to understand.