UPDATED! Grant Morrison and Andy Kubert on BATMAN

[jokermatt]

I really thought they learned their lesson back in the 90s. Bruce is Batman. I think one of the other Batmen dies and not Bruce. Really can't see Jason as batman and with Dick it's been done. Although someone did mention Cap. and the thing with Bucky has been good so far. But even marvel knows that Steve will be back.

[jasontodd2]

blackmask said:

If they kill of batman, i will end my supscription.

Ditto....
If Bruce Wayne is killed off, I will no longer collect any Bat-related comics.

I hope this story line ends with them trying to get across the point that there will only be one Batman and that is Bruce Wayne

[False Face]

I'm not too worried about Batman being killed off and I think you're right that this may show that Batman is Bruce Wayne.

[All Star Batman]

Here's what Didio had to say about Batman R.I.P in his IGN interview:

DiDio: "Batman RIP" starts in April. The good part about it is that it starts with him already dead, if I'm not mistaken. [laughs] Therefore, people don't know whether or not we kill him. It's really an exploration of why he's Batman in the last moments of his life, and we're going to start to see how people would react or think if they had to exist in a world without Batman.

[IamI]

Didio's quote leads me to believe DC is going to explore a "what if" situation. I believe it will be temporary, much like when Azrael became Batman over 10 years ago.

[arkhaminmate]

It had better be temporary. This would be great as an
Elseworlds one-shot, but if they're really killing Bruce, then Dan DiDio is gonna find a few dead cats nailed to his door.

[electri]

arkhaminmate said:

It had better be temporary. This would be great as an
Elseworlds one-shot, but if they're really killing Bruce, then Dan DiDio is gonna find a few dead cats nailed to his door.

Dan DiDio isn't dumb! He's got a job we all dream of and personally doubt he'd kill batman c'mon we are almost 70 years of Bruce Wayne (I did Bruce for a reasion) so really c'mon and just on the topic of 70 years its soon to be Supermans 70 years YEEAHH!

[All Star Batman]

If Didio actually kills Batman (and I'm not saying he would), then he'll be worse than Quesada, and we all know what he's done to Spidey.

[All Star Batman]

BATMAN #677
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Tony Daniel & Sandu Florea
Cover by Alex Ross
Variant cover by Daniel
Continuing “Batman R.I.P, ” the epic story that will change the legend of the Dark Knight forever! As the life of Bruce Wayne takes an interesting turn with Jezebel Jet, the life of Batman falls into the ultimate downward spiral.
Retailers please note: This issue will ship with two covers. For every 25 copies of the Standard Edition (with a cover by Alex Ross), retailers may order one copy of the Variant Edition (with a cover by Tony Daniel). Please see the Previews Order Form for more information.
On sale May 28 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US

[False Face]

Cover looks great with both issues so far!

[All Star Batman]

forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=147734
TALKING BATMAN WITH GRANT MORRISON

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

by Zack Smith

Along with scripting Final Crisis, Grant Morrison has taken some of DC’s biggest icons on some of their most psychological and offbeat adventures. His run on Batman is no exception, drawing from the character’s 70-year history to bring up new figures in the Batman’s life, such as his son Damian, and revamped historical curiosities, such as last year’s fan-favorite “The Club of Heroes” storyline. Now he’s poised for the arc that his whole run’s been building toward, the ominously-titled “Batman RIP.”

When we got to chat with Morrison recently, we asked him some about these upcoming storylines and the rumors surrounding them…and quickly got into a free-flowing discussion about the Dark Knight’s life and times. The discussion got so involved that it wound up expanding a planned two-part series into three. So sit back and relax as Grant Morrison takes you on a guided tour into the mind and history of the Batman.

Newsarama: Grant, let’s talk Batman. You’re currently doing the “Joe Chill in Hell” storyline, and you really seem to be deconstructing Batman, what he’s gone through in the past on a very philosophical level. You’ve spoken in the past about how you saw where Batman was, mentally, when you started working on the series. Where is this particular storyline going to take him?

Grant Morrison: Again, it’s basically trying to push Batman to the limit, to take him to emotional and physical places he’s never been before so we can really see how strong he is. The stronger a hero is the greater the challenges he should face. We want to put Batman under real pressure, to give readers get a better, more dramatic insight into the incredible physical and moral strength he does possess when the going gets rough.

So the idea behind “Joe Chill” and the current storyline is not only to expose weak spots that Batman himself has been unaware of for a long time, it’s to develop certain elements of his biography which may have been overlooked for a while and make those elements central to his undoing. It’s a story about karma in the strictest sense of the word – in his efforts to understand the derangement of his arch-enemy, the Joker, the young Batman inadvertently sets in motion an unstoppable chain of events which now threaten to destroy him utterly.

When I started this story, my first idea was, “What if all the Batman adventures from the 1930s until now were all part of one guy’s life, and he’s really gone through all this stuff, and it’s happened over the space of, say, 15 years, potentially?” To make it all work and still keep Batman at his peak, I settled on him being about 35 right now, so let’s say he’s been Batman since he was 19 or 20 years old.

Now try and imagine all that continuity squeezed into fifteen years. What you have is a guy who started his mission really well and was doing a great job, and then Robin comes along and that makes the job even better, the two of them start cleaning up the streets.

Then things begin to go a little bit wrong when Dick Grayson reaches college age and leaves. And then you have a succession of different Robins with disastrous results and consequences. You have the Joker’s paralyzing Barbara Gordon, you have Bane breaking Batman’s back, No Man’s Land…(laughs). All that’s supposed to have happened in the last few years of one man’s life!

So what would that do to your head? What we’re seeing now is kind of culmination of all these terrible things that have happened to him, and the fact that his mission has run into so many problems, and led to so many deaths. The psychological result of that will play directly into the storyline in the coming months, where we’ll get to see how Batman breaks down, and how he comes back from it…or not.

NRAMA: Now, after your current story, you’re doing “Batman RIP.” That’s been getting a lot of attention, a lot of people speculating. What can you tell us about that story at this time?

GM: I can tell you this much – this is the first story I had planned when Peter Tomasi, the editor at the time, asked me to do Batman, which must have been two years ago now… longer. And the very first story title I noted down was “Batman RIP”. I had a particular image for the cover, which Alex Ross has done a bang-zoom- thousand-times-better version of for the second part of the story.

So it came from there…and out of that notion came the idea for the big overarching story I’ve been telling since I first came on the book. Everything…the “Zur-En-Arrh” graffiti, the Joker prose story, the Club of Heroes…every detail that’s been in the book for the last couple of years is significant, everything is a clue to the grand design that’s unfolding.

My run on Batman is a 25-chapter novel that reaches its climax in “RIP” and maneuvers Batman into the greatest danger he’s ever known, at the mercy of the world’s deadliest criminal lunatics.

And yeah, I’ve seen all kinds of speculation about “RIP,” but it’s not necessarily what people think it’s going to be, although there are very big changes coming to Batman. When we say that this is the story that changes the legend of the Dark Knight forever, we’re quite serious about that.

I’m also looking forward to bringing back the Joker the way we set him up in issue #663. This is my attempt to write the scariest Joker yet and really get into the howling heart of homicidal madness!

What else? We finally get to see the Club of Villains we hinted at in the “Club of Heroes” storyline from last year – Charlie Caligula, Scorpiana, Pierrot Lunaire, the murder mime…and a bunch of other cool freaks. And there’s a new Batmobile, a new costume, more Bat-Mite…

It’s Batman’s final exam, I suppose, all leading to a new take on the characters and the set-up.

NRAMA: There was a rumor floating around about Bruce Wayne becoming a New God. Can you comment on that one?

GM: That was some wee wisp of nothing that got out. When we first spoke about Final Crisis, coming out of the Seven Soldiers series, I had the New Gods cast down onto Earth, and because they’d lost their former shapes, they were cast as spirits or avatars possessing human bodies, like Voodoo gods. [as shown in Seven Soldiers: Mr. Miracle.

For a brief moment back in 2006, I discussed the idea that the gods could then take over the bodies of familiar DC characters - so that an appropriate hero or villain could become the new Orion or Darkseid, say, and someone equally appropriate would become the new Lightray, kind of thing.

That didn’t happen because no one wanted to mess with either Jack Kirby’s or Gerry Conway’s intellectual property by saying Lightray was now inhabiting Firestorm or something like that. Quite rightly, no-one was willing to change existing DC characters into Kirby characters, because that would immediately confuse the ownership of the character and somebody would get cheated out of equity if that character was used in a movie or TV show or whatever. It’s very much a copyright issue.

Obviously, someone heard some faint years-old echo of this discarded idea and pawned it into the notion that Bruce Wayne was going to become a New God. That was never going to happen. That’s just insane. (laughs)

NRAMA: Fair enough. Let’s get into what you were saying about Batman’s life. I remember the first Batman comic story proper that I read was a Tor paperback reprint of the miniseries The Untold Legend of the Batman, where every page had some sort of flashback to how he met this character, or how he got this item. I was nine or 10 and just felt overwhelmed, trying to think of all that happening to one person.

GM: Oh yeah, definitely! When you see it that way, it’s a hell of a lot to go through in one life! And that’s what makes it interesting to me.

Also, we know that Batman has trained – he’s one of the greatest martial artists in the world, he’s mastered yoga and extreme meditation techniques. So he is a man who has the resources to deal with anything that’s thrown at him… and the stuff he’s had to deal with has been almost apocalyptic! It’s fun to confront that, and work through that, and see what that kind of life would do to a human being.

It’s also nice to think that he had a period in his 20s where he and Robin were like the Batman and Robin from the TV show, all sunny and fun and the Joker was a bit crazy, but not killing people. However, that period was only about a couple of real-time years, and then it was over and suddenly the Joker’s an increasingly-darker homicidal maniac again. So we kind of get to have our cake with all the different versions of Batman being facets of one man.

NRAMA: That’s something you’ve really been delving into in your run, like the homage with the pop art exhibition in your first storyline, or the “Club of Heroes,” or the return of the obscure supervillainesses in the one with Ra’s Al Guhl. A big thing in the last 20 years has been to say, “well, here’s a vaguely-defined portion of Batman’s early career that we can plug a story into,” but you’re going for a more holistic take that says, “all these stories happened – how does this affect the character?”

GM: Yeah, that’s exactly what I did. I sat down and I read as much as I could, then I created a timeline of about 15 years where all of this stuff could have taken place. And, like I said but it gives us access to all kinds of ways of thinking about this guy, and allows us to tap into the different types of visuals that Batman has had over the years.

“Holistic” is a good word for it. It’s a way of taking on the entire canon of Batman, and using it as fodder for stories. So yeah, we can develop throwaway notions from the 30s, the 40s, the 50s, the 60s…there’s no end to it.

NRAMA: God help me, but I would like to know how you would integrate all those crazy stories from the late 1950s and early 1960s – “The Rainbow Batman,” or the one where Robin “dies” on an alien world, those tales.

GM: Oh, all those…that’s what the overarching story I’m telling is all about ultimately. It all ties into that era. “Robin Dies at Dawn”, the story you mention – Batman #156, I think it was – [Newsarama note: He’s correct!] was a 1963 story about Batman undergoing an isolation experiment for the military, and he went crazy for a couple of weeks and decided to give up being Batman.

It’s been almost entirely neglected by writers ever since, along with most of the Batman material from that period, and to me, that’s one of the great Bill Finger stories of the past. (laughs) It’s an event that must have had such a big psychological effect on Batman that I wanted to go back there and explore what happened during that 10-day period of being isolated, and from there start to re-integrate all those bizarre 50s stories and give them a new context as part of the current more ‘realistic’ take on Batman and his life.

All of those adventures are not necessarily what he thought they were, but some big things are revealed to have happened to him in his early 20s, things that were unusual and out of the ordinary. So yeah, those stories, the craziest stories, those are the ones that drive the engine of this huge arc I’ve been working through since my first issue.

NRAMA: The strangest Batman story I remember was from this reprint book I found at the library in middle school, Batman from the ‘30s to the ‘70s—

GM: Yeah, yeah, I had that! That was my favorite book and I still refer to it. Re-reading (it) encouraged me to think of Batman’s adventures from the ‘30s on as one big life story.

NRAMA: There’s this one where Batman and Robin have to do this thing underwater, only they can’t come up because they’ll get the bends, and they wind up spending like a week fighting crime underwater in a bat-submarine…

GM: Yeah! God, that was a great one! (laughs) Those were the days, when Batman and Robin on a riverbed was enough to sell millions of copies. Those stories represent the time in Batman’s life when he was first being influenced by Robin. I imagine that Batman – the 20-year-old Batman of Year One and the Golden Age stories, who’s given himself this mission - is working his issues out, but he’s still very grim and angry and lacks responsibility.

And then he meets this little poor kid, a carnival kid, a trapeze artist. And I figure that as soon as he met Robin, it changed his life, because suddenly he had someone to talk to. Bruce Wayne was emotionally frozen when his parents were killed, so he really needed Robin. He never got to have a pal like this when he was young because he was grieving. And where Bruce was a fairly sheltered rich kid, Dick Grayson is a rough-and-tumble street-smart circus boy so Batman learns a lot from the kid.

And I can kind of imagine Robin introducing all this cool stuff to the Batcave, the submarines and dinosaurs all these crazy kid elements, and maybe even convincing Batman to wear a lighter-colored costume. They were like kids together. Emotionally Bruce was still a boy and some of those goofier older stories work more ‘realistically’ when seen in that light.

And again, when Robin leaves to go to college – at that point, we get the Denny O’Neill/Neal Adams stories which returned to a grimmer, 30s influenced Batman…and that’s obviously his emotional response to losing his little best friend to the grown-ups. (laughs).

NRAMA: They had those in that reprint book, and you have Bruce Wayne talking about ditching Wayne Manor and getting a penthouse in the middle of Gotham City right after Dick goes to college, and it’s like reading a midlife crisis.

GM: That’s exactly it! Although technically, I see that period – the whole Talia/Ra’s Al Ghul thing – as happening around the time Batman was 25, that set-up, with the penthouse and that whole 1970s atmosphere, the sexy Adams/Rogers Batman with the girlfriends – that was Midlife Crisis Batman, you’re absolutely right.

NRAMA: Well, getting back to your run, you’ve had Damian in the series, and given what you’ve said about Robin, how do you see Damian representing almost a new step in that saga?

GM: Well, Damian plays into a few story ideas that will become more central as we get to the end of RIP. I always loved the idea of Batman having a kid from Mike Barr’s Son of the Demon story. That was the initial inspiration for doing a grown-up ‘evil’ son, even though I hadn’t read the story in years and couldn’t remember what happened in it! (laughs)

I just felt that Damian added an interesting dynamic to Batman’s life story. And he’s fun to hate - he’s a smarmy, difficult little character, but I often like to start characters off as obnoxious or awkward and then put them through a journey where they get to change and grow and ultimately to show their heroic qualities. And Damian is that character, and he’ll be playing a big role in RIP and beyond. We’ve already established that he may be the next generation’s Batman and we’ll be revisiting that possibility.

NRAMA: In the flash-forward story in issue #666, a few people noted that Damian-as-Batman kind of looked like you…

GM: Yeah, well, that had nothing to do with me – that was the way Andy (Kubert) drew it, and I looked at it and went, “Oh God, not another bald guy!” (laughs) I had written him as having a buzz cut, I think, but Andy drew him bald. I think a lot of people just assumed that I stuck myself into a comic again, but that was never intended.

NRAMA: Well, you have talked about putting yourself into Batman’s mindset…

GM: Yeah. Well, that’s more physical stuff. It’s like method writing, you know, where I like to experience at least a portion of what these guys go through. Writing Batman, I’ve been working out a lot, running up hills, meditating…and going to posh parties (laughs). I try to get into that whole Bruce Wayne mindset as much as possible without actually putting myself in the costume and interacting with thugs.

NRAMA: How long do you see yourself writing Batman?

GM: Indefinitely! I’m having a great time. I’ve got huge plans for the book after “RIP” and Final Crisis, and I want to stay on and take the characters to the next level of the story. Having almost completed the long-form run that’s been “Batman and Son” through to “Batman RIP,” I’ve decided to be kinder to my patient readers and the new stuff after “RIP” will be more in the vein of single-issue or at most two-issue stories with lots of new villains and new situations.

[All Star Batman]

BATMAN #678
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Tony Daniel & Sandu Florea
Cover by Alex Ross
Variant cover by Daniel
Part 3 of “Batman R.I.P.”! Batman’s mysterious adversary has won. All is lost for the Dark Knight. Bruce Wayne is now deranged and dissociated, wandering homeless in the alleys of Gotham City. Is there a chance that Bruce can rebuild his Batman identity from scratch, or is this truly the end for one of the world’s finest heroes?
Retailers please note: This issue will ship with two covers. For every 25 copies of the Standard Edition (with a cover by Alex Ross), retailers may order one copy of the Variant Edition (with a cover by Tony Daniel). Please see the Previews Order Form for more information.
On sale June 25 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US

[electri]

so wat its the end of batman?

[jlavaia]

electri said:

so wat its the end of batman?

no. the series is not ending and the character is not dying. i dont know where you got this from, but you're mistaken.

[All Star Batman]

jlavaia said:

electri said:

so wat its the end of batman?

no. the series is not ending and the character is not dying. i dont know where you got this from, but you're mistaken.

Dude, lay off. The name of the arc is "Batman RIP". It's easy to see why people would think that.

[jlavaia]

batfan1990 said:

jlavaia said:

no. the series is not ending and the character is not dying. i dont know where you got this from, but you're mistaken.

Dude, lay off. The name of the arc is "Batman RIP". It's easy to see why people would think that.

i understand that, but he obviously did not read your earlier post of the interview with Grant Morrison in which he states that he's doing Batman indefinitely and has plans for the series after the arc. it's one post before his, and it's the last paragraph of the post. i was just reiterating what was posted there for him, so those far fetched rumors of Batman dying dont start up again.

[electri]

no its actually dumb of me all star batman I should have known

[All Star Batman]

No harm done. Just a misunderstanding.

[All Star Batman]

DAN DIDIO ON BATMAN: R.I.P.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(at right, page one from Batman #676)

In May, Grant Morrison will pull all his dangling Batman storylines together in “Batman R.I.P.,” a storyline which is promising to break the Bat in ways that are far from physical, and, in the end, be a story that’s title is, in fact, literal.

We spoke with DC Universe Executive Editor Dan DiDio for a broad look at Morrison and Batman and the upcoming storyline.

Newsarama: Dan, let’s start off with a broad view of Grant Morrison and Batman. While he has handled the character in the past, with Arkham Asylum and a Batman: Gothic among others, the announcement of his run on the main series still came as something of a surprise, much like the fact that over a year and a half later, he’s still around, and shows no signs of quitting. What’s the connection for him with Batman, in your view?

Dan DiDio: Grant has such a clear interpretation of Batman in his mind – how he acts and behaves in his world such that his run to date and the upcoming “Batman R.I.P.” are stories that are truly unique to Grant, and something that only Grant can tell. This is something that goes back and touches upon something that he established back in the early stages of 52, when Batman goes missing, and Bruce Wayne goes on his journey of discover and ends up in Nanda Parbat. He locked himself in isolation and came out a changed man – a person much more in tune with himself, and much more aware of who he is and what he’s about. It was a changed Batman that came out of 52, and it’s clearly a changed Batman that we’ve been seeing from that “One Year Later” jump.

In Grant’s full exploration of the character, what I think you’ve seen is a darkening of the world around Batman as Batman is coming to a better understanding of his own self being. And then, as only Grant can do, he’s going to introduce a better-adjusted Batman, and then that’s going to be ripped away in “R.I.P.” Once again, what readers thought about who Batman is will start to change.

NRAMA: You mention it here, and Grant did too when we spoke with him, that this storyline is something that Grant has been building to for a long time, even dating back to 52. Going back to the start of putting Grant on Batman on the first place – was this your plan for him to be around this long, to be able to implement a long-term plan such as this?

DD: With both Grant and [current Detective Comics writer] Paul Dini, I was hoping for a one-year commitment on the character. We’ve got longer stays from both of them, and I think that everyone benefits from it. I think what happened with Grant was that as he started to write the character, he explored so many facets of it, and each one was more interesting than the last. One of my personal favorites was the “Batmen Around the World” mystery where we saw all of those characters along with Batman and Robin. You don’t realize how strong or how deep Batman’s love for the lore of the character really is. If I’m not mistaken, this was Grant’s first chance to really write Batman as a solo character for an extended period of time, and he found that he had a lot of Batman stories to tell.

The best part of it is that we don’t see him coming off the character for the foreseeable future. He’s here to stay because he’s enjoying it so much.

NRAMA: At the same time, he has a reputation for pulling all of the pieces away from a character. More than a few people are starting to equate his Batman run with his Animal Man run in the way that, “What you think you knew maybe not be what you thought you knew” way…

DD: And that’s the fun part of the marriage between Grant and Batman. If any character can stand the intense heat lamp of a deep psychological examination, it’s Batman. His motivation, his drive, his perseverance – everything that he’s about comes from who he was and how he was born. Grant’s been able to explore the depth of the character on emotional, psychological and physical levels, and has been able to push the character to his extremes on every aspect. He’s brought him to the edge of death in the Ra’s al Ghul story, he’s brought him confront himself in his time in 52, we’ve seen his affect on the world with the “Batmen Around the World,” we’ve seen a very personal story of Batman’s effects on Gotham, and a possible extension of the Batman into the future with the “son” of Batman appearing, not to mention how that changes his current family situation. So Grant’s really been turning Batman over and over to see the various aspects of the character, and is continually finding new twists on each facet he finds.

NRAMA: When did you first hear of Grant’s plans as they would be in “Batman: R.I.P.,” and what were your initial thoughts when it was made clear that the title itself may be more than just an attention-grabber?

DD: Grant threw the title at me, and of course, your first reaction after hearing something like that is, “Ho-kay…where’s this going?” The funny thing about the story though is not about where it’s going, but about where it starts, which is kind of interesting. That’s what I really liked about what he was presenting with “R.I.P.” Actually, there are so many interesting things that have been brought together in his Batman’s run – the return of Ra’s al GHul, the introduction of Damien, and even the prose presentation of the Joker – it’s all been pushing what our expectations of the character have been.

For me, I get to enjoy it just as much as a fan does, and with all of Grant’s Batman stuff, as you hear it, you want to know more, you want to hear where it’s going because you’re watching the story unfold as he explains it. The “R.I.P.” conclusion, and I think I’m not talking out of turn here, it’s really the culmination of his run on Batman to date, and brings to a close so many key aspects of what people’s perception of Batman is today, and it’s a point that will naturally have people wondering what’s coming next. The best part of that, of course, is that Grant’s an integral part of what’s coming in Batman afterwards.

[laughs] And I’ve got to say, this all is tough for me, because I don’t want to give any of this away, but I think in this case, no one really wants it to be given away. Besides, however I could explain it will never do justice to the story as it’s going to play out in the series itself.

NRAMA: Well, let’s touch upon something that you can talk about here – the covers of the series. Alex Ross makes his debut as cover artist on Batman with the first issue of “R.I.P.” Was that all timed out to coincide?

DD: In some ways, yes. Alex is so attached and so integral to how people perceive our characters currently, because his images are so iconic. When we worked out the agreement for Alex to do not only the covers to Batman but also to Superman, we wanted to make sure that when he stepped on board, he’d be doing so at places that were launching points for the series, because we knew it would draw additional attention to both series as well.

So, Alex coming on board on “R.I.P.,” and coming on board when James Robinson comes up to the table on Superman - it’s just icing on the cake for what’s shaping up to be two exciting periods of time for Superman and Batman.

NRAMA: Talk about the synergy between Alex and Grant on the covers – when we spoke with Grant, he mentioned that he had an idea for one of the covers, but that Alex just blew away what he had been thinking of…

DD: Well, remember that Grant loves to sketch things out everything that he’s discussing and talking about. He describes it to you, but he also gives you a sketch as well. The good thing is that Alex was part of the conference calls discussing the series, so Alex was in contact with Grant on several occasions and they talked it through. Again, everything that Grant crafts in Batman right now, every element in the book is integral to where he’s taking the character in the story.

NRAMA: Wrapping things up, even though we’re a month and a half from the first issue, what can you leave us with in terms of a tease?

DD: We open up in part one of “R.I.P.” (Batman #676) with a better-adjusted Bruce Wayne than we’ve seen in years, getting on with this life. Bruce is happy. The issue also contains two flash-forwards, one that reveals a coming confrontation with the Joker, and another that shows just where the Batman is going.

[Batlaw]

That is simply gorgeous!

[jasontodd2]

I think it is such a gift and treat to have Grant and Paul on Batman and Detective for so long, I really hope they continue on for a very very very very long time.

I really like Grant Morrison's style and think he fits well with Batman

[All Star Batman]

BATMAN #679
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Tony Daniel & Sandu Florea
Cover by Alex Ross
Variant cover by Daniel
“Batman R.I.P.” — Part 4! Robin and Damian team up — yes, you read that right — to search for the missing Batman. Meanwhile, the Club of Villains — The Hunchback, Pierrot Lunaire, King Kraken, Charlie Caligula, Scorpiana and El Sombrero — rampage through Gotham City! This incredible fourth chapter of “Batman R.I.P.” ends with the surprising return of a character you never thought you’d see again!
Retailers please note: This issue will ship with two covers. For every 25 copies of the Standard Edition (with a cover by Alex Ross), retailers may order one copy of the Variant Edition (with a cover by Tony Daniel). Please see the Previews Order Form for more information.
On sale July 23 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US

[Jack-Ups]

hmmm interesting... Azreal ?

[All Star Batman]

BATMAN: THE BLACK GLOVE HC
Written by Grant Morrison
Cover by Williams
Art by J.H. Williams III, Tony Daniel & Jonathan Glapion
Writer Grant Morrison (ALL STAR SUPERMAN, FINAL CRISIS) brings Batman and a group of global heroes to a mysterious island to face a killer in this volume collecting BATMAN #667-669 and 672-675. Then, Batman relives a defining adventure in the life of young Bruce Wayne: the hunt for his parents’ killer.
Advance-solicited; on September 3 • 176 pg, FC, $24.99 US

[snooch2dnooch]

From Batman-on-film.com:

Grant Morrison, in his interview with COMIC BOOK RESOURCES, says the following about the upcoming story arc, "Batman, R.I.P.":

"So I came to [Executive Editor] Dan DiDio...and said, ’Okay. I am going to work towards this big storyline called ‘Batman R.I.P.’’ And he said, ‘Okay. Go for it. But it just can’t be ‘R.I.P.’ and nothing happens, we have to do something with him.’ So he encouraged me to take it more literally and that’s where it has ended up. This is the end of Bruce Wayne as Batman.”

[All Star Batman]

Apr 17, 2008 12:59:04 GMT -5 snooch2dnooch said:

From Batman-on-film.com:

Grant Morrison, in his interview with COMIC BOOK RESOURCES, says the following about the upcoming story arc, "Batman, R.I.P.":

"So I came to [Executive Editor] Dan DiDio...and said, ’Okay. I am going to work towards this big storyline called ‘Batman R.I.P.’’ And he said, ‘Okay. Go for it. But it just can’t be ‘R.I.P.’ and nothing happens, we have to do something with him.’ So he encouraged me to take it more literally and that’s where it has ended up. This is the end of Bruce Wayne as Batman.”

Please tell me they're pulling our legs.

[snooch2dnooch]

i don't think they're pulling our legs, but i don't think he's going to die either. i think he'll go crazy or retire to have a life with jezebel jet, or be wandering homeless for some reason. bruce wayne will not die, but batman - the true batman (bruce under the cowl) will.

[jlavaia]

Batman will still be Batman once this arc ends. Morrison himself stated so and Batman is a big part of Final Crisis, which will still be going on after this arc ends. Batman is Batman in Final Crisis and this story takes place before Final Crisis. the point of the RIP is that he will probaly be dead inside or something like that, as Morrison is breaking him. that's all. so once again this has to be stated, Batman is not dying, he's not stopping being Batman, no one else is going to be Batman.

[IamI]

But DC sure is hyping the heck out of the "R.I.P." title.

[jlavaia]

Apr 18, 2008 18:48:15 GMT -5 IamI said:

But DC sure is hyping the heck out of the "R.I.P." title.

i know. it's crazy. i've also heard the inane rumors that Batman will die and then come back to life as a Fifth World God in Final Crisis. it's hysterical. it may be due to sales slipping alittle and it's also probaly due to the movie coming out and Final Crisis and everything. Marvel's currently doing the same thing with Hulk by bringing in that Red Hulk.