You have to hand it to Grant Morrison, few writers can turn complete inconsistency into a successful career the way he has. Currently all the Batman titles are biding their time waiting for the return of Bruce Wayne. In order to fill some issues, Batman #701 and now #702 have both been dedicated to a close up view of the last hours of Bruce Wayne as Batman before the Omega Sanction sent him into the time vortex.
The idea itself is pretty cool. Morrison even managed to reign in his own shortcomings making issue #701 really interesting and fun to read. Not so much with issue #702. At some point Morrison decided he was making too much sense and had to slip back into his normal routine of nonsensical meanderings.
Batman #702 opens twenty-seven days before the “Omega Shot Heard Round The World” as all the heroes rush to try and stop the Darkseid plan dealt with during Final Crisis. Here’s the ridiculous part, the part that is so richly Grant Morrison it hurts. Final Crisis is a convoluted, badly structured, all around mess that made next to zero sense during it’s run.
Jump ahead a couple of years and now you have Morrison adding new unnecessary plot points into a story that started out bad and now has been largely forgotten. To even remotely follow Batman #702 you’d have to break out your old issues of Final Crisis because Morrison doesn’t care about the reader, he wants everybody to know how off center he is.
The new elements have to do with a God Bullet lost in a batch of cement because it was shot backwards in time, an Alpha Lantern named Kraken, flashbacks, and a few other tidbits thrown in just to be frustrating. Morrison also managed to make the scene where we see what Batman felt when the Omega Sanction hit him completely laughable.
The entire thing is so heavy handed and written with such pretension that you can’t do anything but laugh. I can’t tell if Morrison is really so self-important he thinks his writing is any good or if it’s all performance art looking to take the piss out of a character he feels has gotten too serious.
Tony Daniel’s art is, well, brilliant as always. Few have mastered how to draw Batman the way Daniel has. It’s a perfect blend of what came before and Daniel’s own personal style. The opening page shot of Superman is one of my favorite Superman pencils in recent memory. Daniel is so good with motion, shadow and mood it’s worth the awful script just to check out the art in #702. I wish they’d get a writer that can match the artwork panel for panel. That would land Batman in the top five of comics currently out there.
The saving grace with Batman #702 is that it’s the second part of a throw away arc, a way to waste time before Bruce Wayne shows up and things go awry. Personally, I would hope even throwaway issues would warrant some kind of respect for the characters but apparently not. I just hope Grant Morrison turns his sights on some other hero, the damage he’s done to Batman is enough already.
