I was going to wait until the end of "Final Crisis" to review it but they've gone and killed Batman today so I have to speak up.
For years there's been the idea of how Batman knows he could die any day, "It could be the Joker, or Two-Face, or some punk who gets lucky...", well it turns out that Batman, who fights evil in the alleys of Gotham has been killed by an evil God from an alternate dimension who has taken over Earth. "Darkseid" lives after all the New Gods were killed and have seemingly been resurrected in human form here on Earth. And he killed Batman with is laser vision, for lack of a better term.
Batman R.I.P. - after the horribly confusing "Batman RIP" storyline, marketed as the end of Bruce Wayne as Batman, I didn't think they could screw up any worse. But here we have Batman surviving an exploding helicopter, only to have been captured by a couple of these New Gods and tortured. Nightwing, Alfred, Robin et al think Bruce is dead and have no idea he's fighting for his life in some underground lair. Or at least he was. After shooting Darkseid with a radion bullet (the only thing that can harm the New Gods) Bats gets exploded, we even get to see his body, held by the until-this-moment-absent Superman (who bursts back into our time after an adventure in the future, just as Bats gets offed).
Confused yet? I've been reading comics for 20 years and even I'm put off by this silliness.
Grant Morrison is the writer and he writes as if everyone knows what he's thinking, like the story is just the cliff notes and we're supposed to know what he meant. Well, "Final Crisis" has one more issue to go and after 6 issues (plus tie-in/crossover books), I have very little idea of what the hell is going on. The only way I find out what the hell I just spent my money on and read, is to go on blogs and message boards and find someone's synopsis because there is always a billion other people also asking "What the hell did I just read?".
Now we have to read "Battle for the Cowl" as Dick, Tim and who knows who else has to decide who's going to fill Bruce's shoes. The boring part is that everyone knows that, somehow, Batman didn't actually die today and Bruce will be back within the year. Captain America got killed over at Marvel and it made sense, he's still dead a year later and his book is one of the best on the shelves. It wasn't announced or marketed, he just got assassinated and we all went "WTF!?" and though we know he'll most likely return, at least there's a damn good story being told in the meantime. DC needs to watch Marvel and do as they do, you damn monkeys.
