A cadre of Man-Bats, engineered by Talia's Al Ghul (daughter of deceased crime emperor Ra's Al Ghul) after blackmailing serum's creator Kirk Langstrom, kidnaps the wife of the British Prime Minister at a party Bruce Wayne is attendng too. Batman tries to help but he's defeated and taken prisoner. But Talia's plans for him are different: She leaves him with her (and his!) son, Damian, born of a night of love she stole from him, i.e.: after she drugged him senseless to breed an heir to her father's crime empire with the perfect man, the Batman himself! Morrison does a good job of playing on Bruce Wayne's guilt issues, so that Bruce/Batman takes the kid in, and at the same time he tries to stop her mother from terrorising the whole world with Man-Bats, he finds himself with a mysterious and deadly 11-years old, hell-bent on proving his father his worth, or possibly betraying him to Talia... Tim Drake's/Robin reaction to this is also perfectly played, since Robin has always been the Batman's acting son: At first he storms away in anger, then comes back to help the kid, in a fantastic and admirable selfless way. Morrison drops many bits of clever ad insightful dialogue, and at any time you get the feeling he's making Batman great by exploring his strengths as well as almost surgically examining all of his contorted psyche. Because, for all the good he is and does, Bruce Wayne is still the enraged, obsessed, heartbroken kid he was when his parents were killed before his eyes. How subtly and brilliantly Morrison and artist Andy Kubert show all this! The close-up on Bruce's eyes as he's asked about his parents and says "I grew over it." just says it all. You can pretty much see the unresolved issues there, bordering on sheer and thankfully used for the general good madness. The Batman's violence is also played to the tune Frank Miller set in the Eighties: He kicks ass to extreme points, always stopping before killing and always without guns, but still maing up an impressive show of terror indeed. Lastly, Morrison draws upon Dickens' A Christmas Carol to weave through all of this a cautionary tale of three Batmans gone wrong, bad imitators of our hero and maybe a future heir in a dark time yet to come, in the closing chapter, which reminds us of how Morrison closes his X-Men run with a story set in the future too, bringing the mythos full circle as he explored yet another facet of it and made it eternal. Andy Kubert drwas the hell out of it all too. He has largely outgrown his X-Men days, reaching sheer brilliance in Ultimate Iron Ma and continuing on the same path here. The prose interlude is also not to be forgotten, as Morrisn writes a fantastic and scary and (of course!) deadly funny too Joker tale, throwing Harley Quinn and commissioner Gordon in as well. Threading abit of the same ground he thread in Arkham Asylum, Morrison explores the latest Joker self re-invention, as the madman non-persnality creates a new even more murderous self, who tries anew to start another killing rampage by killing all his henchmen... Until the Batman comes in, and all hell breaks loose in Arkham Asyu. Great story and absolutely fine prose. This is a must for Batman fans and not, and the set up for Morrison's still in progress work on the character, which I for one am very eager to see go on for as long as possible!Get more detail about Batman and Son.
No comments:
Post a Comment