Batman #666 - Mobile Edition

DC Comics
Batman #666
By Geoff Hoppe
July 26, 2007 - 22:45

DC Comics
Writer(s): Grant Morrison
Penciller(s): Andy Kubert
Cover Artist(s): Jesse Delperdang

Since when is Grant Morrison a thirteen-year-old goth girl?

The Obligatory Warning: FIRE N’ BLOOD N’ VIOLENT DEATH N’ IMPALING N’ GRRAHAAAGHGHA WHY DIDN’T YOU COME TO MY LITTLE LEAGUE GAMES?!?!?!?! (seriously, there’s a lot of violence, the very disturbing kind).

In Batman #666, the story leaps decades ahead of #665 to chronicle a Gotham literally gone to heck*. Bruce Wayne is dead, Barbara Gordon is police commissioner, and Damien Wayne is the new Batman. But he’s EDGY!!! How do we know? He wears a TRENCHCOAT, that’s how we know!!!

He has also booby trapped Gotham with explosives and sold his soul to Satan. He’s much nastier than dear ol’ dad ever was, too. This Batman kills. He also holds the key to the apocalypse. He’s a new, bleak hero for a new, bleak world full of nukes, epidemics, extreme global climate change, and, yes, even Man-Bear-Pig (I’m totally, totally serial).

Issue #666 is a frustrating jumble of details that imply big events somewhere in the unforeseen future. Thankfully, Grant Morrison’s talent as a writer ensures the details are assembled in coherent fashion. A less disciplined writer might have thrown these bleak details in the reader’s face like confetti. Morrison strings them together logically, though the result is still unsatisfying.

Where exactly did this story come from? Are there honestly plans to kill off Bruce Wayne down the line? Do the DC editors want that option open? Is Batman #666 just an erstwhile Elseworlds story? It doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t help that Batman #667 is going to be unrelated to this issue, or the three preceding it. Don’t leave us hanging, Grant!

Andy Kubert’s pencils have more effect than Morrison’s writing in making Gotham a frenetic nightmare. The trappings of Morrison’s verge-of-apocalypse world are nothing truly new. Cataclysmic violence and climate change have been done. To death. Andy Kubert’s art, full of uncomfortable close-ups and staccato-rhythm fights, better conveys a world on the verge of explosion. The images of Batman #666 never allow the reader room to breathe—which is exactly what the story needed.

Worth the money? Art-wise, certainly. But the publicity stunt-iness (yes, that’s a word) of the story makes me hesitant to recommend it.

*Yeah I said heck. Deal with it.