Batman- R.I.P......or DOA?

Hey there gang.

Rather than write a review of an individual book, I was asked for my opinon on the storyline of Batman- R.I.P. (Thanks for the suggestion Jim, I am sorry about the lateness of the post.)

Now, I have to say that while I am not a Grant Morrison fanboy, I have enjoyed most of his work. JLA, X-Men were fun reads more often than not. So far, this has been a disorienting read. Bruce has gone certifably nuts and is talking to not only Bat-Mite, but gargoyles and other objects. The wording and look of his word balloons give the appearence of someone who has come completely unhinged, almost like someone from Arkham. The Black Hand has taken control of the Batcave and have beaten the living crap out of Alfred. Poor Alfred. The Star Trek redshirt of the Batman universe. The guy controlling the Black Hand is "Thomas Wayne". I put quotes around this because we are expected to believe that this is Bruce's long-dead father? If this turns out to be true (and I suspect it won't), Morrison will have committed the ultimate sin in my book. At least when they have brought back Bucky and Jason Todd, they have done it with some conviction and a decent backstory as to why (Bucky's is better than Jason in my book).

Originally I thought that this was going to be self-contained in the two core books (BATMAN and DETECTIVE), but this was spun into both NIGHTWING and ROBIN. This illustrates my point about "event" books. If had stayed with the two, you would have had only input from 2 writers (Paul Dini writes DET.) but now you have to include 2 more (Peter Tomasi writes Nightwing and Fabian Nicieza has just taken up the writing chores for ROBIN right before this started) so now Grant's story becomes even more diluted. Yes, I'm sure that the other writers had a hand in planning this, but this is supposed to be Grant's opus. The spin-off books have been just that. DETECTIVE is working the origin of Hush into this. It turns out that he was introduced to one of Bat's rogues (Scarecrow) at an early age. It looks as if the 2 are working together. My one problem with this is continunity. Not the Scarecrow/Hush angle. That I can live with. It's the fact that in here, Batman is sane and working with Robin and Nightwing and even Catwoman. He hasn't gone 'round the bend yet. There is a mention of the Black Hand in here, but would it be too much to put a box saying "These events occur before Batman 675"?

There is so much to go on about that I am going to break this post up into 2 parts. The next post will address ROBIN, NIGHTWING and BATMAN books and what I think it going to come out of all this.