Batman Incorporated

Looking at its troubled release history, one would think that this collection should’ve been a complete mess.  The series originally shipped with two issues in its debut month with artist Yanick Paquette before going on hiatus and returning with two more from Paquette and Chris Burnham.  Then you had Paquette putting out one more with Burnham doing the next two over a few months and Scott Clark doing the final regular issue of the series before the DC relaunch all in CG.  Then, last November, you had “Leviathan Strikes!” a compilation/reworking of the three issues that were supposed to close out the title before the universe got rebooted from Cameron Stewart and Burnham.  Saying that this collection is “all over the place” in an artistic sense is putting it mildly.  Despite all this, there’s a coherence of vision from writer Grant Morrison that plows through the clashing visual styles as his ongoing “Batman” epic enters its next phase.

Picking up shortly after Bruce Wayne outed himself as Batman’s financial backer and announced the crimefighter’s plans to take the franchise global, we get to see him doing just that.  The first stop is Japan where he, with Catwoman’s help, seeks to recruit legendary local crimefighter Mr. Unknown but winds up running afoul of his nemesis Lord Death Man.  Then we’re off to Argentina and a reunion with El Gaucho, and a rematch with a member of The Black Glove that quickly spirals out into something much more.  How do the original Batwoman, Kathy Kane, master spy Doctor Dedalus, Indian reservation hero Man-Of-Bats, and the St. Hadrian’s School For Girls all tie in to the criminal organization known as Leviathan?  For that matter, which of Batman’s foes has the resources, cunning and motivation to engineer such an epic plan for his destruction?

On its face, the idea of a Batman specific to each country sounds like a ridiculous Silver Age idea that would lend itself to horrible ethnic stereotyping, such as France’s Batman having a ridiculous accent and an overbearing fondness for cheese, and other silliness that would dilute the uniqueness of the character.  Then you’d have other writers putting the concept to the torch as the concept is quietly swept under the rug.  Grant Morrison is not “other writers.”  As an avowed fan of that time and the crazy weirdness that sprung from it he not only has the guts to embrace it, but the skill to make it work in the modern era.  This allows him to pull off a fairly standard “sidekick replaces his mentor” story in the case of the opening arc by not only making Lord Death Man an unkillable violent sadist, but by working in Japan’s predilection for tentacles in its porn into a deathtrap involving a giant octopus in an apartment building.  Also, France’s Batman is a Muslim specialist in the art of parkour who goes by the alias Nightrunner.  So there.

Morrison also continues his “everything is true” approach to the “Batman” canon by finding a way to recast the original Batwoman, Kathy Kane, as the caped crusader’s first true love and one of the few women to actually break his heart.  Revisiting a character who hasn’t been in this universe since before I was born could’ve come off as forced, but the writer re-casts Kane as a determined thrill-seeker who convincingly manages to one-up our hero early on in his career.  Even the goofy Silver Age bits come off as fun, such as when she cites the Joker taking a hostage and running into the ladies’ room as but one example of a situation where she’d be better suited for the job than Batman.

The first five issues do a good job of juxtaposing the setup of “Batman Incorporated” with the fight against Leviathan, it doesn’t really come together until the sixth issue, “Nyktomorph.”  This is the highlight of the book as we finally see the big picture behind Batman’s plans for the franchise, the roles his supporting cast have in it, “Incorporated’s” necessity for fighting Leviathan and how effective it can be in fighting crime on a global scale.  You’d think that it would take more than one issue to effectively show all this, but Morrison squeezes it all into one with an efficiency that doesn’t undermine its drama or scope, and sold me on the concept more than anything else I’d read before it.

Though the majority of this volume is thoroughly enjoyable, there are parts where its reach exceeds its grasp.  A lot of this volume didn’t click for me until I read it a second time, but that’s because it is a very dense read which demands your attention.  However, certain sections such as the scenes with Doctor Dedalus come off as confusing and very hard to follow as Morrison plays up the character’s mind-warping capabilities to not always exceptional effect.  Then you’ve got the CG-rendered eight issue which takes place in Internet 3.0-land as we get Batman and Batgirl teaming up to fight cyber-crime after a meeting with Bruce and several other investors comes under attack by internet zombies.  While it’s clear that none of this is meant to be taken seriously on a technological level, the amount of cyber-babble becomes even more off-putting as a result.  Though artist Scott Clark’s work is impressive from a design standpoint, and the story still flows well enough in his hands, the CG comes off as painfully stiff and old-fashioned.  That’s “old-fashioned” in the sense that it’s being used to represent cyberspace which has not only been done before, but feels like the most obvious and therefore boring way of rendering it.  The whole issue makes you wish that one of Morrison’s more inventive collaborators, say J.H. Williams III or Doug Mahnke, had been given a crack at the material.

So while Clark is the weak link in terms of the art in this volume, the other three artists still acquit themselves well in spite of their stylistic differences.  Paquette’s style is more suited to traditional supeheroics, but he’s more than willing to embrace the weirdness present in Morrison’s vision — particularly in the sequences set in Japan.  Stewart’s contribution is up to his usual standards and the fun he has with the academy of killer schoolgirls (and nicking the likenesses of certain female pop music artists) is infectious.  However, the standout here is Chris Burnham who owes a clear stylistic debt to frequent Morrison collaborator Frank Quitely, but with a more cartoonish vibe.  There’s a quirky energy to his work that mixes perfectly with the Silver Age vibe that permeates this book, but he’s also perfectly capable of tweaking his style to darker effect.  The scenes with Doctor Dedalus exemplify this perfectly, along with his willingness and capability for being able to draw anything that Morrison throws at him.

Burnham has been announced as the (hopefully only) artist on the final leg of Morrison’s Bat-epic, the twelve-issue “Batman:  Leviathan” series set to debut any week now.  Not only is it great to see that the conclusion is in good artistic hands, but the final conflict and stakes have been established beautifully here.  Though his run has had its weak points, and parts where it was a bit too ambitious for its own good, that same ambition has led to some of the best stories featuring the character in the past few years.  Everything in this volume, warts and all, indicates that the resolution will be nothing less than awesome.