Written by Grant Morrison
Art by John Van Fleet
Cover by Andy Kubert
Morrison's run on Batman hasn't been as earth-shattering as one might have hoped--that shouldn't be too surprising. After all, regardless of how good Morrison can be, working on the regular mainstream Batman comic is difficult for even the best of comics creators. No matter how popular the author, Batman (the comic) is full-on corporate property, and anything that goes down in the book has to make it through an editorial process that limits the freedom of an author. Morrison is permitted to experiment all he wants on characters like Klarion and The Bulleteer--no one knows enough about those characters to fight him, and there aren't any movies in the mix to screw up. Batman is a different story.
Still, Morrison's first issues of Batman were frighteningly good stuff--wars set against museum pieces of Lichtenstein style art pieces, insanely ridiculous villains (played as straight as possible) and a return to what Morrison described as the "hairy chested love god" Batman. Then the story took an odd turn, nose-dived into a predictable finale (and Morrison is rarely, if ever, predictable) and the next issue showed up with Morrison and Kubert off the book. (On a hiatus while they got the next arc together.) With this issue, Morrison is back--Kubert handled the cover and returns in full force next month.
It's unknown whether this was an issue Morrison had planned all along--while it serves as a definite introduction to the upcoming Joker storyline, it seems a bit thrown together, like a late-night prequel while Kubert finishes penciling the upcoming chapters. Either way, it's one of those rare prose style-comics, where the art is in stark contrast to the words--line after line of unencumbered, unboxed language, presented in storybook style. In other words, Batman #663 is closer, and resembles, The Cat In The Hat a hell of a lot more than it resembles, say, Batman #664. As can be expected, it's initially a bit off-putting. Van Fleet's computerized art is one that wouldn't look out of place in a video-game's cut scenes, and the books overall ugliness is one that doesn't really reach the level of kitsch that it seems, at times, to be going for. Morrison's prose is about as uneven as one might guess--as brilliant a comics writer as he is, and as imaginative as he is, there's a reason Morrison doesn't write novels. That's not meant to be a slam--it's just a simple fact.
Still, the latest issue of Batman (when compared against every one of the last 300 issues) is without comparison as the most experimental issue of Batman ever. The fact that it's neither that great nor that experimental--well, let's just chalk that up as an "oh well." In the greater scheme of things, it is nice to pick up a super-hero comic that, by and large, doesn't read or look like any of the rest on the stands.
We just hope that next time the said comic will be compelling or attractive as well.
-Tucker Stone, 2007
This is the fairest, least reactionary review of this issue I've yet read. Not sure I agree about the assesment of Morrison's prose-- I had the impression it was deliberately overwritten, in the style those Denny O'Neill text pieces from the seventies. Deliberately very over-written might be a way of giving him the benefit of the doubt. Morrison's work for hire always has that heavy homage, pop historian element.
Like the blog, dude. I'll check back insometime.
Posted by: Ruairi | 2007.03.01 at 14:53