Batman Incorporated v2 #1 Annotations

Though originally announced as a 12 issue limited series, the relaunched Batman Incorporated now seems to be an ongoing, though it's difficult to imagine Morrison staying on board for another extended period. Plenty of questions to be answered and stuff to enjoy before we reach the end though. Bring on the annotations!

Annotations

Cover - The 'new' (for Morrison anyhow) Batman and Robin team of Bruce and Damian feature on both covers, though Quitely's Bruce doesn't have the same kind of stocky build that Burnham and co. have been drawing to distinguish him from Dick's Batman, and consequently doesn't really carry the same sort of 'grizzled veteran' air that Morrison's story demands.

The sniper-scope design element of Burnham's cover really make it pop off the shelf, probably even more so with the black and white colour scheme featured on the Combo pack version.

Page 1 - Mirroring the "Batman and Robin will never die!" opening of R.I.P. we begin this second volume of Batman Incorporated with a flash forward to one month in the future. Bruce at his parents' graveside, about to throw in the towel in light of events yet to be revealed. Inicidentally, this is the same graveyard in the grounds of Wayne Manor where the Joker buried Simon Hurt alive at the end of Morrison's Batman and Robin run.

Accompanied by his faithful butler Alfred, Bruce is ambushed by the Gotham P.D., led by a Commisioner Gordon who, thanks to the New 52 reboot, is now significantly younger and red-headed than he was the last time he appeared in Morrison's Bat-epic. That's probably Detective Harvey Bullock on the left, who made his New 52 debut in Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's Batman #1 (thanks Alex!), and has been a regular staple of the Gotham P.D. since the mid-eighties..

There's absolutely no doubt we'll revisit this scene at a crucial point later in the story.

Page 2-3 - Keeping the concessions to the New 52 to a merciful minimum, Bruce is in his new togs here, losing both the yellow oval and his impressive codpiece since the end of Leviathan Strikes. They're vaulting across the hood of the new Batmobile, which heavily draws on the flying Batmobile design from Morrison's Batman and Robin.

The Dark Tower bag on the far right is a double handed reference to the logo of fast food chain White Castle, and Chris Burnham's local comics haunt, Darktower Comics in Chicago.

Page 4 - Morrison plays to Burnham's strengths by launching us straight into the action. The red inset panels are an especially nice touch. The gun-toting perp is Sam Lucas, (possibly) alias Goatboy, making his first and last appearance this issue. That's his Goat-ercycle he's leaving behind as he enters the abbatoir.

Both the Lone Star Brand trucks in the background and Goatboy's motorcycle front end both feature inverted five-pointed star designs, the Satan Symbol that future-Bats Damian noted way back in Batman #666.

Page 5 - As Batman and Robin travel further into the slaughterhouse Labyrinth, more of the sluaghtermen reveal their allegiance to Leviathan's twisted cause. The de-humanizing animal masks recall the finale of Robin Hardy's Wicker Man, as well as numerous instances in Morrison's own work, from Hellblazer through The Invisibles and Hurt and Pyg's twisted orgies in Batman and Robin.

It's been a long time since Morrison has put animal welfare issues so front and centre in a story - the slaughter-via-electric-bolt track from Burnham a brutal and unpleasant reminder of a part of the food chain most of us would rather not think about.

Of course they're wearing chainmail. They work in a slaughterhouse...

As Bruce cries "Go for their heads!", Damian goes for their knees, slicing the tendons and felling the giant.

There are 16 panels on this page. SIXTEEN. PANELS. And one of them is in a fish eye perspective. Throw in some Quietly-esque sound effects integrated seamlessly with the art, and a fantastic reverse CLANG! as Batman ducks out of the way of the chainsaw, and it becomes obvious why Morrison singled out Burnham as his artistic collaborator for this final crescendo of his 6-year long (and counting) Batman story. Superlative work, can't say enough good stuff aboout it.

Page 6 - Meat and blood, life and death. We transition across town to Leviathan's Park Row/Crime Alley hideaway, where Gotham's criminal elite gather to dine. I don't think we've seen any of the diners before, though I'm sure we'll be meeting at least some of them in future issues. Back left appears to be some kind of riff on Rosie the Riveter, next to her a man bandaged from head to foot, what appears to be an Emergency Room doctor or surgeon, and slightly off panel an Invisible Man. On the other side of the table is one of the Brothers Grimm. We'll get back to him in a minute.

Our (briefly) faceless narrator begins his monologue with a slaughtered cow illustrating his point about luck. On both the art and writing fronts there's an awful lot going on in this comic from a technical perspective - transitions, juxtapositions, all kinds of skillfully-deployed technique.

Page 7 - Damian's protests are, of course, a result of his previous infractions of the Bat-code against killing. That may well be Bat-Cow behind Damian, who seems to take the second rocket-bullet destined for the Boy Wonder via his dad's cape.

Page 8 - Though gyrospcopically stabilized rocket-bullets exist in the real world, their effective range is way way less than the span of a major metropolitian city.

The map of Gotham is based on Eliot R. Brown's map from the No Man's Land Secret Files and Origins one-shot. It also appears on Gotham's Wikipedia page and has become something of a go-to artist's reference when a map of the city is called for. Based on the map key, the abbatoir is close to the docks (makes sense), and Goatboy is probably atop the R.H. Kane Building, named for Batman's erstwhile creator Bob Kane.

Gotham as 'Home of Goats' calls back to Professor Pyg's ramblings in Batman and Robin - "The goat is in it's house" - and various references in Scott Snyder, Kyle Higgins and Trevor McCarthy's Gates of Gotham mini-series.

You can see Bill Hicks Goatboy routine here. Not sure that it has any relevance to the story so much, but hell, it's Bill Hicks. It's worth watching anyway...

A lot of character work on the would-be assassin from Morrison. It's not easy to make the audience sympathize with a guy who's trying to murder a ten year old boy.

"I drive a taxi and I know this city like I know my own mug in the mirror" Echoes of the Batman of Zen-Ur-Arrh's comments on the secret city grid from R.I.P., made all the more apparent by the overlaying of the map itself in the second to last panel. It also brings to mind the throwaway "The map is now the territory" comment from Batman Incorporated #8. Might Waynetech's Internet 3.0 play a role in this series?

An Officer Downe billboard advertises another fine work from Chris Burnham and writer Joe Casey, recently re-issued in hardcover from Image Comics. P-Kow!, an obvious play on the Batman TV show favourite Kapow!, could be some sort of cola maybe.

Page 9 - The two-horned star, an inverted pentagram, also called the Sigil of Baphomet (who's head is that of a goat, natch), is the official symbol of Anton LaVey's Church of Satan. The text around the pentagram as used by the Church is Hebrew for... Leviathan. The Demon Star is Algol in the constellation Perseus. It takes it's name from the same Arabic root as Al Ghul (as in Talia Al Ghul).

Bat-cow... Brilliant. Can we have an Ace the Bat Hound/Bat-Cow team-up later in the run? Please?

Page 10 - The Brother's Grimm (or the one that's still alive anyway) may well have been running the west side Gotham club scene for years, but they haven't appeared before this issue. Chances are they won't appear after it either.

Now the cat's out of the bag with Talia and Leviathan we can get back to some ninja Man-Bat action. Which is a boon for everyone really.

A commentator on Comics Alliance thinks that the Leviathan we see here may be Lord Death Man rather than Talia. Though there's not really much to confirm that either way, feeding a gangster his brother to assert superiority seems a suitably extreme approach for it to certainly be a possibility.

Page 11 - Damian beheaded The Spook way back in Batman #657, two issues after his debut in Batman #655. NoBody was a villain killed by Damian at the end of the first arc of the new Batman and Robin series by Pete Tomasi and Patrick Gleason. Even though that issue is only a few months old, Bruce and Damian's talk here suggest that Damian killing Netz in Leviathan Strikes! occured at some point after it. Though I'm sure its infinitely rewarding to reconcile the New 52 timeline with various callbacks to the pre-reboot continuity, it's not a job for me. I'll just take it as given that some other things happened in some other comics while all this Leviathan stuff has been kicking off. There, that was easy wasn't it?

As we all secretly hoped, Morrison hasn't really made much in the way of concessions to all this New 52 hoohar beyond Batman's costume. Dick was still Batman, Bruce was still 'dead', there were still plenty of Mike W. Barr Outsiders comics and Morrison's superlative JLA run still 'happened'. All is as it should be.

Damian's memory of his time as Robin to Dick Grayson's Batman is an amusing and decidely rose-tinted reference to the beginning of the first series of Batman and Robin.

The sloganeering here certainly fits with the Lord Death Man theory. The Leviathan philosophy remains unchanged - to penetrate the lowest levels of society and turn the disenfranchised, the displaced - "the alleyways, the schoolyards".

Page 12 -I think Bruce's views on Damian's hood are referencing a similar distaste he expressed for Dick wearing one, possibly referred to in Chuck Dixon and Scott Beatty's Robin: Year One. Even if it's not, you should totally read Robin: Year One and Dixon and Beatty's Batgirl: Year One, as both are excellent, and feature the work of current artistic hot-ticket Marcos Martin. Well worth a look.

Page 13 -Yep, Algol, Perseus. Told you.

The Heretic, seen here next to Leviathan, is still something of a mystery wrapped in an enigma at this point. He first appeared in Batman; The Return and returned for a one page cameo at the close of Leviathan Strikes! There's little doubt he'll play an important role in the closing stages of this story.

Nice bit of comic timing from Burnham there in the last panel.

Page 14 - And, in an unexpected turn, we're away to a sex shop in San Francisco. British secret agent George Cross, alias The Hood, was last seen apparently being killed by his commanding officer in Leviathan Strikes!...

Page 15 -Also apparently meeting their demise in Leviathan Strikes! were Batwing, and Freight Train, Halo and Looker of the Outsiders; all of whom resurface here alongside Gaucho and the mysterious new Wingman. Their, frankly brilliant, meeting place is the new Batcave West, a cave under a sex shop filled with Outsiders memorabilia. Amazing.

The original Batcave West.was the short-lived headquarters of the Outsiders when they relocated to Hollywood during their 1980's Batman-less Baxter Series. It first appeared in May 1987's The Outsiders #19, which the internet tells me featured a cutaway schematic. Rest assured, as soon as I find a copy we can all bask in it's glory together. It was created by Mike W. Barr and the incomparable Jim Aparo but was sadly destroyed by super-terrorist Kobra not long after its debut.

Black Lightning's mask and afro (it was a weave?!) is in the display case on the left, with a rack of Katana's... katanas behind.it. The giant penny features the mug of Metamorpho's arch-nemesis and father-in-law Simon Stagg; and the costume display tubes commemorate some of the Outsiders' more colourful villains - from the left, The People's Heroes; Dad from The Nuclear Family; and, best of all, Maxie Zeus' robes from 1984's Batman and the Outsiders #15, a special Olympics-themed issue. Read that one to death as a kid. Amazing Trevor Von Eeden art. Happy days.

Quick bit of exposition as everyone trades death-stories and chows down on canapes. A nod to Morrison's own JLA #1 from 1997 (but we all knew that was coming after last issue) and a little bit of Argie-bargie between the British guy and the Argentine set us up for the continued mystery of Wingman's identity. Must admit I'm fairly stumped at this point. Still don't think it's Superman though.

Page 16 -Great full page spread from Burnham. Spectacular stuff.

Of course Bruce has all this assassination stuff covered. What did you expect?

Page 17 - The by-now obligatory appearance from Pandora in a New 52 issue one in the top panel by the arcade machine. However her story plays out I'm fairly sure it won't have much impact on what Morrison's doing here.

Though I don't think Bed Bug is a real arcade game (not really my field of expertise though, I might well be wrong), Polybius is a 'legendary' (in the sense of probably made-up) game that supposedly drove it's players to suicidal insanity before it was quickly and quietly withdrawn from the market.

A little more characterization for Goatboy here. There's some speculation that he's going to be Batman's man on the inside and so could play a pretty major role in this arc.

Page 18 -The Mutants first appeared, and featured heavily, in Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns as a kind of base commentary on the worst excesses of the 1980's. They also made a cameo appearance in Frank Quitely's chapter of Batman #700.

Speaking of Quitely, Burnham channels some We3 kenetics for Damian's fight scene on this page. And totally owns it.

Page 20 - Merlyn and Bronze Tiger are both one-time members of the League of Assassins, a guild of murderers usually under the control of either Ra's Al Ghul or his father The Sensei. There's an implication here the League are now part of Talia's Leviathan crime family though we haven't seen much evidence of that as yet.

The guy on the right clearly didn't 'kill' Robin.as he seems to be totally unharmed. Highly unlikely you'd escape from that unscathed, given that the kid's dad is Batman...

Page 21 -Goatboy shoots Batman, smashing the eye-pieces of his mask and blinding him, then takes care of Damian who's hood is down, as per his dad's orders earlier in the issue...

Page 22 - ...Except in his camera phone photo of the event, Batman's mask is intact and Robin's hood is up. Like the kid's going to do what his dad says...

And that's that - a rip-roaring start to the final volume of Morrison's Bat-epic. Join me in 30 for another round of Batmannotating. As ever, any corrections, additions or comments always welcome.

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