I’ve spent a good many words talking about all the ways that Morrison radically changed the status quo and even what a Batman comic could be. By the time of Batman Incorporated, Bruce had confronted his innermost psyche, “died”, travelled through time, come back to life, taken on his long lost son as the new Robin, and formed a global crimefighting organization all under the Batman brand. Like I said in part 2, it truly felt like Batman was reaching a new stage of his career. Things were changing and evolving not just in his title, but in all across the Bat family line.
While all this was going on, hints at something grander played out in the background. The themes of cyclicality and rebirth pop up again and again. The bat which flew through Bruce’s window the night he became Batman was dying, having been usurped by a younger, stronger creature. The Joker “reinvents” himself for the new millennium. Bruce is buried by the Black Glove only to rise again. The entire journey through time is an exploration of how Batman is the culmination of eons of lives all mirroring one another in a grand tapestry.
Just as the idea of Batman perpetuates itself into the past and future all at once, so too does this new era wrap in on itself in a great ouroboros. Everywhere that Batman Inc expands to, a mysterious organization led by a “Dr. Dedalus” (secretly Otto Netz, head of international spy agency Spyral) seems to already be there, ready to counter them. Each individual story in the initial run of Batman Incorporated reveals a small piece of the larger puzzle. Otto’s ties to the world’s governments call into question who can be trusted and just how far the global conspiracy might go.
In the final confrontation against Netz, both the story and the heroes’ perception of reality become non-linear and unclear. Once again the theme of time being a malleable thing to suit a higher narrative purpose is brought to the forefront. The same conversation repeats itself, but with slight variations each time and never truly breaking free of the cycle. That’s the power of the comic book medium. There’s always a greater force ready to twist the very fabric of reality to push back against anything that strays too far outside acceptability. This becomes especially poignant as two major events follow the downfall of Spyral: Otto is revealed to be a puppet of Talia al Ghul’s, and the entire DC Comics universe is rebooted.
Writers were only told about the impending New 52 reboot a few months ahead of time in March of 2011. By that point Morrison was about half way through their initial Batman Incorporated run and had no way of knowing just how much it would affect their story. While characters such as Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown would be wiped from existence and Dick would go back to being Nightwing, Morrison handled the transition about as gracefully as possible. Even if some side characters stopped showing up and there were some unexplained costume changes, they were still able to finish out the plot that had started five years prior.
More than finish it, the reset arguably underlined the thematic point that Morrison had been building towards. It’s impossible to know what Morrison’s run would have looked like had the New 52 never happened, but the story they did end up writing centered around the idea that comics are forever bound by the whims of their status quo. The events happening in our world were folded into the story in real time, exploring the ways in which comic narrative and editorial mandate inform one another. Efforts to fundamentally upset that order will be met with harsh reprisals. For Bruce, that backlash is embodied by Leviathan.
Enraged by Bruce’s refusal to join her, Talia creates Leviathan in order to systematically dismantle everything that he had built. She brings her father’s vast world wide resources to bear in order to infiltrate governments and cripple Batman’s forces. One by one Batman’s allies are targeted as they are forced into a retreat. Gotham and Wayne Enterprises have no choice but to acquiesce to her demands and cut all official ties with Batman Incorporated. She forms a noose around the world to which Batman is helpless to fight.
For Talia, Batman’s entire vigilante war on crime is a joke. It’s a pointless distraction and the root of what drove both Bruce and Damian from her. The roles of heroes and villains are something she views with contempt. However, rather than reject it entirely, she adopts it in a twisted subversion. She intentionally frames herself as a theatrical, megalomaniacal villain because that’s who Batman is “supposed” to fight. At every opportunity she mocks his obsession with games and riddles. They’re a childish delusion that Bruce chose over the responsibilities of parenthood and ruling that she offers.
This ultimately culminates in a one on one fight to the death in the Batcave. Replete with swords and spandex, it’s the operatic finale that one would expect from a superhero comic. In many ways it harkens back to Batman’s duel with Ra’s way back in Batman #244. It’s not something she enjoys, but a point made with vitriol and scorn. By becoming the “cartoonish” villain his world demands, Talia can defeat him on his own terms, proving just how absurd it all is. A final, fiery rage that can tear down everything Batman stands for in mind, body, and spirit. Everything that kept him from her.
However, like I said before, everything works in cycles. Just as there can be no final victory, there can be no final defeat. In an eleventh hour rescue, Kathy Kane, former Batwoman and daughter of Otto Netz, appears from the shadows and shoots Talia dead before she can finalize her plan. It’s revealed that she now heads Spyral, who have been working to take down both Leviathan and Batman Incorporated. Spyral’s agents disarmed the oroboros traps around the world with a “meta-material” and wrapped everything up in a nice, tidy bow. She leaves Bruce dumbfounded, alone in the cave with his thoughts in what initially reads as a sudden anticlimax.
In a way it is, but an intentional one. There’s a sense of melancholy as you’re left with the emptiness of realizing that these characters are powerless to affect their world. There will always be someone there to keep things in check. More than a simple fictional organization, Spyral is the hand of the author itself. They are the higher force in comics that ensure that at the end of the day all the toys go back in the box. They lurk in the background while the story plays itself out and the characters have their fun, but when it’s time for things to come to an end, all must return to the status quo. That’s why Spyral is a circle, a web, an ouroboros eating its own tail. It’s all the same. The story will come full circle and the actions of the heroes and villains can do little to stop it.
It’s fitting, then, that all of this is interspliced with a flashforward to Gotham, days later as the world returns to the way it was. Kathy’s connections have cleared Bruce of all charges and Batman goes back to fighting street crime and crazed villains. References to canonical changes that result from the New 52 like “Zero Year” show that, just as with the battle against Netz, the same events will repeat themselves even if the details might change. It’s all part of the medium.
Morrison’s run is able to touch on what fuels Batman as a character and as a piece of our cultural consciousness. The way their stories can reinterpret and recontextualize decades of past works is something that can only really happen in comics. They are a shared narrative, with each creator taking their hour upon the stage before passing the role onto the next one. Certainly full of sound and fury, but instead of signifying nothing, for Morrison it’s what makes superheroes so pervasive. Yes it’s sad when one chapter comes to a close, but the ability for future artists and writers to add their own interpretations is what keeps the characters alive. They’re not stories so much as ideas, and those are forever.
