Seems an ok week, but I wanna talk about BATMAN: RIP
But first, mousover spoiler space.
Th’ fuck? So–after like 3 years/~30 issues, the big revelation is that Dr. Hurt either is or isn’t Thomas Wayne? And he is or isn’t some look-alike actor? And that Bruce may or may not be dead? And Hurt’s motive is eeeee-vil? Not specific evil, mind you, no. Just generalized eeee-vil. This wasn’t an ending, this was a dribble-off.
What a horrible let-down. Did I miss something? Cause if I didn’t, this ending just sucked. I mean, Morrison’s not one for characterization (Barry Allen returned 4 issues of Final Crisis ago and the sum total of the reaction we get is “Huh. How 'bout that.” :rolleyes: ) but up 'till now, at least he understood how to end a story.
I just read the Paul Dini Detective run that was concurrent with Morrison’s Batman run and for all that Morrison’s Batman was more imaginative (I love ninja manbat assassins working for Talia), Dini’s run was so damned much more satisfying to me–I loved the Zatanna appearances and the new Ventriloquist was fantastic. Dini even made Hush interesting (and Hush, 'till now, has been the lamest villian since Bane).
No-one? I can’t have been the only one to get this week’s comics.
And the Batman RIP thing gets worse–a reread makes clear all sorts of errors (how’d he change back into his regular suit from the Zurr-En-Arr one? Why didn’t Alfred make Damien stop when Damien ran an ambulance off a bridge?) plus, reading a bunch of other message board comments show that most people think that Dr. Hurt is…get this…the devil.
Of course, there’s no hint that of that beforehand and the “clues” are that Dr. Hurt talks like…well…just about any comic-book psycho bad-guy (“I am the hole in the zero! The puzzle piece that does not fit!”). So I’m not really sure how everyone’s getting the Devil from that.
The big secret in Bruce’s past is revealed and that’s that Thomas Wayne was sad that if Zorro was real, they’d have put ZORro IN ARkam. L’il Bruce didn’t catch that clearly…he only heard Zor In Ar–Zurr En Arrh–geddit? But Thomas wasn’t being disparaging of the Zorro concept–he was expressing regret. So the “big reveal” that Thomas spit on Bruce’s life’s work…doesn’t really make sense.
I had Nova and Guardians of the Galaxy in the pull box this week, and I picked up Hulk as well. Nova was good, as usual, but I hope he doesn’t stay on Earth too long. I like him as a cosmic hero. Guardians is alright, but not nearly as good as Nova, despite having the same writers. It’s just kind of muddling along. Hulk seems like a pretty good book. I got last month’s too, and I plan on getting it next month to finish out the storyline. I may go back and get the issues I missed, too.
Trinity: Not thrilled with this book. I might wind up dropping it. It’s good to know that I have a weekly book to look forward to, except that I don’t look forward to it all that much.
Yeah, I want to like Trinity, but it’s just not clicking with me at all–frankly, I attribute it to Fabien N–whatshisname. He’s not a bad writer, but I don’t like his writing and anything he touches turns to “eh” for me.
That said, it’s STILL better than Countdown (but hey, then so was “Street Poet Ray” or “The Green Team”.
I have been enjoying Trinity. But I get my stuff once a month, so I have been getting 4 or 5 issues at a time and reading them all at once. The story flows well that way. And I am going to gather all of RIP when it is done and read all of them at once also. It is the only way I can really get most of Morrison’s stuff.
What I find amusing is how journalists (who know nothing of the ways of comic books) are absolute suckers for this stuff. Grant Morrison duly obliges them (tongue firmly in cheek).
It was bad resolution, but at least it WAS one. The Scissormen arc or the Painting That Ate Paris arc both had endings–I’m not sure I could explain them (the magnetic chick becomes a one-eyed faceless thing) but at least they had endings. Ditto with his JLA arcs.
Could have been worse. It could have been Invisibles. I’ve really tried to like Morrison but he’s yet to write a book in the long term that I enjoy. There’s moments of cleverness but it never comes together as an interesting story. I get the impression from some of his pretentious twaddle… er… serious works that I am supposed to be impressed by the random crap he just throws in but it typically lacks meaning, purpose, or context. Anyone can say “And then (noun)(verb that noun typically doesn’t do) and went after (famous noun).” Being clever means that you do that and it makes sense afterward.
If I’m posting to gripe I might as well mention that I’ve hit volume 17 on Lone Wolf and Cub and I’m angry off that volume 15 (that’s Grasscutter II) of Usagi Yojimbo is apparently out of print and fairly rare.
