Okay, so, I haven’t really been keeping up with Marvel comics. I’ve been busy trying to read the Civil War, while they’re already three events ahead of me: Secret Invasion, Dark Reign, and the newest one called “Siege.” From what I can gather, Dark Reign has been about Norman Osborne fucking shit up, and Siege is about further shit being fucked up. If you’ll excuse the incredible crude, and base, description of it all. At some point during this, Tony Stark fell victim to something, and has been out of commission. Which seems kind of odd, but they always have plans for this.

So, to celebrate Tony coming back from the brink of whatever, they’ve decided to give him some new armor, which looks roughly like this

That’s not a particularly bad design. One of the designers, who happens to be involved with both the upcoming Thor and Iron Man movies, Matt Fraction, had this to say:

“The inspiration for the new design came from thinking about a sleeker, leaner, tougher Iron Man,” revealed Fraction. “If technology is increasingly getting smaller and lighter it seems like the Iron Man should do the same: ergonomic and aerodynamic. We were looking for something that felt as sleek and glossy as a sports car Tony Stark would covet. I love what we’ve come up with. It feels like the next evolutionary step in the Iron Man’s design.”

Which is a good idea, really, and shows that they aren’t complete idiots whenever it comes to character determination for things like this– costumes and so forth– it’s an interesting design, I’ll say that much. However, I’m not entirely sure how to react to it as a whole. I feel like the drawing itself that’s been given to people isn’t entire complete in its idea. There’s something about it that’s missing. While it may be true that technology, as it advances, compresses so to speak (look at the evolution of the television from the large rotary ones to the fact that you may very well be reading this on a phone about the size of your hand and thinner than a checkbook) there is still the issue of the armor. Of course, given the fact that Marvel exists in a universe where a fictional, indestructible metal called “Adamantium” exists, this isn’t really an issue so much as it is an inconvenience and an excuse for people to complain. Some of these lights look a little superfluous, but this is comic books and superfluousness is something that exists in large heaping masses.

Of course, there is still Ultimate Comics: Iron Man: Armor Wars and the, what I believe was called “iMan” if you want absurdly streamlined technology for your comic books.

For now, I’ll support the costume change, though I think Ultimate Iron Man probably has the best Iron Man suit.

I am fairly certain, from reading #3, that the person involved with this storyline has never actually read Marvel 1602, and has no idea what he’s doing. I mean that with respect, of course. I say this because Henri Le Pym, the Hank Pym analogue for this story who works for “Baron Octavius” the obvious Doc Ock analogue (who seems to have tentacles, or at least his hands bear suction cups similar in nature to an octopus) has a man in his captivity named “McCoy” who looks not unlike some kind of feral, beast like animal. McCoy describes himself as one of the greatest minds of the era, and a number of other things. However, there’s an issue here.

There was already a Beast analogue– Hal McCoy of the Witchbreeds led by Carlos Javier– and this man was not any kind of philosopher or anything of the sort. He was also Beast without any kind of major mutations. Simply the original form. This new McCoy lacks the large hands and feet and stature, and instead just looks like a rather hairy individual. So, either we’re to believe that Hal was kidnapped and believes himself to be something else entirely, or this is an instance of someone wanting to bring in a character, and couldn’t find some way to shoehorn the guy in there. It’s disappointing, really, that the person couldn’t be bothered to remember that McCoy already existed, and wanted to bring in Wasp, Ant Man and a bunch of other people who weren’t entirely Spider-Man oriented.

They’ve also brought in the Watsons– here “Watsonnes”– with Marion Jane as an actress. I understand that sometimes names need to be changed for the sake of the literature, however, “Marion”? The name “Mary” existed then, and if anything, why not call her “Miriam” or something like that? Are we channeling Maid Marion here? And furthermore, why bring in any kind of analogue to Mary Jane, but not bring in Gwen Stacey? Who was, really, a much more significant character in Parker’s life. Unless Virginia Dare, in this instance, was taking her place.

Perhaps the only thing worth looking at in this comic is the use of Kingpin and Bullseye. Specifically, these two are now pirates– The King’s Pin (I am not entirely sure what that means. I would have simply used his real name.), and Bull’s Eye– and they are probably the best translated to the new universe. Specifically Bullseye. This new incarnation is a tattooed pirate, with a white bullseye on his forehead. He keeps his knife throwings and everything, and seems to be rather focused on killing Peter Parker. Which is interesting, because he’s a Daredevil villain and Murdoch doesn’t exist in this book (though he could easily fit).

I don’t know what’s going on with this story to be perfectly honest. I’ve tried, several times, to read through these first three issues in an attempt to make sure I follow it, and I can’t. It’s just not good. There’s too many things that don’t fit the universe, and too many instances of the writer simply leading me to believe that he doesn’t care about the story. I won’t keep reading this so don’t expect anything more detailed than this in the future.

It’s just disappointing that 1602 has been reduced to this. It was rather promising.

I’ve been following the Justice League since I first got into comics in 2005. The first JLA books I read were “Year One” and the “Tower of Babel” arc from the actual series “JLA”. It was a piece of art, to say the least. The wonders that Batman had come up with in an effort to take down his teammates, and the fallout in “Divided We Fall” were all wonderful to read and I was completely engrossed with every incredibly epic (used here in the sense of “dealing with this on an epic scale” not in the sense of “EPIC WIN!”) page and story. I followed it up until the Crisis of Conscience, and the Infinite Crisis connections. The last issues of the book were disappointing to say the least, and the not the kind of thing that even really FELT like the Justice League.

That’s when I found out that Brad Meltzer, who had written one of my favorite arcs in the Green Arrow book, as well as Identity Crisis, would be doing the first several issues in the newest JLA book, and it would go back to the name “Justice League of America”. I was excited. I anxiously read through issue #0, taking in the different aspects of the Yesterdays and Tomorrows of the different artists under him, wondering which aspects would be true. I hoped that, while it would not be the same creature of Morrison and Waid, that it would hold its own well.

Then I read the first issues. I was blown away with The Tornado’s Path. The agony of the tragedy of Red Tornado is something that still, ever so slightly, makes me feel for him. Meltzer’s characters have always had a human quality about them that I found particularly enjoyable. I felt for Reddy, as he went through a number of new experiences in his human body, only to have it all ripped away from him by a newly developed Solomon Grundy as his friends attempted to beat an Amazo who hadn’t quite had all of his memories of Red Tornado removed.

And in the end, Reddy was a robot with a soul again, but now he had the knowledge of what it means to be a human. And he really would never recover. Meltzer made a point of showing that. He had seen the other side, and he was slowly becoming detached from it all. Perhaps a kind of depression.

“The Lightning Saga”, combined with the wonder Geoff Johns’ Justice Society was another fantastic story that also brought the human emotions that DC characters sometimes lack and that Johns and Meltzer can sometimes bring to a story. Watching the Legion talk, and recover, and wondering just who it was they were going to bring back. And seeing the disappointment in the eyes of the old leaguers whenever, once again, Barry Allen stays dead, is something that strikes me.

However, Meltzer really left after all of these. He moved on to other things and other writers took over. We were introduced to a new Injustice League, and while it was nice to see a new Injustice thing, for the sake of the story, it felt kind of out of place compared to the rather personal stories that had just taken place. And on the whole I feel like this was the beginning of the end of the League.

The one arc that saved it, in a unique was, was the Anansi arc that took place just before the big stuff that’s going on now, if memory serves. Vixen (who had recently had a number of issues with her powers) met up with the African trickster entity Anansi, here declaring that he was the one who developed her powers, and had connections to Animal Man. Reality was being altered by the Spider, because all stories are Spider stories, to indirectly quote Neil Gaiman.

The Anansi arc was interesting in different respects. There was no Luthor or anything, and it felt a bit like “Divided We Fall” in the way it was. Anansi shifted the truth into new stories, and we watched as characters changed. And sometimes in rather interesting ways that I would actually like to see done.

In particular: Bruce Wayne underwent a rather drastic change. As we all know, following visit to see The Mask of Zorro, Bruce’s parents were killed. Well, in the New Story, it was a western, I believe. And Bruce, in turn, killed the person who murdered his parents. Instead of Batman, he became Paladin. And he was a killer.

He was a fugitive, a kind of Punisher in old-west gear and it was interesting to read and I wondered just how much more you could work with a man who killed his enemies. You would need a mini series, obviously.

Other characters changed, Superman and Wonder Woman married, and so forth. In the end, this storyline ended much too soon.

Of course, it’s not just storylines that have had issue. Black Canary, at the beginning, was made the chairwoman of the JLA, something that she took great pride in, and something that was slowly subverted by the Trinity (one of the given names for Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman) with the three of them going so far as to develop a pocket dimension wherein they could hold meetings. Canary found out about this, and this, along with general poor writing and wishes for various paths, led to the breakdown of the League almost completely after the events of Final Crisis.

The original team was gone. Black Canary still led the team, but it wasn’t entirely something worth leading. Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and a few others were gone. They had left for various reasons. Instead, the team still contained Vixen and Red Arrow (Roy Harper, who was once Arsenal and Speedy. Not my favorite choice, as I thought Arsenal was a fine character type, but there’s been a need for Johns and Meltzer’s stories to kind of bring Kingdom Come into continuity despite it being a part of the multiverse) however they were greeted with the arrival of the female incarnation of Dr. Light and a few other people.

The team was no longer the A-Team or even the B-Team. It was a collection of B and C level characters, some of them who had last existed in a League book whenever was the Justice League International. The only major characters who were involved were Green Arrow, Green Lantern, and Black Canary. But even then there was trouble, as Arrow and Lantern defected and gave us the wholly forgettable mini-series “Cry for Justice” wherein we watch as a bunch of wonderfully drawn panels tell a story that I honestly can’t remember anything about after having read all that’s come out.

Things have gone on in this book for a while, and I’m hoping that, soon, things will work out and the League will turn into what it was. However, what it is happens to be something that’s barely worth reading. The most recent issue of the book is issue number 40 as of this writing. It consisted of Vixen, Black Canary, an incredibly deformed Plastic Man (I actually missed issues 37-38, and have difficult remembering before then, so I’m not sure what Eel is doing there), Doctor Light, another female I can’t remember, and then Zatanna all being attacked by the various Black Lanterns that have formed from the old rogues.

One of which is your friend and mine, the original Doctor Light. Dead-Light decides that the best course of action would be to attempt to rape Living-Light because obviously the guy does nothing but want to rape women, talk about rape, and do rape-y things because this is character development as opposed to beating a dead horse. So the issue ends with a bunch of broken Black Lanterns, a naked Living-Light, and all of the other people from there looking all distracted and worried and serious and in all honestly it’s something I would have rather not read, however, I keep hoping that this series will start to get better.

I don’t know when I’ll stop following it, if I will. The stories are incredibly disappointing anymore, with, as I said, the Anansi arc being the best one that existed after Meltzer left the book. I don’t expect Meltzer to join back onto it, but can we at least get something worth reading again?

Zatanna and Black Canary are both supposed to be incredibly strong characters. Not necessarily physically, but Zatanna is one of the greatest magic users in the DCU. Canary is a fantastic martial artist and was part of the Birds of Prey setup for a while. Vixen has the ability to call upon animal spirits and so forth to give her the ability to PUNCH A HOLE THROUGH AMAZO. Why are these women being written like helpless little girls?

Why has Doctor Light been written like a housewife who can sometimes make bright things happen with her hands? These aren’t these characters.

Is it too much to ask that the characters be written like superheroines?

…but all in good time. Let’s get down to business, shall we?

THE RESISTANCE
The first album up for review is the newest offering from Teignmouth, UK’s number one collection of prog/gloom rockers Muse. The long-awaited follow-up to 2006’s iconic Black Holes & Revelations, Muse’s The Resistance has arrived to a storm of hype, a viral internet game, a tour with U2, and a gnashing of teeth by those nice people at Pitchfork waiting desperately to chew Matthew Bellamy to pieces. But aside from all of that, how does The Resistance stack up as an album? Well.

The short answer is stupid, overblown and pretentious and most importantly, stupid. But if you’re a fanboy, you probably want the long answer.

I’ve probably listened to this album more times than I care to admit, but that’s not due to any kind of real enjoyment that comes from the experience; it just makes good background music for killing the shit out of mobs in Guild Wars. In fact, that’s probably what the majority of this album could be described as: soundtrack music.

The LP opens up with the Blondie/Dr. Who shout-along “Uprising,” with a hint of Marilyn Manson’s “Personal Jesus” cover thrown in for a bit of extra bite. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of this, and while the track is nothing spectacular, it does give a strong opening hook for the album to play from. Plus, who doesn’t love a good faux-punk shout-along track on a swing beat?

Once we get to the titular “Resistance,” though, the whole thing starts to fall apart. Between the turgid U2-isms, the idiotic, overwrought 1984 lyrics, and a chorus that drags on for just a bit too long, Resistance quickly murders any momentum Uprising built beforehand. The album limps from there through “Undisclosed Desires,” a clear attempt to re-capture the R&B syncopated glory of Black Holes & Revelations’ “Supermassive Black Hole,” only without the cutting riffs that made the latter such a pleasure to listen to. From there we get to the viral marketing ploy/Queen tribute/Oh-God-Bellamy-put-the-fucking-tinfoil-hat-down anthem “United States of Eurasia (+ Collateral Damage).”

And the worst part about this overwrought, unapologetic orchestral-rock-opera-the-government-is-coming-to-destroy-you-and-murd er-your-children mess? It’s probably the best track on the album. Queen comparisons go here.

After that comes “Guiding Light,” which is basically Bellamy masturbating onto recording tape with his synthesizer while trying to pull off his best Vangelis impression. At this point I’m convinced Muse would be a pretty good hair metal band.

Things finally pick up again with “Unnatural Selection,” a straight-up rocker that confirms that Muse have finally stopped ripping Radiohead off and taken to ripping themselves off instead (see also: “New Born”). Despite the copy-paste riff, the bland vocals and the bizarre organ opening, the song itself does have a few good hooks and can make a fun listen, if you don’t take it very seriously. “MK Ultra,” aside from having one of the best song titles ever, does have a certain Dream Theater-esque charm, though by this point the lyrics have already gone back to the Alex Jones News Story of the Week in thematic terms.

If by this point you haven’t given up on this album or were too busy merc’ing the Lich in Hell’s Precipice to Guiding Light, there’s one more song and a final, exhausting run through a three-piece “symphony” that closes the album in a bugged-out, new-prog space-rock (?) mess. First comes the sleazy “I Belong To You,” perhaps one of the more creative songs on the album, complete with an ill-advised clarinet solo (seriously?), a ballad-y, unholy attempt by Bellamy to sing in French, and some less-than-stellar piano acrobatics.

Then comes the Final Boss of the album, Exogenesis: Symphony.

The first part isn’t bad. After some sweet string melodies, followed by Phillip Glass-esque scales, the song finally introduces itself with some space-y guitar work and undeniably vapid lyrics (“Who are we? What are we? Why are we?”). It’s theatrical bordering on the maudlin. Again, this is something enjoyable to listen to if you don’t take it very seriously.

The second part banishes the oh-so-pretty strings in favour of Bellamy’s desire to show off his Rachmaninoff-esque piano noodling. Only instead of adding any flavour of technical virtuoso to the track, it comes off as completely directionless. Then there’s some epic opera rock about spreading codes to stars, but by this point I’ve become so inundated to this kind of bullshit that I’ve just given up trying to make sense of this album.

Finally comes a Chopin/Liszt-style piano piece about forgiveness and starting over. Saccharine and mostly forgettable.

So, towards the end of the review I was working out a long-winded essay on why I’ve been a Muse fan all of these years, but after enduring this album (and writing this review) it’s not hard to say that I’ve found my ‘Guiding Light,’ which is telling me to never spend money on a Muse album again.

I rate this album one poorly-written libretto out of five.

To use the Marvel phrase “What if the heroes all first came about in 1602?” And it was a marvelous little piece of work, if you were into it. I loved seeing just how everyone had been manipulated, forced into a situation that was wholly unnatural, even for Marvel. Nick Fury as military man under Queen Elizabeth, and so on. It was a fantastic little thing that made the universe seem very real.

As it’s been known to happen, following Neil’s work, a number of spin-offs came about. One of which was like “1602: New World” and the other was “1602: Fantastick Four”. Each of them introduced a few new characters such as Namor, and Iron Man (though the 1602 incarnation of Iron Man seemed significantly more implausible than his mainstream counterpart, simply because of Marvel’s tendency to develop absurdly advanced science even in the 1960s.) as well as others that I’ve likely forgotten because the stories themselves were wholly forgettable.

However, this year, someone apparently decided to revive the franchise of 1602 by creating a Spider-Man mini series in the universe. So, the first issue is out, and I’m curious as to if it’s got any promise in this issue. I have my doubts, but it’s mostly because New World and Fantastick Four were, essentially cash-in books (I mean that as nicely as that kind of thing can be said).

And, truth be told, with the first issue down, so far that’s really all it feels like. There seems to be something lost in the transition between the writers. The writers of New World and Fantastick Four lacked the kind of whimsy that made Gaiman’s 1602 so appealing. Everything now seems to be a cross between attempting to shoehorn in various people from the Marvel universe, sometimes in unsavory ways, while other instances just seem to not make sense.

The biggest issue I’ve found so far is with costumes. Parker wears basically his regular clothes and a Spider-Man mask. There’s no attempt to make it even appear to be fitting into the era, it’s simply the same Spider-Man mask that he always wears. The covers to the comics give the impression that he has an outfit that vaguely resembles the Spider-Man costume were it placed in 1602, but he doesn’t wear that.

Ultimately, I feel like this comic is gearing up to be a disappointment. 1602 is really awkward kind of setting, since if you don’t do it right, you’re going to end up annoying everyone because you just have established something in an already decent continuity, but it’s somewhere so far removed from the original vision that you might as well make something else entirely.

However, a few of the interesting things established in this are the introduction of who I believe to be Doctor Octopus, as well as The Wasp. The Wasp being a victim of an experiment gone wrong, and in a jar. I’m curious enough about these characters, and if Spider-Man actually gets a new costume, to keep reading this series. Once it’s finished I’ll give a full write up, but at the moment it’s not something I’m really looking forward to finishing.

With only two issues out there, I’m already hooked on this series.

I’ve never read anything before of Christos, so I didn’t know what to expect with this book. However, I’m more than willing, after seeing this, to read more. But enough. Let’s talk about this book. This is described on the purchasing page for the comic at Comic Cavalcade as:

ABSOLUTION introduces John Dusk, a superhero in a world where they’re a sanctioned arm of law enforcement. But this veteran hero has been scarred by his exposure to man’s infinite capacity for evil, and he’s seen one too many perpetrators escape justice. One day he crosses the line…lets a murderer die…and discovers it feels good. Surrounded by sociopaths, both human and superhuman, who he knows will prey on others if they’re not stopped–permanently–how far will he go, knowing every step he takes puts him further on a collision course with his teammates Alpha and The Servant, not to mention his homicide detective girlfriend?

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a vigilante-gone-wrong comic, but there’s something about this book that just strikes me as really interesting so far. There’s just something about it that’s appealing to me, and I think part of it has to do with how the book, so far, just isn’t a generic superhero book. One of the things that’s nice, for instance, is the oddly practical look of the costume which you can see in the link I posted up there. The suit is armored, and the pants of it look kind of like jeans. The helmet is a helmet. It looks like something someone might actually wear if they needed a suit like that.

The muscle definition, then, is justified.

I can’t, given the little bit that’s been shown in issues #0 and #1 properly determine if I’m going to accurately like this book, but I think I will. The way the man seems genuinely haunted by the things he’s seen in the past, and takes it out in a brutal way while simultaneously trying to avoid being caught by his love is an interesting conflict that I’d like to see elaborated on.

He also has an interesting looking power that I’d like to see developed more. He creates something to the effect of glowing tendrils that he uses to get around, and manipulate his surroundings. It’s like a, if you’ll excuse the awkward phrasing, tangible telekinesis. Or like Doctor Octopus if it was energy instead of robot arms.

I can’t wait to see where it goes. I wholly recommend this book.

But somewhere along the time something happened I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it. I had, earlier, complained about how “Ultimates 3” was basically a sham, and a disgrace to the Ultimate Marvel line. Poor storytelling by means of blending 616 Marvel aspects and Ultimate into something that wholly failed to resemble anything and everything I had considered to be part of the continuity of the story. It was something that felt so unlike what I had read before that I was fairly certain (which was perpetuated by rumors on the Comic Book Resource forums among other places) that “Ultimates 3” was essentially a 616 story that Loeb had manipulated into Ultimate Marvel.

I had hoped, following that, Loeb would leave. I wanted to make sure that my image of Loeb hadn’t been tarnished. It wasn’t, completely, tainted by the story. After all I still had the stories I read first, back when I thought he had decent stories to tell. And the rest of the Ultimate Universe, barring inclusions of Greg Land and similar people, was a more or less peaceful situation with stories that were genuinely interesting, as well as surprising takes on different aspects of the 616 continuity– such as the Ultimate Clone Saga.

Loeb, of course, didn’t leave. And, in the end, I’m not surprised or disappointed or outraged or anything. I knew he was tapped to do the Ultimate Marvel event titled “Ultimatum” and, following my disappointment in the “Ultimates 3” book, I simply decided to not read the story through. I read the first issue and stopped.

Well, recently I decided to go back and actually read the story, since it has finished, and I wanted to see what happened to the characters I had grown fond of, and the actions that led to the creation of the books under the title “Ultimate Comics”.

Ultimatum is, itself, almost a direct sequel to Ultimates 3. It is the result of the previous book– the deaths of both The Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver– that prompted Magneto to decide that everyone is a bunch of dicks and should be killed in a horrific way. Not really entirely in line with Magento’s thoughts, if you have ever kept up with Ultimate X-Men, has Magneto all but hated his children, and was nothing short of someone who would be disqualified for Father of the Year because he was trying to set his children on fire.

But, eh.

Ultimatum: The Ultimate Price

Ultimatum opens with everyone hanging out and being groovy. We see The Fantastic 4, The Ultimates, Spider-Man and his gang, as well as various X-Men. Then suddenly rain comes and a giant wave decides that it’s going to go ahead and sweep in over New York.

It starts killing a lot of people, including Dazzler, who dies in a really insignificant way– drowning.

Spider-Man is helped by Kitty and told to go Help People Like You Do, while Sue Storm gives herself an aneurysm trying to push back THE GIANT TIDAL WAVE. Everyone is scrambling, to say the least, in an effort to both figure out just what the hell is going on, and how they can help as many people as possible before any more giant waves come and kill everyone in this city.

We’re then cut to Latveria, where a non-goat-legged Doom notices his kingdom is covered in ice and snow.

The first issue ends with Charles Xavier telling everyone, ever, that this is all Magento’s fault, and Magento is a man who is all but pissing evil. And the issue ends with Magneto saying “For what they have done, they will pay the ultimate price!” And we’re told “Next: It Gets Worse” which is a vaguely amusing statement considering how many people I’ve been told don’t like this story.

The second issue kicks off with Spider-Man trying to help lift things, and utterly failing, while a bunch of Giant Men are busy helping clean up everything. Also, Hulk decides he wants to help Spider-Man.

Tony Stark shows us that Captain America is unconsciously, more or less dead, possibly having drowned when the wave hit.

While that’s going on, Hank Pym is looking for Jan, and Hawkeye reminds me him that he knows what it’s like to lose someone you love, since Loeb’s Hawkeye has not been able to shut up about anything other than his dead family since Ultimates 3.

Sue is still out like a light, and Reed has taken to working with Namor in an effort to better understanding things. They end up seeing Doom, working with Zarda in an attempt to get Nick Fury back.

Meanwhile, Thor is off rambling in iambic pentameter only to find that Valkyrie is somehow dead by the Statue of Liberty. Thor proclaims vengeance and whatnot, like you do. He goes to Valhalla, meets up with Hela, to tells him to leave. He decides to tell her no, and starts fighting zombies to be “rewarded… for a price.” Interesting thing to note is that somehow or another Captain America is in this Valhallan situation and he doesn’t seem to know why.

We cut back to Hawkeye and Pym, and we see The Blob eating Jan. Because he totally eats people. Because he’s totally Ultimate Hulk.

Suddenly, in the X-Mansion, Mangento decides to break Xavier’s neck. And that closes out issue two.

It gets better.

Issue three opens by letting us know a bunch of deaths through The Scarlet Witch, so is supposed to still be dead: Dazzler, Beast, Nightcrawler, “The Academy of Tomorrow” in Chicago, Emma Frost, Sunspot, and a number of other mutants including Longshot and Forge in the Savage Land.

Also, Madrox has decided to be a suicide bomber.

We learn, though, that the Scarlet Witch we see is actually Mystique.

Magneto does his half-soliloquy about things and I honestly didn’t read the pages because it’s losing my interest. But, rereading them now, it looks like they’re basically the same crap he’s been spouting since the first issue about how he’s great and so on and he has control.

Suddenly, Hank Pym bites of The Blob’s head.

We then cut to the X-Men finding all of their dead friends. Angel says he’s going to go after Magneto, Jean finds out Xavier’s dead… and then suddenly we’re back with Thor and Captain America fighting zombies in the afterlife. They win the challenge, and Thor and Captain America are presented with Valkyrie– but they are told that the agreement is that one of the two of them must stay in her place.

Cap, ever the gentleman, offers himself.

More Madroxes are blowing shit up, in other news. Hank Pym and Hawkeye show up where they are, and decide to beat them all up. The Madroxes gang up on Pym, who walks out into the water and lets them blow up him. Hank Pym, now, is dead.

We then see a living Valkyrie, talking with Tony Stark. Thor has sacrificed himself in effort to bring her back. She’s now decided she’s going to kill Magneto. Cap wakes up, finds out Jan is dead, and then announces that “It’s time to save the world.”

So, if you’re following at home, still. Several major players, most of them mutants, have been killed. Along with members of the Ultimates. And, thus far, all we’ve really had is people dying and saying “I’m going to kill Magneto” with no real action otherwise.

Issue 4 opens with Hulk, from an issue of, I believe, Ultimate Spider-Man, blowing up mystical shit– which happened after he found (in the USM issue) Daredevil just hanging out, dead. We then see part of Peter Parker’s mask, and are left to assume that Parker is dead in an effort to fuck with Dormammu. Dormammu, it should be noted, is using Johnny Storm as some kind of conduit.

Dr. Stephen Strange decides to try to attack the dude, only to be killed via having his head explode. I wish I was kidding by this point.

The X-Men and Hulk work together (with a bit of telepathic coercion) to find some more of the X-Men. In the hopes, I assume, that they aren’t dead.

Meanwhile, Doom, Zarda, and Richards are all in the Supreme Power universe (because we have to keep referencing THAT crap) trying to get shit done with Fury. Fury decides to agree to go back to his universe.

Suddenly people attack Magneto following a brief emotional moment with Kitty Pryde and Wolverine that feels kind of half-assed compared to all of the obnoxious amounts of violence that have been spent on these issues.

Angel jumps down and hits Magneto, and his prompted attacked and killed by Sabertooth, who is shot in the eye a crossbow by Hawkeye.

Valkyrie attacks Magneto, wanting Thor’s Hammer, and cuts off his arm before being killed by Mangeto himself. Captain America crashes down into the scene and declares that “[He's] death with would-be tyrants like you all [his] life. Small men trying to make up for their inadequacies.” Now, the placement of the boldface text in the second sentence is on “small men” and “inadequacies”. I can only assume here that Loeb is having Cap imply Magneto has a small penis.

The issue ends with Magneto standing in front of everyone looking cool and quoting the Bible and saying he’s gonna blow up everything.

Issue Five, the final issue of this mess, opens with Wolverine being cool and attacking Magneto because the metal in his body so doesn’t put him at an extreme disadvantage to everything. However, everyone seems to forget that Iron Man is there, and Magneto somehow manages to use his powers to make Iron Man’s suit shoot a big laser at Wolverine and turn him into something really gross. We look, to see that Wolverine is basically an animated skeleton at this point, and manages to stab Magento in the chest in a very dramatic way.

Magneto, in revenge, uses a nice blast of energy to apparently tear the adamantium off of Wolverine’s bones and leave him a pile of blackened bones. Apparently, Wolverine has actually managed to die.

We then cut to a bunch of people in the basement areas of Magneto’s base. Including Sabertooth, Mystique, Collosus, and Hulk. Sabertooth and Mystique escape on a hang-glider as that part explodes.

We then go BACK to Magneto, bleeding and being indignant, when Nick Fury shows up with his posse and decides to be cool because his character looks like Samuel L. Jackson.

Fury uses Jean Grey’s powers to shove the knowledge that mutants are actually just genetic experiments (something I believe that came up from Ultimate Origins) into Magneto’s head. Magneto, extremely distraught, decides to undo the damage he’s done by shifting the magnetic poles and returns them to normal.

Cyclops then uses his optic blasts to blast of Magneto’s head saying “There’s no one left to forgive you. And no one ever will.”

After that, we jump to eight days later with a giant No More Mutants protest/press conference thing in Washington, D.C.– which is ironic considering someone at the Comic Book Resource forums referred to this as “Ultimate M-Day”. But, of course, Magneto was a mutant, and Magneto fucked up a lot of shit up. Cyclops, at this protest, decides to give a speech and is shot in the head by a sniper.

In Latveria, Doom has captured Namor, and the Thing walks up and crushes his head, killing him.

We then cut to a little cabin with the bullet that killed Scarlet Witch in a gloved hand, being told that it was that bullet that killed Cyclops and that “you’d appreciate the irony”. We then see Pierto inside that cabin with Mystique and Sabertooth, along with a woman who we only see a silhouette of, but based on what he just said, I’m assuming is Scarlet Witch.

So, in the end, the two people whose deaths were responsible for it aren’t really dead, and apparently, at the very least, ONE of them is actually just as malicious as his father, despite nothing else in the entire history of Ultimate Marvel declaring that. Yeah.

That’s Ultimatum. The issue ends with a list of all of the people who died. Well, not all, but a rather large portion of the important people.

Ultimatum: Requiem

Now, as follow-ups to this story, Spider-Man, X-men, and the Fantastic Four have supplemental stories called “Requiem” that detail Life After Ultimatum. Spider-Man’s deals mostly with him actually not being dead. No surprise there. As such I’m not really going to talk about it.

However, let’s talk about Ultimate Fantastic Four’s Requiem. Obviously, the team has disbanded. They aren’t having a book come out with the new imprint. But why are they not back together? Surely Sue and Reed, as they should in every continuity ever, get married and so on.

Well, no. Not this time.

UF4’s Requiem is narrated by Reed story deals with Dormammu taking Johnny Storm and using his fire to help make him more awesome and huge, as well as just kind of detailing bits of the universe in general. It revisits Strange’s death at the hands of Dormammu (god, I’m tired of typing that name).

Sue and Ben attack, and they overload Dormmy who ends up reverting into some random guy I can’t recall ever seeing before.

Back at the base, Reed shows up after the fact, and Sue walks off like he’s killed a baby. Ben talks with Reed, and finds out that Reed was, in fact, with Doom and Reed has gone through numerous calculations and found no possible way for anything to be different. Doom is a douchebag, etc. And bad things are going to keep happening because of Doom.

We then cut to Latveria because of Doom.

Then, at the funeral for the late Dr. Storm, Reed proposes to Sue, who turns him down saying “You left. You had to choose between saving me and saving the world and you left.” To which he responds, “You’re part of the world. It was the logical thing to do. Wasn’t it?”

“I used to think our love defined logic,” she responds, “Maybe it was just beholden to it.”

Turning to bed, Reed thanks him for carrying the weight of the team on his shoulders. Ben says his shoulders hurt.

Next we see Ben signing up for the job offered by S.H.I.E.L.D. while Johnny is in a bar in France, Sue is back in the Baxter Building working, and Reed packs up and leaves before going back to his parent’s home.

The issue ends with each of them, separate. Thus ends the Fantastic Four with a simple “To Be Continued?”

So that’s it for them. But what of the X-Men, who were all but brutally massacred at the hands of Loeb for the previous event? Do they get any justice in this? Well, if you’ve seen what’s happened so far, you can safely assume that I’m not going to think so.

It starts with Kitty Pryde, in costume, snatching the skeletal arm of Wolverine– for some reason having rather metallic looking blades still attached despite all of the adamantium being blown off of him. Maybe the artist didn’t realize this, or is just assuming his claws are naturally metal and shiny.

We see Bobby Drake, Jean Grey, and Rogue making a place of remembrance for all of the people who were killed, lining then up on what looked like a baseball diamond.

Bobby destroys the X-Mansion.

Suddenly Rogue is taken out by Gambit, who was actually killed back in Ultimate X-Men Annual 2. She is, apparently not dead, though.

We cut back to Jean, who is now with Kitty. Kitty explains that, through some files at the base, Magneto killed “all of [Wolverine's] cells.” Which roughly means there’s no way possible to ever bring him back, based on that logic.

Suddenly Mystique, Sabertooth, and a guy named “Assemble” who looks like Cap, Hulk, and Iron Man if they were a robot show up and start making fun of the remaining X-Men. They explain that THEY knocked out Rogue, as opposed to Remy actually being alive (And with everyone being dead right now, that would certainly be surprising). Bobby, in a fight with Assemble, does some wonderful exposition explaining that “Assemble” is actually Cap, Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, and Giant Man all rolled up into one robot.

Kitty stabs Sabertooth in the chest with Wolverine’s arm. Which is still entirely too metallic.

Mystique attacks Jean, flipping between various people who have died saying “if only you’d been faster” and so on before Jean is knocked out. Captain America takes out Assemble after Rogue regains herself.

Everyone is buried, and then Jean erects a stone memorial to them all.

And then there were no X-Men.

Of course, I didn’t read Ultimate X-Men 100, so maybe something helps that along through there. But in the end both of these issues were resoundingly disappointing.

And so, Ultimate Marvel is over.

Ultimate Comics

But what of Ultimate Comics? The new imprint that features Spider-Man and other people who are cool, but not the X-Men because they clearly suck.

Well, there are, as of this writing two issues: Spider-Man and Avengers.

Let’s get started. I know you’re excited.

Ultimate Spider-Man picks up six months after Ultimatum, after, apparently in Requiem, J. Jonah Jameson finds out Spider-Man isn’t a huge dickface who doesn’t eat babies. Because he thinks Spider-Man is dead.

The issue opens with Parker soliloquizing only for us to learn that he’s working in a fast food place. And Ultimate New York basically looks like nothing’s ever changed.

And really… nothing happens in this issue. Kingpin is suddenly back in America, Gwen Stacey is living Parker again and apparently he’s dating her instead of Mary Jane. But nothing’s really explained. Johnny Storm shows up and passes out.

Then Ultimate Mysterio shows up, and pushes Kingpin out a window. And that’s basically the entirety of the issue. I might follow this for a while, just to see where it goes, but ultimately I’m still kind of frustrated by Marvel.

I’m also a little iffy on the art. It feels off somehow, and Spider-Man’s head is almost a perfect circle in his mask.

Ultimate Comics: Avengers, on the other hand starts off with the cover being filled with basically everyone who’s still alive, and even someone who isn’t (Daredevil). The issue starts three weeks after Ultimatum with Samuel L. Fury hanging out and being cool with Hawkeye (who seems to be less morbidly depressed). Turns out that, apparently, Cap has gone rogue and Danvers is trying to find him.

And they’re introducing The Red Skull, which is an interesting villain to FINALLY BRING IN.

Cap and Hawkeye are fighting people– and even Cap feels a bit more like his old Ultimates 2 self, uttering the phrase “What kind of GIRL gets stopped by a BOMB?” whenever they get into a Helicopter and we find the new Red Skull, who looks more like someone just dipped his head in red wax, and proceeds to be the ever-loving shit out of Captain America.

It’s an interesting sight to see, to say the least.

The issue is left with this message: The Red Skull is Captain America’s son.

Yeah. I almost feel compelled to follow this story just because I have to know where they’re going with The Red Skull. I mean, it’s THE RED SKULL. I’ve never been a huge fan of captain America until I read Brubaker’s run on the character, and then I determined, quite simply, that he was awesome. It’s good to see Millar writing him again, too.

But, on the whole, these stories seem to be all but ignoring, at the moment, what happened in Ultimatum, and that’s upsetting. They’re also almost stand-alone stories, instead of the universe that Ultimate Marvel was.

I am going to, however, keep reading them for a while to see if the issues actually are worth noticing. After these first arcs, though, I’ll make my judgement.

Where I last left was that Batman has just freed himself from Darkseid’s captivity and decides to haul ass to do what he can to be awesome stop the Crisis from going any further.

Final Crisis and the Death of Batman

But, as I said, he is freed, and he does what he has to do. He has to stop all of this. This goes back into Final Crisis, where Batman’s last adventure– as the book says– take place. Batman dies. We know he does, so to speak. The man named Bruce Wayne does not exist in this timeline anymore.

How he dies, however, is a bit of debate in the eyes of most people. After freeing himself, he finds Darkseid, and informs him that, prior to being captured by them all he managed to reverse engineer the bullet that Darkseid created to kill Orion. And he’s going to use it him Darkseid.

And he does.

Batman, in his very last action, shoots Darkseid with a bullet that can kill gods.

Batman. Shoots. Darkseid.

And he is hit with the Omega Sanction of Darkseid. Superman holds the husk that was the man we know as Bruce Wayne, the man called Batman, the Caped Crusader, the Dark Knight of Gotham. Such is the way he goes. It’s an amazing scene, the last panel of Final Crisis #6, seeing Bruce Wayne’s husk, costumed, held by a Superman who just pages before ripped through all the world with eyes that spewed fire and rage. Evil, perhaps, wouldn’t win.

But this isn’t about Final Crisis, this is about the fate of Bruce Wayne, isn’t it? That’s what this entire thing– what I’ve spent now over four pages talking about– is about what happens to Bruce Wayne and the repercussions of this throughout Gotham and the world.

Final Crisis #7 gives us an interesting note to see, but something that feels out of place, ruins it all a bit. At the beginning of time, we see a man, drawing the bat symbol on a rock. The man is Batman. He’s not dead… just at the beginning of time.

He might as well be dead. But Bruce Wayne is Batman, and Batman cannot die that easily.

But he is, however, gone from the world as we know it– as he knows it, and Gotham City must live on without a Batman that also resides in the body of the man named Bruce Wayne.

World Without A Batman

I’m going to talk very briefly here about what’s also called “Last Rites”. This being the Dennis O’Neil story that takes place after the events of the Final Crisis and R.I.P. and serves as a means to help connect everything that’s happened to what is going on with Gotham as a whole. Furthermore, this bridges the gap and brings us to Battle For The Cowl– which I will, obviously, be talking about later.

The story “Batman: Last Rites: The Last Days of Gotham” is a two-parter that deals, for the most part, with every other character in Gotham other than Bruce Wayne. Our main character starts off as Nightwing– The Boy Who Was Robin, etc. And he’s attempting, desperately, to hide from people like Jim Gordon the clear and obvious fact that Batman isn’t there anymore.

But it doesn’t start there. It starts with a woman on a stage being hassled by some men, just before the events of “Cataclysm” and “No Man’s Land” whenever Gotham is hit by a huge earthquake that generally makes things unpleasant for everyone for a surprisingly lengthy period of time. However, this woman on the stage escapes, and becomes “something else” as she puts it. We cut to a more recent time, the woman is wearing veils and the men from before learn she is called “The Face of Gotham” in the newspapers– an amusing notion, as the men work for Harvey Dent, the man known as Two-Face.

The woman ends up scarred.

Time flashes back to the present and she narrates the story of Nightwing coming along. All in all, these two stories are ultimately forgettable, and only really exist within the continuity as something you should read if you feel the need to have the entire story.

For the most part, the stories of Nightwing being solo within this World Without A Batman exist solely to remind everyone that Dick Grayson feels inadequate, and that he cannot really replace Bruce, which is what needs to be done. However, Batman is a force that has to exist to maintain balance within the city of Gotham.

Which is where Battle For The Cowl comes in.

Battle For The Cowl

The current pieces of the puzzle fall into place in two arcs: Battle For The Cowl and Batman Reborn. Battle For The Cowl tells us who will be the new Batman. There are a number of side stories, including one that introduces a new Azrael, one involving Oracle and Calculator, and a number of one-shots about various people within Gotham coming to an understanding that the man who was Batman isn’t there anymore.

The first of the Batmans who will be battling is an armored, rather Knightfall Batman combined with something that reminds me of the Third Batman from Morrison’s Batman #666. He’s a killer, unlike the others, and seems to view things in a much more morally polar way than Bruce or the others. He’s violent.

We also learn rather quickly that it’s Jason Todd, who was Robin, who was The Red Hood, who was Nightwing for a time. Todd, sadly, has never really come into his own as a character, leeching off of former identities and names that are not being used by people. But that’s partially the fault of the editorial staff, who thought it would be cool to bring him back from the dead to fuck with Bruce during “Hush” and, subsequently “Under The Hood”.

This incarnation of Batman, Batman-Todd, is essentially everything that Bruce wasn’t. He maintained fear in a manner very similar to how he ran things within Under The Hood. In that he blew shit up and took down everyone he could.

Tim Drake, shaken by everything, also decides to adopt a Batman uniform, actually using an older model looking more like the 70s costume as opposed to Todd’s custom costume.

Drake-Batman and Todd-Batman duke it out and Drake is left impaled and dying as Todd goes to get Dick Grayson and have him understand what must be done.

As this goes on, Grayson is left dealing, still, with the numerous problems that he’s got to deal with as Batman is gone. Including attempting to maintain order in the city when people like Black Mask (who was supposed to be dead) show up and start taking control of the Gotham underground crime. Grayson also attempts to enlist the help of the Outsiders, Catwoman, and a number of other people who have gone into the realm of legitimate business while things fall apart around them.

It should be noted, of course, that all through this time, The Joker hasn’t been seen.

Grayson and Todd-Batman end up fighting, starting off in Todd’s elaborate underground Bat-Cave where the cowl of Drake’s Batsuit is set up on some wood in a rather dramatic way. Drake, though, has escaped and is busy trying to make his way back to safety. Of course, he doesn’t make it right away, and ends up going through a bit of problems before he winds up managing to make out.

Grayson and Todd-Batman fight, trading the ideas that Todd has some issues with Batman and everything. Ultimately, Todd is knocked down into a chasm of sorts, but points out to Grayson that he isn’t going to die. Which leads me to wonder where he’s going.

Grayson, reluctantly, picks up the mantle. With Damien Wayne, he is The Batman, and Damien is his Robin.

Outside of this story, as I said, there are a number of other stories. However, they aren’t central to understanding THIS story by any means. The Oracle’s story deals mostly with Oracle attempting to determine what Calculator is doing with the Anti-Life Equation and why he’s killing various people in an attempt to harness it.

The Azrael story deals with, well, a new Azrael. Talia Al Ghul has some armor, and swords, and Azrael gets them in the end. Of the stories, while I still liked this one, I thought this was probably the weakest of the bunch.

There are also a bunch of one-shots dealing with things ranging from the criminals of the city attempting to distribute power in a way that only they can– violently– while at the same time every still tries to come to terms with Batman being gone… for a while.

The arc of “Battle for the Cowl” begins with two “Gotham Gazette” issues. One is subtitled “Batman Dead” and the other “Batman Alive”. Both involve Vicki Vale and her splendor as she tries to get information, meet up with Bruce, and so on. In the end, though, she manages to put a few things to together and it’s shown that she’s figured out that Tim is a Robin, now Red Robin, and that Dick and Damien are Batman and Robin.

It was a good enough arc to transition into the new Batman stories. I would have like something longer, and a little more fleshed out, though.

Batman Reborn

Batman Reborn is the name of the “Event” that is taking place within the Batman/Gotham City books. The books in continuity, that I’ve read and know are out, are as follows: Batman, Detective Comics, Streets of Gotham, Red Robin, Gotham City Sirens, The Outsiders, and Batman & Robin. Batman now officially has more books than The X-Men, I believe. And he’s dead. Sort of.

Because all of these books are either in the middle of new story arcs, or completely new books, I can’t actually summarize what’s going on. However, I’ll give a brief rundown of some of the things that these are entailing, in cause you decide to swallow your pride and read them.

Batman is no longer the main continuity book. It starts after Battle for the Cowl, but not entirely before Dick assumes the Batman title. It establishes the period of mourning just before the mantle is assumed, and the new base for Batman. At the end of the first issue of this return, though, Dick as assumed the mantle and the new status quo of sorts has been established.

Judd Winnick’s take on Grayson in this is certainly something I’ll be keeping an eye on. I thought he handled Jason Todd about as well as could be expected, considering the rather unfortunate creation of the story.

As this isn’t the main continuity though, some people make be wont to skip this for a general dislike of Winnick.

Detective Comics is now focused on Batwoman, the redhead from 52 that showed up and was in a relationship with Renee Montoya before she became the new Question. Each issue of Detective Comics now, it should be noted, also features a Question story, as a kind of double feature.

The art from it takes something to get used to, though it is something to behold, and is something that is both rather beautiful and haunting in the current arc. The artist seems fond of splash pages, and the surreal nature of the current arc (another Alice In Wonderland-themed character) makes it perfect.

I’ve always been partial to Detective Comics and I hope it stays high quality with this new character.

The Question side stories are kind of interesting. I’m curious to see where they’re going to take the new character, and I like some of the new additions they’ve made to her since 52. I haven’t really kept up with Montoya, though, so I’m not feeling like I should read more of her stuff.

Batman: Streets of Gotham follows the new Batman and Robin team on a level that is more “street”-oriented than that of the other relevant books, being told from a different angle of storytelling than the typical Batman books. As Batman is no longer the Genius Ninja Detective that he once was, it makes sense, I feel, to have the book set up in a way that best describes that.

This book, like Detective Comics, features an additional story. Only this one is of Manhunter. Who I’m unfamiliar with and generally uninterested in. You may like the story, but I’ve no interest in it and won’t likely keep up with it.

Red Robin deals with the story of Tim Drake, now calling himself Tim Wayne, out and about in places that aren’t America in an effort to both find himself and find evidence that Bruce Wayne is alive– something that he believes wholeheartedly.

I am utterly fascinated by this story. Seeing Tim willingly and knowingly separate himself from the rest of the Bat-Family, trying to find out who he is now that there’s a new Robin, and Batman, and everything else going on the world is something that I think will be very compelling for some time. Tim’s feeling of isolation has driven the current arc in the few issues that are out. The feeling that the Bat-Family has turned on him and so on, and he is completely alone.

Plus the use of “Red Robin” an homage to “Kingdom Come” is a nice touch.

Gotham City Sirens is a story about Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, and Catwoman living together and having pillow fights try to figure out Batman’s identity while simultaneously dealing with Thomas Elliot still looking like Bruce Wayne in a time when Bruce is dead. Paul Dini seems to have a mancrush on Hush. I’ll reserve judgement on this book after this first arc with Bruce Hush is done, but right now there really isn’t a lot happening.

As far as The Outsiders goes… well… I never really read that to begin with, so I don’t think I’m qualified to talk about that one. If you read the book before Batman RIP, I assume it’s not going to be that much different.

Batman & Robin is the main continuation of the story, written by the Mad Genius Grant Morrison as a direct continuation of his run on Batman and the events of Final Crisis and so on. It deals entirely with the new team, but from what I read, it’s on a much less emotional level that the Winnick run on Batman. If you aren’t a fan of Morrison, I’d suggest leaving this out of your readings simply because you know you’ll hate it on principle.

There’s supposed to be a new Batgirl coming out soon, in addition to an Azrael book. However, they weren’t out while I was writing this, so I couldn’t really give my first impressions of them.

Conclusion

Batman is dead. But not really. Bruce is going through the Omega Sanction and dealing with that while everyone tries to adjust to a new world. It’s an interesting collection of stories so far, some weaker than others, but that’s how it goes. At the same time, I’m genuinely curious to see how long this is going to last, and I can only hope that Bruce’s eventual resurrection doesn’t undermine the number of stories that have come out recently, and will continue to come out in time.

Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide if you want to boycott DC or whatever, but I think you should at least give these things a try, since it’s significantly more interesting, thus far, than both Knightfall and the Death and Return of Superman.

I have a tendency to talk about Batman a lot. It wasn’t something I intended whenever I remade this website into what it is, but I read a lot of Batman comics, so it stands to reason that Batman would be, by extension, a character I write about rather frequently. I’m also a fan of Grant Morrison, which has really only recently been cemented with things like “Final Crisis” and “Batman: R.I.P.”– as enraging to some fans as they may be.

But, then again, there are some fans who will be enraged by anything that isn’t exactly the vision they have in their minds of what the comics/movies/television show should be. I’ve been known to fall victim to that more than once, so I can’t complain too vocally about it without falling into hypocrisy. Also, that’s not what this post is about.

This is about Grant Morrison’s Batman masterpiece, his Bat-masterpiece, “Batman R.I.P.” and the event that has followed it, “Battle for the Cowl”. One of the things I’ve definitely learned, in just trying to properly get information on this event, is that you need to be at least tangentially aware of a number of things that existed within the context of the Silver Age. However, having full knowledge of them isn’t entirely necessary.

The Batman of Zur En Arrh

One of the key points of the entire thing is The Batman of Zur En Arrh, which sounds a lot more interesting than it really is. The “actual” Zur En Arrh is an old comic that took place ages ago where Batman is transported to the planet of that name, and there is a brightly-colored Batman who hangs around and so on. It’s oddly coincidental that there happens to be another Batman on another planet– but Morrison, in the whole Black Glove thing that has been going on for what amounts to a few trade paperbacks, has also resurrected a number of the old Batman-esque heroes that also existed during the time of these things.

Morrison, being Morrison, has taken this interesting idea and manipulated this simple story from the Silver Age into a rather interesting concept. Bruce Wayne has just been attacked by The Black Glove, who have it out for him because that’s what you do, and damaged his brain. Bruce, however, anticipated this sort of thing– that is to say, an attack that might render mentally incapacitated– and underwent various training to give him a backup personality on the chance that such an event like this would take place.

That backup personality is what we see in the Silver Age– The Batman of Zur En Arrh. He never went to a different planet, not really. Stories from the Silver Age had a lot of space travel, and people like Batman have had history altered and this is definitely one of those instances in which history was altered for the better. Batman’s new personality is harsher, and slightly crazy. But that’s amusing in itself.

The Black Glove, The Joker, and The End of Batman

The Joker is also full-on into the new personality that was established within Batman #663, which I’m becoming increasingly torn on if I like it or not (the issue, that is). It’s an interesting book, but I’ll go into that more, later.

While The Batman of Zur En Arrh (because he isn’t Bruce anymore) wanders the streets beating the shit out of people to get information on The Black Glove, the people of The Hand have stormed The Batcave (as they did to actually get Batman) and are holding Alfred hostage as well as people generally overly dramatic weirdos who seem to have nothing better to do than go after Batman.

Also Dr. Hurt claims to be Thomas Wayne, which is kind of odd.

In the end, the people of The Black Glove manage to take control of Arkham Asylum, and use the Asylum to subsequently hold a bet to see if the Joker will kill Batman– as Joker decided to join in on the fun and see just what was going on. Joker and Batman have a conversation that amounts to a lot of meta-talk (“We had a thing going.”) that ends whenever Joker starts to point out that there’s really nothing Batman can do to understand just what goes on in Joker’s mind, no matter how much he wants to.

During this battle, Batman notices that Jezebel Jet, Bruce’s love interest for this story arc, so to speak, is captured by The Black Glove and placed in a room where some stuff will happen that is going to be very bad. After he breaks out Jezebel, The Joker screams “Now do you get it?” as we all come to the realization that Jezebel has been in on it with the Black Hand from the beginning.

They decide to bury Batman alive, in a straight jacket. Which is fine, except this is Morrison and Morrison’s Batman, as we’ve established, is nothing short of God On A Stick Made of Awesome. The Black Glove, also, has decided to hold a celebration of their victory, while The Joker hangs around, and decides to see just how wrong they’re all going to be. He even says “I’ll bet you double or nothing that Batman will come out of that grave perfectly fine, and hunt all of you down.”

And he does, too.

Batman is back, so to speak, and he goes after the Black Glove members that The Joker didn’t kill before he escaped. Dr. Hurt and other escape on a helicopter, but Batman leaps onto it, and they all crash over a body of water.

Batman R.I.P. ends with Nightwing standing on a roof, holding Batman’s cowl.

The End of Batman?

While “Batman R.I.P.” can certainly be considered the end of Batman, Batman didn’t actually DIE until Final Crisis– another of Grant Morrison’s interesting little creatures.

I won’t even begin to go into Final Crisis as a whole, because I’m still not sure I understand just what’s going on in it. It’s a bit confusing, but it’s one of those “I don’t know what it is, but I know I like it” situations that seems to go on during these big events that have more symbolism than I know how to properly comprehend.

Suffice to say that Batman gets captured by The New Gods and set up in Granny’s little funhouse. This actually leads into the other Batman mini-arc, a follow-up of R.I.P. called “Last Rites”. Not to be confused with the other “Last Rites” written by Dennis O’Neil that I’ll talk about in a bit.

This “Last Rites” takes place during Batman’s time captured by Granny. The New Gods are attempting to use Batman’s mental abilities and so forth to create duplicates of him– for lack of a better word– and we’re brought through a series of not-entirely-accurate memories of Batman. Some of these include, but are not limited to, Alfred’s thoughts of different identities for Bruce as well as being incredibly aware of how… childish the Joker became over a period of years.

At one point, things shift, and in his mind, Bruce begins to live a different life within the memories. In these memories, his parents never died, and, by extension, Batman never happened. Dick Grayson never became Robin, and was killed by The Joker. The Joker himself was executed.

History, because there was no Batman, is different. But, these things are not entirely unexpected. Batman is a force, in everything written in the Modern Age, and it’s always been suggested that he, though indirectly, is the cause of so much trouble within Gotham. After all, it’s suggested rather frequently that he is the root cause of The Joker– most origin stories and all. The movie “The Dark Knight” is an interesting take on that concept– that, because of Batman’s meticulous destruction of organized crime, we are left with these psychotic costumed villains and murderers. But that’s a different thing altogether.

Again, Batman is a kind of force within the city of Gotham, having brought non-lethal justice and so forth. But without him, things become skewed, and different. There is no Robin, no Joker. But Batman is aware that things are not quite right within this new world, even going so far as to tell Alfred, “I keep thinking I could have saved the boy somehow. I don’t know why. I can’t seem to get it out of my head.”

However, Batman become distinctly aware of what’s taking place to him, and manages to use his own mind– his memories, his emotions– against the various people keeping him captured. It’s an interesting thing to watch unfold. Batman manipulates the worst events of his life– including the death of Jason Todd, into such a moment that the things they’ve connected him to claw out their own eyes because of the pain he goes through.

The entity within his mind that is using the memories for the lump attached to him continues to explode out the worst of his memories, as Bruce continues to take them and use them as a weapon to free himself.

And, in the end, he does free himself. Because he’s Grant Morrison’s Batman, and he is basically the most ridiculously overpowered guy in the history of forever. But it’s pretty damn cool to read.

Morrison’s Batman, expressed through the first part of “Last Rites”, and R.I.P. is more evidence of Batman as a symbol than Batman as a real person. He’s larger than life, he’s not Bruce Wayne. He is The Bat-Man and he is the vengeance of Gotham and everything else. He is strength, he is power, he is the pinnacle of human achievement– to coin a phrase from “Kingdom Come”.

The next part of this will cover Final Crisis #6, and 7, and the world without Batman.

As I said, this movie was a complete letdown, especially compared with the fantastic Iron Man movie, and the good-but-not-as-good-as-Iron-Man movie featuring The Hulk. Also, it’s not as good as The Spirit and to even consider this on par with the previous X-movies is shameful. And, as you might expect, I have more than enough nerd rage built up after having seen it, and my general knowledge of X-Men (though not on the level of some, I feel I have enough information at my disposal and knowledge of the characters to be properly annoyed by the film) to fill something that is adequate entry. But, before I go into that, I figure I can get the good parts out of the way.

The good parts: Ryan Reynolds felt, for a brief moment, like Deadpool. The specific point in that movie when I felt like he was the characters rather early on (for obvious reasons) when he said “Okay… people are dead.” Also, whoever played Gambit looked like something akin to Ultimate Marvel’s incarnation of Gambit, but with better hair. Gambit and Deadpool, it should be noted, are two of my favorite characters in Marvel.

That’s pretty much it.

Now onto the bad stuff

The bad parts are, essentially, everything else in the movie. I’ve never been a fan of Hugh as Wolverine– he doesn’t fit any version of the character and he doesn’t have the kind of raw, generally frightening feel that the cartoons possess. Plus he’s way too tall. Also, people, really, his claws. I’m glad that they had them bone, but where was the blood?! In both bone and metal claws, there was never. any. blood. Ever. Even in the comics they bother to make the claws bloody or at least have a little bit of blood shoot out BECAUSE HE HAS GIANT WOUNDS IN HIS HAND.

They’re also too long, too high, and suddenly developed an edge whenever they shifted from bone to metal. I don’t get it. I could understand if he had, like, sharpened the bone beforehand, but he didn’t. They also wound up bigger, even though all that happened was just a simple bonding of metal. But I’m getting a little too picky on these claws and there’s so much else about the movie that frustrates me.

For instance: Deadpool. What the hell did they do to Deadpool? I mean, really. I know Deadpool. I know him better than I know anyone else in the whole X-Franchise. They completely ruined him. Even if they wanted to make a Deadpool movie after this, they’d gave to completely ignore everything– which I would appreciate because this movie was garbage– and make it right. Wade Wilson joined up in Weapon X because they said they would help treat his cancer, then he became a mercenary after Weapon X ditched him because the synthetic healing factor bonded with his cancer and all of the experiments they did on him drove him insane.

I don’t so much have a problem with Wilson’s original outfit. It looked pretty neat, and if I were making a more faithful interpretation of the character, I’d probably use the vest and so forth as a base.

Everything, as a whole, annoys me about this movie for a number of reasons. If it’s not things like that, then it’s that so many characters were just thrown in without any real meaning, or purpose. This “Weapon XI” thing was nonsense and just made the movie hard to follow. Plus, it turned Deadpool into someone who looked more like Baraka than it did Deadpool. I mean, really, they combined roughly 715 mutant abilities into Wilson, who really only had a healing factor that wasn’t his, and made him Baraka With Laser Eyes and Teleportation.

Which reminds me: the people making these movies need to bear in mind that not every mutant has the ability to jump around in the middle of a fight and look cool with doing it. Deadpool has never had the ability to cut bullets in half or spin his swords and reflect bullets. He is, in fact, not Gray Fox. No matter how awesome that would be, it’s just not true. Just like Gambit doesn’t have the ability to make his cards float. His power is generate energy and that’s it.

And Gambit’s eyes are, at base, black with red pupils. But now I’m getting really picky.

The battles were over the top, took too long, and generally made the movie go on much longer than it should be. It’s not like with 300 where the movie WAS the fights. It just felt shallow. There was no real reason for a lot of these fights other than “OH YEAH?!” as their primary justification, at least on the surface. Disappointing, really, considering Wolverine and Sabretooth going along beating the hell out of each other.

Interesting side note: in Ultimate X-Men, Sabertooth makes the accusation that he’s actually Wolverine’s son, and not brother like in this movie. Also, they aren’t related at all. At least, I’m fairly certain of that part.

So, I’m going to complain more about this “Weapon XI” crap.

These X-movies have had a horrible problem with just shoving random mutants into the movie to appeal to the fans. Obviously, if you’ve seen the previews, you’ve seen Cyclops and Emma Frost in addition to the standard fare that you’re expecting. Obviously I’ve got nothing too horrible to say against Scott. They do him well, considering that he’s involved with something that is generally retarded.

However, I also noticed Quicksilver and Toad. I’m not sure who else was supposed to be there, but I know that there’s probably a lot more than I expected.

I have a large complaint with Emma Frost being there. For starters: Emma’s primary ability isn’t turning into a diamond, she’s a psychic. She was more or less a kind of replacement for Jean Grey, only part of the Hellfire Club and dressed in a much more interesting way. Frost’s ability to turn into diamond didn’t take place until Grant Morrison started writing The New X-Men and Genosha went all to hell. Also, the ability has always been that she turns into a kind of solid “organic diamond”– whatever that means– while the movie has it look as though she just gets covered with a bunch of nicely cut diamonds.

I’ll accept that, just because I feel like it would be difficult to properly express the powers like it’s presented in the books. Some things you can’t do properly.

That doesn’t excuse, y’know, most of the movie.

Also, a lot of people have been going on about the after-the-credits ending and how it’s “Deadpool breaking the fourth wall” and, yeah, that was kind of clever and all and kind of almost made the thing redeemable… it was just ridiculous. Had I not known about that, going into it, I wouldn’t have bothered staying and wasting time.

If you notice, I didn’t really talk much about the plot. Mostly because I’m not entirely sure what was talked about. It was “Wolverine attacks people. Wolverine decides it’d be cool to attack people for the US Government. Wolverine feels bad. Sabretooth fucks up shit to make Wolverine mad. Wolverine gets mad. Random other people show up and do stuff.”

It’s really pretty shallow. There was also a lot of “Wolverine is sad” that felt so forced. I also decided to not consider anything in the movie whenever Wolverine’s love interest (who was a fucked up version of an actual character and wound up being Emma Frost’s movie-sister) “died” and they did the dramatic “NOOOOO!!!” thing. Those scenes, while apparently some kind of attempt to be dramatic, just feel, as I said, forced. They also totally break the flow and immersion and leave me rolling my eyes and feeling like they could have done something better.

On the whole, unless you’re a fan of the movies, don’t even bother with this thing unless you feel like being frustrated by an inadequate X-movie. If you must watch something X-related, watch Hulk versus Wolverine and the old 1990s animated series. Those are the best things out there, even if the dialogue on the 1990s series is kind of laughable at times. This just wasn’t even worth it. If you’re a fan of the comics, you’re probably busy complaining as it is, and may or may not be yelling at the movie screen when you go see it. Of course, you might also just have not seen it because, really, you knew it was going to be bad.

If you need me, I’ll be watching The Dark Knight to burn out the bad movie.