The Return of the Renaissance Batman

I know, I know, we’ve discussed the Grant Morrison Batman before…last time, I promise! It’s just that when Morrison spoke about his plans for the Caped Crusader with Newsarama, I was reminded all over again about why his depiction of “a psychologically ‘healthier’ Batman” is one of the more exciting developments of the new DC Comics. “The idea here is not to soften or emotionally reset Batman as an exercise in nostalgia but to make him more real and relatable,” Morrison explains, “while at the same time offering some rationale for his complex multi-faceted personality. I want to see a Batman that combines the cynic, the scholar, the daredevil, the businessman, the superhero, the wit, the lateral thinker, the aristocrat… He has a wider range of experiences than most people will dream of in ten lifetimes. This is not a one-note character! So, while I won’t pretend we all live on Sunnybrook Farm, I don’t think it’s appropriate—particularly in trying times—to present our fictional heroes as unsmiling vengeance machines. I’d rather Batman embodied the best that secular humanism has to offer.”

Thus the fight against an army of man-bat assassins* in issue #656, which shipped yesterday, is a perfect subversion of the “grim’n'gritty” tone Frank Miller used to portray the character nearly twenty years ago in The Dark Knight Returns—Morrison even sets at a Pop Art exhibition as an excuse for several pages of visual puns. In the interview, Morrison also gets off a good shot at the plans to show Batman kicking bin Laden’s ass: “Cheering on a fictional character as he beats up fictionalized terrorists seems like a decadent indulgence when real terrorists are killing real people in the real world. I’d be so much more impressed if Frank Miller gave up all this graphic novel nonsense, joined the Army and, with a howl of undying hate, rushed headlong onto the front lines with the young soldiers who are actually risking life and limb ‘vs’ Al Qaeda.”

*If you haven’t been reading comic books since the 1970s, this may not make sense to you. As with much of Morrison’s writing, it’s easiest to simply go along for the ride.

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