It's been a big year for Batman. There was the anticipation of THE DARK KNIGHT, the metric ton of marketing, commercials everywhere, then the movie itself. I made my feelings on it abundantly clear, I didn't like the movie. Still everyone had bats on the brain, especially with the impending "Batman R.I.P." Fans were in a tizzy wondering how on earth could DC dare to kill off Bruce Wayne. How could they do it? Who would replace him? In fact, even now that the storyline has come to a close there's still so many questions in the air. "Battle for the Cowl" will determine who will be the next Batman.
Just one tiny iddy biddy problem with this: Bruce Wayne ain't dead. He's still Batman.
Unfortunately DC editorial didn't get the memo. I blame grant Morrison's accent for this. Obviously, Dan DiDio couldn't understand the words coming out of Morrison's mouth when he told the fat controller the Bruce Wayne doesn't die. Otherwise he wouldn't have turned the storyline into an 'event' and had every Bat-related comic tie into it.
How do you write a story dealing with the ramifications of the death of a character when the character is just fine and continues to appear in comics. Peter Tomasi nailed it perfectly last week in NIGHTWING #151. There was a brilliant scene at the end of the issue in which yes, Bruce Wayne was missing and instead of going nuts searching for him, Dick Grayson, Tim Drake and Alfred the Butler popped some popcorn, made smooties and watched a movie on Wayne Manor's home theater system. Tomasi green lit the R.I.P. storyline when he editor. Unfortunately Tomasi proved himself to be competent so he's not an editor anymore. Fortunately he's writing the most enjoyable NIGHTWING run since Chuck Dixon.
R.I.P. has been handled poorly in every respect outside of the execution of the story itself. It was marketed horribly, misleading readers. It was turned into as 'event' when really it the final chapter of Morrison's storyline. This story also referenced a ton of old Batman stories which DC didn't see fit to reprint before hand. They are making up for it by putting out THE BLACK CASEBOOK next year to go along with the trade of "Batman R.I.P." which will be collecting the stories in question. That's a whole other can of worms since it shares the same name and page count as THIS. The compiler of that torrent was never contacted by DC which they don't have to since it is DC's property being collected. Still, credit needs to go where it's supposed to. This guy did it first, and did it when it could help readers fully understand what's going on. He did DC's job for them and did it for free.
So now we've got Bat-books on hiatus or being canceled to be relaunched. That or other titles will pop up to replace them. Don't forget the next event which will answer the questions not caused by the last one, but thrown out there by rabid shortsighted fanboys and an editorial staff that needs to go back to editing storylines, not creating them. All because no one wanted to listen to the writer when he tried to tell people not to go nuts.
I'm going to go what the Tim Burton BATMAN flick now. Just to calm my nerves.
No comments:
Post a Comment