Batman Inc, Endgame

With three issues left in Batman, Inc. there's more coming than the story we've seen so far seems to require. Talia believes that a grand finale begins with the moment that issue #10 ended. But a battle won't last three issues. And we have seen, in #1, a look forward that includes a second funeral. In that flash forward, Batman once again appears to be a normal man, which means that he will have willingly reversed his transformation into a man-bat. And yet, that funeral leaves Bruce speaking of defeat, before being arrested by Jim Gordon, and that will require yet another series of twists. Where is this story going?

First, a list of the pending mysteries: Sivana's photonic crystal. The identity of the headmistress. The detail that Ra's says that Talia forgot. Whose death causes the second headstone in Bruce's vision? And overall, just where is this going?

Oroboros, Otto Netz's invention that allowed him to build a meta-bomb, a ring around the world, and Sivana's photonic crystal are both meta-materials. Unlike many comic book gadgets, these actually exist, and on small scales, actually do allow such otherwise impossible properties as a lens that pulls out detail smaller than the wavelength of the light that passes through them, and as mentioned in the comic, invisibility. If the importance of this is simply to give Batman one more weapon in his coming battle, then this will have its role, which should pass quickly. However, as this was introduced in the first issue of Inc, and has been mentioned more than once since then, it probably has a larger importance, related to the meta-bomb threat rather than as a mere battlefield weapon. The common language used to describe both and the explicit comparison of the two seems like more than coincidence.

The headmistress from Leviathan Strikes has been conspicuously hidden from full view in each appearance. We see her once with black nails, once with red. She wears a revealing dress in #10, and we find out that she's on Batman's side while she appeared to be on Leviathan's. And with the girls she trains wearing costumes in the style of the original Batwoman, others have guessed that she indeed is Kathy Kane, the original Batwoman whom Morrison has shown at several intervals in his epic. As of Inc v1 #3-5, she has been rewritten as a double spy, who was asked to betray Batman, and began that assignment but did not complete it. We know that Scorpiana is an underling of the headmistress, and we know that both Kathy Kane and Scorpiana dance the tango of death. Batman seems confused about the true identity of the headmistress, and he also seems convinced that Kathy Kane really is dead. Overall, the pattern is most easily completed if it turns out that Kathy Kane faked her death and has been seeming to work for Leviathan but will now fall in line and come to her former lover's assistance. For her to seem unscrupulous and turn out to be something more was even foreshadowed back in Batman #682, when Morrison's "Last Rites" story showed her leaving Bruce, prompting a young Dick Grayson to say, "There's something about her I don't trust." At the end of Leviathan Strikes, we see a woman speaking to Matron (the head of Spyder) about the death of Netz, and about her obvious familiarity and hatred of him, a hatred well explained in her recruitment into Spyder by Netz, who claimed to be her father. This woman has the Fifties hairstyle Kathy Kane was known for; it seems clear that Kathy Kane remains high up in Spyral.

Kathy Kane's death at the hands of the Sensei's men is a curious fact for Morrison to reference. The original Batwoman nearly disappeared from DC continuity in the early Sixties, but made a very brief appearance in which she was killed in 1979's Detective Comics #485. A fact of that story, which I will mention later, may prove to be a key plot element still to be seen in this one.

In Inc v2 #2, Talia visits Ra's, at his request. He announces that she will remain his prisoner, but she turns the tables and makes him her prisoner. The issue is full of flashbacks summarizing the history of Ra's, Talia, and Batman. The battle of wills between father and daughter is full of betrayals and reversals, recapitulating the events of #2 itself, in which he forbids her to fight a war against Batman, which seems only to strengthen her resolve. We don't see Ra's again until #10, in a scene that borrows atmosphere from the famous Batman-Joker scene in The Killing Joke, and again in DC Universe #0, when a captive foe seems to hold power over their captor. Just as the Joker plays cards by himself in both those scenes, Ra's plays chess by himself in this one.

The details of Ra's's chess game are obvious allegories to the main action, with red representing Talia's side (she wears red through most of #10), and black representing Batman's. First we see a red rook capture a black pawn. This is the Heretic killing Damian. Damian is even referred to as a pawn in #2. This is followed by a move in which the dark knight captures the red queen, and the meaning of the dark knight should require no explanation.

Multiple clues point to the fact that Ra's is not actually a prisoner at all, except in the literal sense. For Talia to have been revealed as the villain in this story came far too early, when the story has yet to climax.

1) In the aforementioned Detective #485, Ra's visits Batman and tells him that the Sensei was behind Kathy Kane's murder. He later says explicitly that he did so in order to use Batman against Sensei, so that the battle will weaken both of them, leaving him to emerge victorious.

2) The chess game itself, representing Batman and Talia is literally being played by Ra's. In that the pieces represent other people, we are seeing Ra's as the main agent, using others (as when he "forbids" Talia from fighting Batman) to weaken one another. In Detective #485, this was against Sensei (retroactively defines as Ra's's father by Morrison). Now the same dynamic skips a generation, with Ra's working against his daughter. Clearly he ends the scene smug, in control. His control is likely to become the central fact of the story's climax.

In addition, there is a very cagey geographical detail in the story which is unlikely to be a coincidence. The setting of Ra's's imprisonment is in Switzerland, by a mountain called Jungfrau, German for young woman. This mountain is invariably considered one of a trio, along with the Eiger (Ogre) and Mönch (Monk), all visible in one panoramic sweep. These map onto the key players in the story with Batman as the Monk and Talia as the Maiden. Perhaps the brutish and powerful of the Heretic indicate that he represents the Ogre, but the legend implies that the Ogre is a threat to the Maiden, whereas the story (and the chess symbolism) indicate that Heretic is a mere physical force serving Talia, alternately the Queen and the Maiden.

For the story to end, we also need another death to take place, one that makes Bruce mourn greatly, and for him to place a grave on the grounds of Wayne Manor. The best fit for this may be Kathy Kane, who could die as soon as she returns, just as she did in 1979.

Ultimately, something big is at stake. The battle with Talia is due to begin at 11 o'clock and what is 11 o'clock but an occurrence before the climax, which Morrison has twice (once with the Joker, once with Doctor Hurt) set at midnight. Morrison has also made mention of midnight in reference to Darkseid and Mandrakk. 11 o'clock is a pointed choice on his part to say that Bruce's battle with Talia is not the climax, but the thing that comes before the climax. We've seen enough mention of apocalypse and the Devil to wonder if the Heretic, Fatherless, is that climax, and yet Heretic appears simple, easily dominated in a battle of wills despite his enormous physical power. Ra's, on the other hand, looks calm and collected, and calling the shots. The endgame, the midnight battle, may show us what happens between Batman and Ra's once Talia has served her purpose as Ra's's tool.

Batman, Inc #10

In what is perhaps the most significant event of Grant Morrison's long run on Batman, Damian Wayne was killed by his brother/clone in Batman, Inc v2 #8. This was in many ways foretold, not the least of which that he had appeared to die in his fourth appearance and Morrison said later that he intended for Damian to die then. Now, more than sixty issues later into Morrison's mega-epic, that death has taken place for real, but rather than serving as the climax of the story, it comes with five issues to go, which leaves a mystery: What sort of story is Morrison telling? What is the intended payoff?

After an issue largely dedicated to grieving and the follow-up battle between Batman and his allies and the Heretic, we now see the sides prepare for another battle. Of course, Batman will have his retribution. Of course he will dismantle Talia's threat and leave Gotham safe. But something bigger is coming.

#10 is full of action and twists, with ten scenes in only twice that many pages. That starts with the fold-out cover that shows what the publicly-released cover does not: In his commitment to winning this war, Batman willingly becomes a man-bat, disfiguring himself to gain the power to physically defeat the Heretic and Talia's army of man-bats. Inside the issue, this scene comes last, after we see Kirk Langstrom working on an antidote that will surely set Batman back to normal when his victory is complete. We also see Batman use an experimental exo-skeleton which had proven dangerous and the return of Sivana's photonic crystal from Inc v1 #1 which will also power him in the coming battle, perhaps giving him the power of invisibility.

Talia's cool and collected facade beging to crack in this issue. She seems to be in control when she orders Gotham's mayor to declare Batman a fugitive, and when she uses control over the Heretic's nervous system to stop him from commiting mutiny against her. But she's frequently at a disadvantage. We learn that she did not plan on Damian's death, and in a rage she orders the brutal murder of many of her underlings. A visit to her father proves disturbing as he hints at one forgotten factor that is certain to lead to her defeat. As he teases her with this knowledge, we see on a chessboard, a dark knight knocking off the red queen, reprising the red-and-black game theme from earlier in Morrison's Batman work, with meaning all too obvious as Talia wears red throughout this issue awaiting her battle with the Dark Knight. Later, she's disturbed to see Bruce's new look. Having used her man-bats to defeat Bruce twice before, she knows that she's lost her tactical advantage on him.

In fact, she may have lost this war before it began. She may not even be the main villain. Earlier, we saw the Hood, representing Spyral, take Jason Todd hostage. Now, as the Knight and Ranger arrive to rescue him, we learn that the evil headmistress operation in the UK (raided by Stephanie Brown, who no longer exists in the DCnU) was never really serving Talia in the first place. The Hood's earlier declaration of Batman, Incorporated being a failure was not a statement of victory but of resignation. Spyral is aligned against Leviathan, but we have yet to learn why he cold-cocked Jason Todd and tried to force his cooperation instead of asking for it.

And this leads to the most significant part of the issue, its beginning. Batman visits Michael Lane to recruit him, and while doing so, works to piece together the vision of the future we saw in #5, while Lane recites lines from Nostradamus and bemoans his own fate ultimately to serve evil, while Batman taps him to play a significant role for good. This opening scene mentions the Devil and the Joker (at least, the word "joker") and indicates a bigger picture than we've yet had come into focus.

The simplest way this story could end would be that Batman would defeat Talia and the Heretic in a battle and send them off into incarceration, with Talia shaking her fist at the air and bemoaning that she underestimated him. There's too much story coming for that to be all that happens. We have three more issues (one more than the original plan) and numerous hints of a more complex arrangement than we, or Talia, or even Bruce realized. The portentous prophecies in the scene with Batman and Lane have to come true. The vision of Gotham's apocalypse has to fall into place. What R'as knows and Talia does not has to be revealed. Why Spyral is working against Talia but also against Batman has to be explained. The battle that this story requires may be a small part of the three issues left in Morrison's epic.

Action Comics #18

The final installment in Grant Morrison's extended Superman story is like a piece that fit just as it must, in the shape of the hole the unfinished puzzle was missing. Surprises? Not so many. There was no doubt Superman would beat Vyndktvx, and the way he did it, well that didn't matter so much. In fact, what was it? Or did he beat him a thousand times?

For anyone looking to be deeply invested in a linear plot, this multidimensional story about a 5-dimensional villain left them hanging, although the past several issues should have made that clear. The 18-issue run gradually turned more and more into a fractured, postmodernist experience that used science fiction to explain the twisted structure which was about the science fiction it was describing, a self-writing meta story which has been Morrison's vision in his previous Superman works. In that regard, there was nothing new here, and the greatest difference from Action #14-17 and Action #18 is that the cliffhangers all convert into victories, as we knew they must.

To the extent there is a story, it is this: Vyndktvx, being a 5-dimensional being, attacks Superman not just in space but in time; Superman wins when he realizes that from Vyndktvx's perspective, there is only one attack he will ever make against Superman, and by beating him once, Superman beats him many times, and every time. So of the many fronts on which Superman and his allies are fighting Vyndktvx, which of them is crucial? One, all, or none, but Superman's victory is preordained, and as he starts doing stuff to one-up Vyndktvx, it all works at once, ending in a definitive defeat of Vyndktvx, and saving every life that was jeopardized along the way, including those which earlier seemed to have been lost. Does the Legion of Super Heroes' plan succeed? Yes. Did Mrs. Nyxly really die? No, and we see her live happily ever after with Mxyzptlk. Did the little boy and other colonists on Mars die? No, because the one wish Mrs. Nyxly had left was used on something red (Mars) to set them all right again. And of course, Superman and Krypto survived, and there the story ended, like a final panel from the Sixties, with the man and his dog in a definitive happy ending.

And in many ways, it was from the Sixties, and the happy ending was definitive. As with Morrison's Final Crisis, Superman Beyond, and All Star Superman, the story has too many references to serial storytelling structure for us to miss the larger message. The story of Superman isn't a lot of stories. It's basically one story, where the strong and just man defeats evil. From 1938 until the Sixties or so, Superman most stories happened in circular time, time out of time, where everything was always put right back where it started at the end of the story. As a Superman mythology grew, Superman began to live in linear time, with some stories changing his world in significant new ways, with new Kryptonians and other major changes coming along, gradually writing a larger narrative with a beginning and middle... and at last, in 1986, an end. Which led to a new beginning, and recently, another end. Because Superman is still in circular time, and if the circles take 25 years to come around where they started, that's still a circle. Superman Beyond reminded us that Superman's epitaph is "To Be Continued." Action #18 observes that all of Superman's victories are just one victory, and if he has to do the impossible to accomplish them, then the impossible is what has to happen.

The last point repeats a meta observation made in 1987's "The Greatest Hero of Them All", in which that story's Superboy performs a feat that's seemingly impossible, and notes in his death scene that maybe he always could do anything he needed to. Perhaps the most meaningful reference to earlier stories is that the villain here was styled after Doomsday, the villain who killed Superman in 1992, but this time, despite the title of Action #16's story, "The Second Death of Superman", cannot finish the hero off. In an alternate timeline seen in Joe Kelly's 2005 story "This Is Your Life", Superman simply refuses to die in the Doomsday battle, and reflects that for Superman to die points his universe in the wrong direction. Morrison's epic emphatically agrees, and this Superman never dies. Perhaps the choice of Doomsday here is to inoculate the post-Flashpoint Superman from ever having that death story re-told by future writers. As with Morrison's desire to liberate Superman from a commercial, faceless shell (as Vyndktvx says here, with "$" in place of "S"), his power to control the future is limited, but he does make a heroic bid to do right by the Man of Steel with these creative moves in a run that will inevitably be remembered.

In Morrison's Batman run, it was asserted that all of Batman's past eras, as diverse as they were, existed as part of one timeline, and he created a belabored explanation within the story for the many sharp changes in tone between those different eras. In Action, he has an easier time of accomplishing much the same result because Superman's science fiction underpinning makes alternate timelines a straightforward consequence of fifth-dimensional villainy. Morrison has included characters and scenes from 1938, the Silver Age, the Bronze Age, the Byrne era, and a plunge from the sky oddly reminiscent of 2006's Superman Returns. Mrs. Nyxly, speaking with a Red-and-Blue Superman from the Nineties (which was itself an echo of an earlier era's "imaginary story") tells this timeline's Superman that he'll never know what he was giving up. Being fifth-dimensional, she knew as we do that the adult Kents have been virtually killed by this reboot. This and other nods to other Superman continuities make it appropriate that fifth-dimensional character were in the forefront in this run, because, as Morrison's Bat-Mite told us, "Imagination is the fifth dimension." Morrison has essentially written a 32-story Superman epic that began in the All Star Superman continuity, continued in the post-Byrne/post-Infinite Crisis continuity, and ended in this post-Flashpoint continuity, but folds all of them together in a way that we, and fifth dimensional characters can see as one. And now we shall see where the next generation of writers take the rebuilt Man of Steel.

Killing Damian Wayne

In 2006, the world’s greatest superheroes suddenly got three sons. In the film Superman Returns, we found out that Superman and Lois conceived a child way back in 1981’s Superman II. In DCU continuity, Superman and Lois adopted a Kryptonian son they dubbed Christopher Kent. And in the pages of Batman, Bruce Wayne found out that he had conceived a child with his lover/enemy perhaps during the same events narrated in the 1971 story that introduced Talia. Three sons introduced at the same time. Now, all of them are gone.

It has long been noted that Grant Morrison planned to kill off the Damian character as soon as he introduced him. In fact, the Batman and Son story ended with events that might have been interpreted as Damian’s death. But seven issues later, a quick scene established that Damian, thanks to his mother’s access to remarkable medical technology, would survive.

Damian played a major role in an al-Ghul crossover story, then reappeared briefly during the long storyline of Batman, RIP. After Battle of the Cowl, Damian had his longest time in the spotlight, as the second title character of the Batman and Robin title. While Damian has appeared in several titles over the past three and a half years, the centerpiece of his character development was in Morrison’s first sixteen issues of that new title, with Damian and Dick Grayson inverting the familiar dynamic of a serious Batman and a cheerful, punning Robin.

It appears to have been Morrison’s intention for this third long storyline, that of Batman, Inc, to have Damian be murdered by his own mother. It has been foreshadowed generally that someone would die, and specifically that Damian was the object of a murder plot, and now, with Batman Inc v2 #8, we appear to have seen this transpire.

We have also seen, in Batman#700, a future in which Damian becomes Batman, although this future was never guaranteed to take place. It resembles the one seen in Inc #5, and Bruce Wayne, following the information he saw at the end of time in Return of Bruce Wayne#6, took steps to prevent this from coming true. By firing Damian from the Robin identity, and as the heir as a subsequent Batman, Bruce Wayne effectively chose to save his city while sacrificing, on some level, his son. In the final scenes before Damian’s death, we saw the cat that would have been his pet had he gone on to be Batman in the future seen in Batman #666 and elsewhere. Small references taking the story backwards and forwards in time, like a double punch shared by Dick and Damian, and the minor character Ellie, first seen in the same story back in #664-665 where Damian returned from the dead.

Will he return from this death? Impossible to say. Inc v2 #1 ended with the apparent death of Damian, which proved to be a ruse. Batman: The Return opened with Bruce saving a man’s son from apparent death. The theme has been established. Whatever Morrison’s plans are, it could happen sooner or later in any case.

But what are Morrison’s plans for this story? A grand death has happened. Batman has suffered a tragic loss. The man who lost his parents to murder has now lost his son.

The solicits for upcoming issues run as follows:

9: The fallout from last month’s shocking turn of events has Batman on the run! Is The Dark Knight a murderer?

10: When only one can survive, which will it be: the man or the bat?

11: Batman’s world has been devastated by his war against Talia, but is he willing to give up on his own humanity?

These point to the flashforward seen in Inc v2 #1, where Bruce, mourning a loss, plans to quit the Batman role, upon which he is promptly arrested as a murderer. Clearly this is a plan on Talia’s part. Clearly, Bruce Wayne has to prevail on some level, and will save the world and Gotham from destruction, and also return to be its protector. But what of the loss of his son? When Grant Morrison took over the Batman character, he spoke of the grimness with which his predecessors had handled it. In an interview as well as in the pages of his stories, he included the death of Jason Todd as part of a pattern that had led Batman down too dark a path. How can Morrison feel that way then and kill Damian off now? We had Batman, RIP end with Batman climbing out of a grave to fight and win again. Jason Todd himself had died and come back, as did Dick Grayson in the old story Morrison cited, Robin Dies at Dawn. Will the grave, having let these other Batman and Robin return, prove inescapable for Damian?

Action #17

With next month’s Action#18, Grant Morrison’s run on Superman will come to an end, wrapping up the extended story that redefined DC’s flagship character.

Defining and redefining Superman has been a quagmire for DC over the last 15 years. This was true only three years ago when I expounded on the topic in my review of Geoff Johns’ Superman: Secret Origin #1. That series redefined Superman’s past in a way that summed up changes which had been in progress since Infinite Crisis. It was only to serve as the status quo for two years before being discarded for another, total, reboot. And in fact since then, we have also seen another heavily-sold out-of-continuity Superman origin in J. Michael Straczynski’s Earth Oneversion of Superman, and a fleeting glimpse of a Superman who dies young in DC’s current Earth 2 title. If that’s not confusing enough for fans, the “2” and the “One” in those titles do not serve as part of a sequence, and they are piled on top of earlier Earth Ones and Twos (or 1s and 2s). The nomenclature alone produces vertigo if not nausea. Yet another out-of-continuity story called DC Universe Online (but it was not online) showed yet another Superman for 52 issues.

A new Superman in Grant Morrison’s hands had been long-anticipated. Morrison wrote Superman as part of his Justice League run starting in 1997, and shortly thereafter was part of a pitch called Superman 2000 which did not come to pass. In 2005, Morrison began a 12-issue run on All Star Superman, a fantastically popular mini-siries taking place in its own continuity, which in many ways was a prequel for the Superman we finally saw as part of the 2011 DCnUthat is the main continuity of DC’s stories, for now.

With this series at the pause between the penult and ultimate issues, it stands as a single body of work which does not fail to reflect plotlines we’ve seen in all of those other Superman redefinitions mentioned above, a quilted kaleidoscope of stories and storylines which are rehashes of stores we had just seen. Brainiac double-crossing Luthor? Seen it in Online. General Lane directing a US Army plot against Superman and Superman’s tight association with the Legion of Super Heroes? Seen those in Secret Originand other Geoff Johns stories in then-current continuity. Clark Kent beginning his journalistic career as a poor young man in the slums? Seen it in Earth One. Yet, it is hard to fault Morrison for reworking those almost-current stories: If he avoided every storyline in those several retreads, he would have had to write a story by negation, leaving holes in Superman’s DCnU history just to spite those other works. Morrison did not choose that path, and so we have a maxi-series from Morrison that looks like a blend of half a dozen other recent works.

And that includes Morrison’s own. Morrison’s Action employs elements from his All Star Superman title, including a key role for characters from Mxyzptlk’s Fifth Dimension, which provides the key villain in Action. Morrison has also used the Fifth Dimension in his JLA run and with his use of Bat-Mite in Batman.

Structurally, the run strongly resembles Morrison’s runs on Batman. In Morrison's first run on Batman, in issues #655–681, the hero faces a single dominant threat whose plot is at first hidden, from both the hero and the reader, surfacing in a series of smaller threats, calculated to test the hero without toppling him, before culminating in a final showdown between Doctor Hurt and Batman in Batman R.I.P. Morrison's Action run has a parallel structure, with the Little Man, who appears in the very first panel, proving to be the ultimate victim who confronts Superman directly only in the final issues. Both Doctor Hurt and Vyndktvx make pretensions to be the Devil, using the word "deal" like it's going out of style. Vyndktvx is often drawn three-faced, like Satan in Dante's Inferno. However, while the Batman story was fundamentally the story of a single plot by Doctor Hurt calculated to topple Batman, the Actionstory is a series of Superman adventures primarily featuring independent menaces, a few of whom Vyndktvx recruits for a single assault. Both stories are spread widely over time. Both wrap the events of much older stories into their telling. Both villains have identities held out as a mystery. Ultimately, The Little Man seen in the very first panel of Action #1 is given a complete backstory in terms of Fifth Dimension intrigue. There is no longer mystery regarding who he is, but we await the ending of a climactic battle, which began to crescendo in the final pages of Action #14.

The references to past Superman stories, both prominent and obscure, are more numerous than I will attempt to catalog here. Characters originating in Superman stories from every era from the Thirties through the Nineties have appeared in passing and in the foreground. I will mention, instead of the smaller facets, three larger stories that have impacted the narrative here in a very central way.

At the end of the pre-COIE era, two stories were published the same month wrapping up the pre-Byrne Superman. Both of these stories, on the surface unrelated, depicted a suddenly evil Mr. Mxyzptlk as the villain. By far the more famous of the two, Alan Moore's Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow? also had the structure of a larger villain (Mxyzptlk) throwing secondary menaces (as great as Luthor and Brainiac) at Superman before the hero and villain took each other down in a battle that undid them both, in different ways. A less well-known story by Steve Gerber in DC Comics Presents #97 showed a Mxyzptlk who had been punished by his own kind and who merged with the Phantom Zone and its villains before attacking Superman one last time. In this story, Mxyzptlk achieves a tactical and strategic victory, apparently poisoning the Earth with kryptonite (with the added horror of Argo City's dead bodies showering out of the sky), then leaving a defeated Superman behind in what was, technically, the last moments we saw of the pre-Byrne continuity. Morrison has based his run, thematically, where pre-Crisis continuity ended, with a new Fifth Dimensional villain posing the ultimate threat to Superman, so that Mxyzptlk's inherently benevolent nature can be preserved for future stories. By utilizing the same thematic menace as that of Moore's story, Morrison may be giving Superman a chance to face that threat that ended "him" before, and overcome it, just as he is with the Doomsday threat from yet another continuity. It will be interesting to see if the final issue makes more explicit reference to WHTTMOT?

A subsequent work, mending the pre- and post- Crisis worlds from the other side of the divide, Keith Giffen's run on the Legion of Superheroes dealt with the gaping hole in continuity that the LSH had been inspired by Superboy, but in the Byrne run, there had never been a Superboy. We promptly saw the emergence of another "Earth", the Pocket Universe, which led to Byrne's Superman going through a spiritual ordeal after killing that Universe's Phantom Zone villains. More germane to the present run, Giffen rebooted the LSH not once but several times in rapid succession, with the Legionnaires deliberately rebooting their own timeline to undo histories where one of their villains had triumphed as the undisputed master of the 30th Century. The Time Trapper, Mordru, and Glorith all have the capacity to become dictators of the Legion's universe, and so they reboot the universe until they create a timeline where a "Balance of Powers" leaves a free universe in which the LSH battles these villains, neutralizing them. In Action #17, Morrison seems to utilize the very same idea when the Legionnaires plan to "wipe out [their] entire history" and thus save Superman's life as well as "stop the rise of Universo." Morrison puts the LSH here in the same predicament they faced in Giffen's multiple timelines; this is, incidentally, a device he also used in his JLA story Rock of Ages where heroes overcome a despot villain's rule not by defeating him per se but by rebooting the timeline so that the victory by Darkseid never happened.

Another story serving as the template for this one is Morrison's own Final Crisis and its related crossover, Superman Beyond. The title page of Action #17, like the last page of Action #16, shows the Super-Doomsday creature poised to kill Superman just as the first page of Superman Beyond shows a flash-forward to the fateful battle between Superman and Mandrakk. Like the Bane Batman from Batman #664-665, it shows a meld of the hero with the Nineties villain who broke him. The creature incorporates elements of Mandrakk, the Nineties Doomsday with the armor Superman of Superman Beyond, the evil Superman from Morrison's Animal Man, and more generally every anti-Superman we've seen over the decades. Picking up the theme of Final Crisis as a story about story, the Super-Doomsday creature refers to itself as a "franchise", in a fourth-wall reference to itself as an alternate character that strives to defeat the DCnU Superman. It is a "thought" that we first saw in Action #9, where the Lois Lane of its parallel universe defines to it as the product of selling out, of a Superman "brand" designed by experts to have "maximum cross-spectrum, wide-platform appeal, a violent, troubled, faceless anti-hero... a global marketing icon." It sounds like Morrison has a very specific villain in mind, something that Warner Brothers might be creating and incorporating into video games right now.

In every aspect of this run, we see a Morrison trademark: postmodernism rendered in the terms of the comic genre. In his Batman run, Morrison delivered unconventional narratives that were explained in the story with Batman-appropriate devices such as hallucinogens and brainwashing. Here, as in JLA, All Star Superman and Superman Beyond, Morrison accomplishes the same postmodernist storytelling through Superman-appropriate devices such as time travel and multiple dimensions. The reader's experience, either way, is one of unreliable narration and dramatic irony. The vehicle for creating this is specific to the hero, and ties in with a heritage from past decades when postmodernism was not the aim.

As with Final Crisis and Batman: RIP, the jump-cuts in narration may detract from many readers' enjoyment. In what now makes four consecutive issues, we have seen a cliffhanger with the first two simply put aside as the story picks up in the next issue. As the structure is so heavily borrowed from other Morrison stories, and the conventional payoffs blunted by his sleight of hand, the story is not likely to be remembered as a fan favorite nor as one of his milestones. What is most admirable here is that he worked his tricks, in many ways familiar and well-worn, in ways so specific to this particular character.

On two other levels, the story works assiduously and brilliantly to serve red meat to the fans: It does, after all, reboot Superman in ways that many fans yearned for. It overturns many aspects of the past continuity that overstayed their welcome. Perhaps to greater effect, it shows Morrison's gift for the flourish, the moment of perfection. When miniaturized Luthor looks out of shrunken Metropolis and sees Superman's symbol looming outside the jar, to the call "Look, up in the sky!" Morrison shows Superman winning every way at once. Inasmuch as Morrison has shown that he will let threads drop (or hang), we see Clark's vow to his father to wage a battle for justice.

In what is the final cliffhanger of Morrison's run, just as Super-Doomsday is about to kill Superman, Luthor arrives, saying "Nobody kills Superman but Lex Luthor!" If this seems familiar, it is not an accident. The very first monthly issue of John Byrne's run, in Superman Vol. 2 #1, ends with Metallo about to kill Superman when Metallo is suddenly teleported away. This is explained in #2 when Luthor says, "Of course I stopped you, Metallo. The killing of Superman is a pleasure reserved for myself."

The Morrison run in Action will have a lasting impact. It will serve as the definition of Superman's origin for untold years to come. And it is such an intricate story, it will be a work worth studying. It remains to be seen how much, in conventional terms as a comic, it will be enjoyed. While it is certain that Superman will, with help, triumph over Vyndktvx and Super-Doomsday, it is less clear that Morrison will triumph unconditionally over the commercial Superman that Super-Doomsday represents.

A Christmas Story

This story is not original. Credits at the end.

It came upon the midnight clear, a gloved hand traced over a computer screen, touching names and addresses, as the man who owned the hand made connections, saw patterns in police reports, and planned his nightly patrol so that Gotham City’s criminals would have the least chance of escaping justice. His route was determined, his car fueled, a warm cup of tea drunk, and Batman arose to go into the night, when suddenly he saw another figure, one who had somehow gotten close – here in the Batcave of all places! – without being heard. Batman instinctively ducked into a crouch and drew a batarang to throw at the red-suited man who was standing on a sleigh. It seemed to be Santa Claus, but obviously it could not, and whatever the explanation for this man’s presence was, it could as easily be dangerous as not. Until the man spoke in a calming voice.

“Bruce,” he said, “It’s good to see you. I know you’ve been a very good boy. Merry Christmas!”

Upon hearing the rich, deep voice, Batman lowered his guard. He knew this was no enemy. “Merry Christmas. It’s good to see you. But I can’t stay and visit. My patrol starts now.”

“Bruce,” Santa Claus said, “Gotham can always count on you. And I’ve been watching, all these years. All those thieves and muggers, the Joker, Mister Freeze and Penguin and Clayface. I’ve been watching people for a long time, and I don’t know anyone who’s better than you. So tonight, let me give you a present.”

“Leave it over there,” Batman said, striding towards his car.

But Santa Claus said, “I can’t leave the present here, Bruce. The present is that you get to stay. The present is that you get to have Christmas.”

“That’s very kind,” the man in the black cowl answered. “I would like to take a day off. But when I take a rest, crime goes on, and innocent people get hurt. So I have to go out.”

“Bruce,” Santa Claus said, beaming, “That’s what makes you so good, what makes you so deserving. Why you deserve Christmas more than anyone! So here’s your present: You get to stay home all day. And your work, your good work… you can return to it tomorrow.”

“It’s not that simple. I wish it were. But any time that I take off, any, that’s more crime that goes unchecked. This would be the worst day of all for me to stay home and leave the city unprotected.”

“Bruce,” Santa said, a little sadly. “When was the last time you had Christmas? A normal Christmas, opening presents, being with the people you love? Was it…?”

Touched, to the point it stung, Batman hesitated. “It was… then. Before they died.”

“Oh, Bruce. All of this, all you’ve done for everyone, and for them, too. Don’t you think they would want you to be happy? Don’t you think your parents would want you to have Christmas?”

Nothing else could make Batman feel so deeply as the subject of them, of the parents who had loved him, who gave him the only Christmases he’d known. Now, years later, it was hard for him to speak without showing more feeling than he could let himself show to the man in the red suit. “Of course…” Batman answered, and then he had to pause. “Yes. But my work.”

“Bruce,” Santa Claus said, “tonight your work will be done. Call Gordon.”

A moment later, with a red phone in his hand, Batman spoke with Commissioner Gordon. Santa watched with a knowing grin. When the call ended, Batman looked shocked. “He said there’s been no crime since earlier this evening. By this hour, there should have been eighteen crimes reported, but there’ve been… none. Not one.”

“And there will be none,” Santa said to Batman. “You have my word. At midnight tomorrow, you can go back out, go back to your good work. But tonight, and tomorrow, the city will be safe without you. That’s my present to you. Go to bed tonight. And in the morning, join the people you love. Call Dick. Call Tim. Call Alfred. Spend Christmas with them, spend it full of love. They can join you by the fire and together, you can celebrate Batman’s first Christmas.”

The caped crusader was unable to contain his emotion. Freed from his duties, for the first time in years, he was at a loss for how to speak or move, how to be Bruce Wayne, how to be himself, on Christmas. After a long pause, he answered, “I will.”

Santa Claus laughed his famous laugh. “I’m so glad, Bruce. Everyone deserves Christmas, but nobody…” he paused, and stretched out his hand “…nobody deserves Christmas more than you.”

His head down, Batman could not speak, not without showing more feeling than he could bear to let the other man see. He nodded, and while he was looking down, the other man and his sleigh disappeared.  When a minute has passed, Batman’s composure returned. Then Batman looked up in the direction of the faraway sky, and in a soft voice that only the man in the sleigh could hear, Batman whispered,

“Thanks, Clark.”

Acknowledgements

No idea in this story is mine. Most of the credit belongs to ItsJustSomeRandomGuy, who posted a video called Twas The Dark Knight Before Christmas in 2007. I saw the video and found it wonderful. It returned to my thoughts many times afterwards.

At some point, at least a year or two after my first viewing, I watched it again and found that one key idea that I had remembered from the story is not actually in the story at all. I was perplexed until I thought harder and realized that my foggy notion of Superman watching over Gotham City on Christmas was actually something about Supergirl, and then my memory lead me to the DC Universe Holiday Special with a cover date of February 2009. In that issue, a 5-page story by the great Joe Kelly contains the rest of the inspiration for my mis-remembered version of RandomGuy's video. Kelly's story has Gotham devoid of sirens on Christmas, an event largely narrated from Jim Gordon's perspective, with a cameo by Batman. At the end, we find out that the combined efforts of Barbara Gordon and Supergirl had kept Gotham crime-free for a single day. In Kelly's story, this gift was given anonymously, with no advance notice or explanation after the fact, to make Gotham's protectors believe that a miracle had given it a day without crime.

My memory had unconsciously worked that detail into my memory of the video, with Superman convincing Batman to take Christmas off, not merely with a "pep talk" but with the guarantee that Gotham would be safe during Batman's holiday. It seems more Batman-like to me that he would need that guarantee before canceling his Christmas patrol.

Almost all the rest of how I rendered the story here is from the video, particularly the twist ending. And part of what I found wonderful was imagining Superman's Christmas over Gotham, swooping down to stop crimes here and there, hustling back into the sky to watch for more crimes, beaming with the grandest smile, knowing that he was helping ordinary citizens, and doing something truly special for his friend.

What I find especially touching about this is the history of the Superman-Batman friendship, cemented in decades of comics, but later erased in stories by Frank Miller and John Byrne, before being revived in stories by Jeph Loeb and others. Because you don't know the continuity of a story like this one, you can't be sure what the status of the two superheroes' relationship is, but in a brilliant twist, you find out that they are friends in precisely the last word, which is the only place in the story that indicates that Superman is in the story at all.

Apologies to RandomGuy and Joe Kelly for co-opting their ideas. I felt that the mash-up of their stories was more powerful than either alone. I hope people enjoy.