Bruce Wayne With His Bat-Bots Is Just Creepy
Grant Morrison hits the accelerator this issue, racing through the establishment of Batman Incorporated to get many of the pieces in place in very short order.
This issue comes as a bit of a relief to readers like myself, who have been losing patience and feeling like it was taking forever for Batman Incorporated to take shape. This issue sets out to give us that shape and shows us the members of Batman, Inc. who have been recruited along with some new recruitments. Not everyone who appears on the cover actually appears in this issue, but many characters do appear. It is especially great to see Nightrunner make it into the pages of this series.
Is it completely satisfying, though? No, not completely. As stated, Morrison is rushing through the process in this issue, and that does leave a few things wanting. We get a little more of the African Batman, but... I still don't know what to call him other than African Batman. We strangely get a real name for him but not his codename. Similarly, Batman recruited the new Ranger in Australia, but there's no mention of the name Ranger. It took looking the character up on here to figure that out. Honestly, some of this stuff is Storytelling 101, but in rushing through, Morrison misses a few necessary steps.
Cassandra Cain also makes a surprise appearance, and... is this seriously what DC is going with for her character? Blackbat? That costume? I'm not exaggerating when I say I do not think anyone could come up with a lazier thing to do with the character. On a similar note, Red Robin and the Outsiders seems more like DC putting together two things they don't know what to do with than a genuinely interesting concept.
Morrison tackles the issue of Batman Incorporated compromising Batman's secret identity head on here. Along with the hiding in plain sight idea, he also goes with the ploy of clouding the issue by feeding conspiracy theories. It is a good attempt, but no, it really doesn't work. This has been one of the big problems with Batman, Inc., because I am having to strain my suspension of disbelief to the limits to cling to the idea that Bruce Wayne hasn't just effectively outed himself as Batman. Having Bruce stir up some internet conspiracy trolls does little to change that.
Chris Burnham is a capable artist who illustrates a lot of appealing panels in this issue, but good lord, he has some problems with facial expressions. Bruce Wayne looks freaking insane throughout the story. He would make the Joker feel uncomfortable. Burnham's art is fine otherwise. It's really just when we get Bruce looking like he has totally snapped that it starts to hurt the story. I really appreciate how he takes care to make Bruce and Dick's body types clearly different, even if the difference may be a little exaggerated.
This is not a perfect issue, but it is a good one that makes it feel like Morrison has steered the series back onto the track people were expecting for it. However, the rushed nature does leave some questions like who is that, why do some adopt the Bat symbol but not others and seriously, who is that. Morrison seems to have pulled in a lot of potentially interesting characters into this series, and hopefully, he will follow through on developing them.
