It just won’t stop.
§ First, for all your informational needs, IGN has a lengthy interview with editor Mike Marts, who comes off as quite smart and professional and all the other things an editor should be. And the IGN folks ask him all the questions you want answered:
IGN Comics: Seeing as you had worked with Grant before on New X-Men, I think it’s probably safe to assume you guys knew going in that RIP would be a controversial and divisive storyline. That said, did you anticipate some people’s confusion over what actually happened in the story and that last issue?
Marts: Well, you know, with the amount of things we were dealing with in this story, I’m not surprised that readers had questions. But I think that’s always part of Grant’s plan. Grant is a master at teasing story tidbits and story information, and he’s very good at satisfying the reader up until a certain point, but always leaves them wanting more. So I think that the way Grant structured Batman #681 was intentional in that he wanted to come full circle on certain parts of the story and wanted to resolve certain things, but also wanted to leave readers saying, “Huh? What’s next?” That was very intentional on his part.
He does go into what’s next, Neil Gaiman’s Batman, why Tony Daniels, and so on. Like we said, everything you wanted to know.
§ BUT…MEANWHILE, Tucker Stone continues the current trend of using BATMAN #681 as the lens through which to view all that feels wrong about the comics industry, via comparisons to The Shield television program.
Now, if The Shield had operated the way the Batman comics do—what would have happened to it? Say that Shawn Ryan only decided to write specific episodes of each season that had to do with his overall idea of a long-ranging “important” story, he’d only vaguely described it to the other writers, and they’d decided to just insert various one-shot stories that didn’t match up to the ones surrounding them—characters had sex and then never mentioned it, dead people showed up alive and well with no explanation (just an assumption that the viewer would “figure it out”) and each and every episode was directed by directors of varying talent and wildly divergent style, like Yasujiro Ozu for three episodes and Michael Bay for a couple of bookends.
Never mind BATMAN RIP being the new black; when did we go from “comics should be more like movies” to “comics should be more like TV shows?”
Since TV shows became more like episodic movies, I suppose.
If we’re doing TV show comparisons to comics, BATMAN R.I.P. needed to be more like LOST and less like HEROES.
Mike Marts is being a tad bit disingenuous. It’s not that readers were left hanging at the end of RIP, it’s that they genuinely, fundamentally don’t understand what happened in the story. It’s not, “Huh? Is this the end?”, it’s “Huh? Can someone please explain to me, in layman’s terms, what I just read?”
I think it should have been more “My Mother the Car”, with a generous topping of “Mannix” and a dash of “Solid Gold.”
I don’t know if the storyline needed to be more LOST, but I certainly couldn’t have been.
Batman RIP, from beginning to end, was Grant Morrison’s baby from beginning to end, and boy, can you tell it. Grant is a talented writer, no doubt, and several of his works are true credits to the industry. BUT (and note that this is a big ol’ but) he may be starting to believe his press, as in “I’m Grant Morrison, and I can do no wrong.”
Of course, this is not the first big train wreck in the industry (I’m looking at you, Spider-Man, repeatedly), and I feel sorta kinda bad for Grant, as expectations on a work like this will most always exceed the best results. Still, I’ll be off the bat-books for a while, until Hurricane DiDio blows over.
And I don’t think I’ll be alone…
Batman RIP, from beginning to end, was Grant Morrison’s baby, and boy, can you tell it. Grant is a talented writer, no doubt, and several of his works are true credits to the industry. BUT (and note that this is a big ol’ but) he may be starting to believe his press, as in “I’m Grant Morrison, and I can do no wrong.”
Of course, this is not the first big train wreck in the industry (I’m looking at you, Spider-Man, repeatedly), and I feel sorta kinda bad for Grant, as expectations on a work like this will most always exceed the best results. Still, I’ll be off the bat-books for a while, until Hurricane DiDio blows over.
And I don’t think I’ll be alone…
What I can’t abide about this is the fact that Batman’s “death” doesn’t occur in Batman but in Final Crisis – yes it’s serial fiction and all that entails but it seems to me you break the psychological contract with the reader if the pay-off to a series of stories is somewhere else.
Mike Marts is being a tad bit disingenuous. It’s not that readers were left hanging at the end of RIP, it’s that they genuinely, fundamentally don’t understand what happened in the story. It’s not, “Huh? Is this the end?”, it’s “Huh? Can someone please explain to me, in layman’s terms, what I just read?”
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Not everyone. The majority of folks were underwhelmed b/c they didn’t get the HUGE surprise that DC and Grant said they were going to give.
Most message boards seem to be able to get the comic. They’re just going “that’s it?”
RIP was too involved…it would have been better if Batman had just fought Joker, and we could have voted online whether Batman should live or die in an explosion at the end of the story. That way Joker could have killed bith Batman and Robin.
Hell, I could write that story.
Also, it’s amazing how many people are making their nut bashing DC Comics these days. Beware karma!
“Darn it, Norvell! Why can’t you change the Spider’s thrilling but nonsensical adventures into something more upscale, like something from this Nathanael West guy? We could rename the magazine DAY OF THE SPIDER!”