Batman #677 - Grant Morrison, Tony S. Daniel (DC Comics)
It’s hard to argue with Jezebel Jet here. Her reading of Batman – that ‘Batman’ is a defence mechanism created by the young Bruce Wayne to avoid dealing with his parents’ deaths directly, and possibly even growing up – is a good one.
She’s certainly backed up by large chunks of the text, not least the Batcave trophies which litter the corners of the page.
There’s even a tasty vein of meta-fictional message running through it. After all, if we’re talking about superheroes as a way of clinging onto childhood as adults, the finger probably isn’t only being pointed at Bruce Wayne. It’s the kind of reading that’s been pretty commonplace in superhero comics since Watchmen, and I’m sure certain writers would leave it there, pleased with their observation.
But not Morrison.
The rest of RIP makes it clear that Jezebel's argument, to borrow a catchphrase from Catchphrase’s Roy Walker, is good but it’s not right.
Batman makes his counter-argument on the following page, actually somewhat unconvincingly, but the narrative has his back. A few issues later, Jezebel is revealed as an agent of the evil Black Glove, and Batman emerges from RIP not only victorious (beating even the story’s title, at least for a little while) but having pretty comprehensively proved himself a necessary force for good.
(I’m going to get a bit super-connected over the next few posts, btw, in an attempt to get down everything I want to say about the first act of Grant Morrison's Batman (…& Son/The Black Glove/RIP). It’s just too big for a single post, which is actually kind of appropriate.)
