Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Batman, Inc. and the Grant Morrison Complexity

The announcement of Batman, Inc. is nothing new. It's where Bruce Wayne decides he's going to fund and train heroes all over the planet to fight crime, like a corporation. Maybe. I haven't read whether all of the heroes he's training will dress as Batman and Robin, nor do I care to find out.

B,I. is being written by Grant Morrison, the bane of my comic reading. This is the guy responsible for non-sensical messes such as "New X-Men" (Before Academy X took on the name), Batman RIP, and Final Crisis. By his own admission, Morrison does not "write the character." He comes up with his bullshit and then crams it into whatever book he's been hired to write and most of the time his characters all read the same, spouting off phrases that aren't usually even complete sentences.

So why do people like Grant Morrison? I have no idea. Maybe it's under the same category as why people like some indie/foreign films, the "I have no idea what's going on, therefore, it's the best thing ever..." principle. Maybe some people have just as disjointed a mind as his and actually understand his words in the order in which they are written. I don't. Maybe it is just me, but half the time I can't figure out why the words are in the order they are, coming from the character's they are, and why I continue to read his bullshit. Maybe it's just so I don't fall behind entirely on DC Comics' continuity or that they keep putting him in charge of big DC events.

His recent offense, The Return of Bruce Wayne, is capped off with all the characters continuing to read exactly the same, spouting phrases that make no sense and reads like a child wrote some really terrible fanfics (not all fanfics are terrible, mind you, but this reads like a bad one). The kicker here? Now he introduces big, science-y words into the dialogue, which don't make sense in the context in which they're used. I would copy down some examples, but doing so would mean I'd have to reread his mental vomit, which would cause me to physically vomit, and thanks to the flu, that's not something I want to do right now. It's like he used Google to look up "Science" and just started inserting what he found into his writing, like some giant Mad-Lib.

And all of this just continues to run the Batman character into the ground. His latest move (aside from the aforementioned Return of Bruce Wayne debacle) was having Wayne announce to the world that he's been secretly funding Batman for years, but he is absolutely, positively not Batman. Yeah. Right. Like anyone is supposed to believe that. It's like Tony Stark trying to tell people he isn't Iron Man...again. Would anyone believe him at this point? Once that announcement is made, wouldn't anyone with half a brain be able to figure out Bruce is Batman?

So thank you, Grant Morrison, and by extension, Detective Comics, for ruining Batman comics for a generation of readers...

Also, today is Lou Ferrigno's birthday. Happy birthday Mr. Hulk. But you still owe me money.

No comments:

Post a Comment