Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Chris Burnham
This is it folks, the much buzzed about Batman Inc. #8, the death of Damian Wayne. The death had been reportedly “leaked” early in the week, but was probably more likely a maneuver to sell more books. I say “leaked” because not only did DC not try to plug the “leak”, they also reported on it on their official blog. Hmm?
Regardless of the leak, Batman Inc. is another slam bang entry in the Grant Morrison book. In fact it may have been too slam bang (I can’t believe I’m complaining about TOO much action.), because there is about 2% story to the whole book and 98% action. Now I am an action junkie and its one of my favorite aspects of comics, but I also love good stories, and Batman Inc. #8 veered too much into the action direction, sacrificing story almost all together. It reminded me of The Expendables in that I had no idea what was going on at certain points except a bunch of things exploding.
That’s not to say there weren’t some great moments, such as Damian and Grayson in a nice bonding scene, seemingly being even closer than their entire run together as Batman and Robin. Red Robin also made an appearance, but his dialogue was so stilted that it would take up to five panels for the guy to get a whole sentence out.
The panel layouts were a real problem for me as well as they damn near confused the hell out of me on certain pages, which made it hard to read all the panels as one scene. This also made it hard to keep some of the dialogue straight and caused me to have to reread some pages. I did enjoy most of the art and Chris Burnham’s style, but again, with the pages being so choppy it made it hard to enjoy the art at times.
As for the death of Damian, all I can say is that the guy goes out like a stud in a very brutal battle. This does leave me wondering how this will affect the rest of the Bat books going forward, especially the Batman & Robin title. Batman needs a Robin. He has to have a Robin, so who will step in to fill his shoes until he makes his eventual return in true comic book fashion. I’m also wondering why they decide to make this move now? Damian started off as a real snot nosed punk and has since worked his way into the DC fan’s hearts. Why kill the kid when he’s finally getting popular?
No matter what the reason, overall this was just an okay installment in the Batman Inc. line and I have to say, a little disappointing given Morrison’s great story telling up to this point.
2.5 out 5 nerds
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Marc
Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….
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