REVIEW: ‘Batman Incorporated: Vol 1’ by Grant Morrison et al.

The second collected volume of Grant Morrison’s Batman Incorporated is due be released in May, and will also rather confusingly be titled “Volume 1”.  The reason for this sequential anomaly is DC’s new shift in company-wide continuity, dubbed “The New 52”.  As far as the company is concerned, all series set in the main DC universe have been given a do-over, starting again from (almost) scratch.  As DC’s biggest-selling hero, Batman is not immune to this overhaul in continuity, and Scott Snyder’s recent run on the rejuvenated main title has been garnering rave reviews.  But where does this leave Batman Incorporated, Morrison’s globe-trotting companion title to the main run?  Resetting the volume number of the collected trades does not appear to have reset the entire continuity of the series, for Morrison seems committed to acknowledging the continuity of the new DC universe while simultaneously preserving all that went before during his runs on Batman, Final Crisis and Batman & Robin.  Synthesising the series’ new continuity with one which technically no longer exists might sound like something of a narrative headache, but all throughout his last seven years writing Batman, Morrison has delighted in dragging forgotten and abandoned pieces of Bat-continuity out of the shadowy recesses of DC’s vault and forcing them to fit together like some sort of demented jigsaw.  The “New 52” continuity shift merely allows him to continue doing this in real-time, and it’ll be fascinating to see how this is accomplished in the next volume of Batman Incorporated.  In the meantime, though, it seems appropriate to look back at the first volume of the series, published early last year.

The notion of a network of Batman-like crime fighters stretching across the globe has its roots in the ‘Batmen of All Nations’ storyline from 1955, just one of the many esoteric pieces of Bat-lore upon which Morrison drew for inspiration when creating his earlier Batman RIP arc.  Bruce Wayne’s idea of turning this network into an incorporated structure supported by Wayne Enterprises was unveiled at the end of the preceding Batman & Robin series, and Batman Incorporated follows on directly from this point.  In fact, the series is so much a continuation of Morrison’s previous work on Batman that new readers may find themselves out of their depth if they’re unfamiliar with the Batman RIP and Batman & Robin arcs.  Unlike, say, Scott Snyder’s excellent Black Mirror (part of the same continuity), Batman Incorporated is not a series that can really be read in isolation.  The globe-trotting nature of the concept provides ample opportunity for a story-of-the-week structure, as Batman visits Japan, Argentina, France and the fictional African nation of Mtamba recruiting reluctant heroes like El Gaucho and the Nightrunner, and battling weird and sinister villains like El Sombrero and Lord Death Man.  Most of these bizarre characters have their origins in half-forgotten Batman comics from the ’50s and ’60s, but here they’re given a Morrison-esque twist which renders them at once more strange but somehow less ridiculous than their original incarnations.  It isn’t long, though, before the grand and malevolent ‘Leviathan’ conspiracy hinted at during Batman & Robin begins to rear its ugly head from the shadows, and Batman Incorporated begins to look less like a crime-fighting network and more like an international army, deployed by Bruce Wayne against sinister and (as yet) unseen forces.

As the series goes on, the story-of-the-week format gradually begins to take a back seat to this emerging story arc concerning exiled Nazi scientists, a cold war superhero spy network and the mystery surrounding the death of original Batwoman Kathy Kane.  Little by little, Morrison expertly draws these threads together to offer glimpses of Leviathan’s horrific grand design, always tempered by elements of illusion and misdirection, before bringing the first volume of Batman Incorporated to a surreal conclusion full of shocking and memorable imagery, which plays with the reader’s perception of time and references cult TV show The Prisoner as well as the work of Jorge Luis Borges.  Typical Grant Morrison, in other words.

Batman’s weird and wonderful quest is rendered in almost uniformly superb fashion by the variety of artists featured in this volume, from the rich textures of Yanick Paquette to the bubblegum pop-art of Cameron Stewart, the only missteps perhaps being Chris Burnham’s tendency to ape the work of Frank Quitely and the intriguing but ultimately soulless digital experimentation of Scott Clark and Dave Beaty.  For his part, Grant Morrison continues his run of consistently high-quality writing on Batman titles, although there is a suggestion at times that he has started including certain ‘Morrison-esque’ tropes in his storytelling out of a perceived obligation, rather than the necessities of plotting or characterisation.  Such an approach can easily lead to self-parody, as Garth Ennis discovered during his run on The Punisher, but for the moment Morrison’s authorial tics largely continue to serve a grander purpose, in addition to eliciting wry smiles from his ever-loyal fanbase.  It’s pleasing to see him draw upon story elements that were put in place as far back as the Batman & Son story arc in 2006, and he continues to evolve the character of Bruce Wayne in an interesting fashion.  Trading on his god-like reputation after an apparent return from the dead, Wayne cajoles, threatens and manipulates to achieve his end of an army of Batmen prepared to face the apocalyptic conflict he claims to have foreseen.  It’s an even more Machiavellian portrayal of the character than is usually seen in the pages of Batman, to the extent that his attempts to accumulate ever more manpower and technology begin to take on a slightly sinister air.

Warren Ellis’ The Authority explored the concept of superheroes imposing themselves upon the world’s population as a necessary force of authoritative power, and the Bruce Wayne of Batman Incorporated continues in that vein of moral ambiguity.  Morrison’s use of the name ‘Leviathan’ for the shadowy organisation opposing Wayne and his Batmen is thus full of deeper meaning, for this was the name given by the philosopher Thomas Hobbes to the dictatorial form of government that he argued was necessary for humanity’s own good, and which of course provides a clear parallel to the Batman Incorporated organisation.  Just like the Joker is in some ways a mirror-image of Batman, so Leviathan is that of Batman Incorporated, and it will be interesting to see if and how Morrison explores this relationship in future volumes.  The series’ use of such a grand canvas has drawn criticism from some readers that Batman Incorporated is not really a Batman comic anymore, as it has strayed too far from the essence of the character.  Whatever one’s feelings on this point, the more conventional Batman titles will always remain an integral part of DC’s publishing output, and Batman Incorporated for the moment provides an alternative take on the character which continues to be compelling, thrilling and at times haunting.  With any luck, taking on board a whole new continuity in the second volume will only give Morrison more opportunities to dazzle us.

Now if he can just do something about the mildly offensive national stereotypes that are the ‘Batmen of All Nations’….