Why I hate BATMAN R.I.P. and how it would have been vastly improved if they used a different villain

[thehefner]

This story. Ohhhhhh, this fucking story.





One of the biggest problems with BATMAN R.I.P. is the villain. The villains in general, actually: a group of all-new characters who get absolutely zero background information (aside from the hunchback), thus we have no reason for anybody to give a good goddamn about their characters and motivations other than that they're EEEEEEEEEEEVIL. But the worst of all is the mastermind, Doctor Hurt:





No, he's not Dr. Thomas Wayne, clearly. So who is Dr. Hurt?

*waves hands* Nooooooo one knoooowwwwws!

Morrison never makes it clear, which many find intriguingly ambiguous, but strikes me as being more wishy-washy than anything else. We're led to believe that, in all likelihood, Hurt is the uncredited military scientist from the classic Silver Age story, "Robin Dies at Dawn!" ...





... which makes the most since, consider that Hurt looks like this:





But then again, maybe there's more to him than that. Maybe he's a disgruntled former actor, which would be fine if Morrison gave that idea any real thought or development (or did he? Was there something in the "Club of Heroes" story that I missed?). Or maybe he's much more than a mere human being. No, Morrison hints that Hurt could actually be ssssssssssssssSATAN????

Yes, he could be the Devil himself! Never mind that there's already a Batman villain who fills that role, and that character pretty much explains why Hurt is full of shit. That's the thing, though: he does it IN MORRISON'S OWN STORY, thereby exposing the utter hollowness of the threat presented by Hurt. In the end, the Joker's words there totally undermine the integrity of the story as anything other than "a bunch of posturing monologuing nobodies show up, try to out-Joker the Joker, then fail pathetically."

Even when the Joker is depicted as stupidly as he is here (and hey, let's totally just reduce a richly complex trickster/devil figure into a one-note grinning nightmarish ghoul, thus making him the polar opposite of the Hamill and Ledger Jokers alike) he still rightly points out that Hurt himself is a joke.

Which would be great if that's what Grant Morrison intended. But no, it wasn't. Morrison has outright stated (in BATMAN: THE PRIVATE CASEBOOK, for one place) that Dr. Hurt was literally intended to be the ultimate villain for Batman.

Remember when Loeb tried to do that with Tommy Elliot in HUSH? Remember how contrived it was then? It's even worse now, because it's coupled with Morrison's trademark self-seriousness and grand posturing.

Just like Hush--the last time someone created a new out-of-nowhere character to be Batman's OMG ULTIMIT NEMISIS--they seemed to neglect the fact that, guess what, Batman already has an arch-enemy. Hell, he has several! Just like Spider-Man has arguably equal arch-enemies in Green Goblin, Dr. Octopus, and (ugh) Venom, because they all represent the ultimate opposition to different aspects of Peter, Batman has Joker, Two-Face, Ra's a Ghul, and hell, even Joe Chill himself!

A character can't just show up and be declared to be the Ultimate Villain. That title is earned through years of actual stories, through which the villain proves by action that he is an enduring threat. And there are at least a dozen characters who will endure much longer than Hurt, characters long established over 70 years of canon.

But I don't think Grant Morrison gives a shit about canon. Oh, many will say he does. "But the whole point of this story was to employ all his wacky Silver Age adventures, the stuff that nobody uses! He's creating an ultimate Batman story that ties together all of his iterations over his history!"

Except that no, he isn't. Yes, Morrison digs out obscure shit--so obscure that no one would have any reason to know about them, thus giving Morrison fans yet another chance to pat themselves on the back for "getting it"--but he only digs out the obscure shit so that he can Morrison-ify them.

If Morrison were actually planning to have it be that, say, there was an actual alien Batman from Zur-En-Arrh, and they really did have their Silver Age adventure, that actually could have been fun! It would have felt like the kind of wacky crack in BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD! But no, no, it's all just a hallucination and a state of induced madness, used expressly to explore the kinds of metaphysical psychological bullshit so beloved by an old chaos-magick-practicing acid-head like Morrison.

I get that Morrison has a point that he wants to make about Batman. I get that. I just resent that he does it by taking nearly-totally-forgotten paper-thin characters and conceits, then throwing them in with a bunch of new boring, one-note characters that we have absolutely zero reason to care about, and then ultimately reveals just how hollow and pointless they really were all along. As opposed to, I dunno, using some characters with actual established Batman history rather than the history that Morrison MADE UP expressly for his story.

Because if Morrison really cared about the integrity of Batman's rich universe over his own ideas...

... if he really wanted to come up with an ULTIMATE VILLAIN for Batman, someone who knows how to get under Batman's skin, someone with the ability to take Batman's sanity apart piece by piece, someone with a vested interest in destroying and thereby becoming Batman...

... if Grant Morrison really wanted a character like that for BATMAN R.I.P., he would have remembered that Batman had an arch-nemesis before the Joker even came along. Batman's original arch-enemy:





I've been rereading BATMAN ARCHIVES vol. 1 and I firmly believe that Strange was originally intended to be Batman's Professor Moriarty. Of all the mad scientists, racketeers, would-be despots, and other early enemies, Strange was the only opponent to appear more than twice, the only one never to be killed off but rather sent to prison, where the last panel is devoted to him behind bars, swearing to escape and have his revenge. He was clearly the first stab at giving Batman an arch-enemy.





And then the Joker showed up, kicking off Batman getting his own DICK TRACY style rogues gallery. And very soon after that, Professor Hugo Strange was killed off. He was of another era for Batman, an era seemingly lost forever right alongside Dr. Death and the Mad Monk, never to be seen again.

That is, until more than 30 years later, where he resurfaced in 1977, right in the thick of Batman's return to darkness in the Bronze Age.





In the legendary run by Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers, Strange returns and discovers that Batman is, in fact, Bruce Wayne! Armed with that knowledge, Strange gains a new ultimate goal: not to merely destroy Batman, but to BECOME him! In fact, he becomes so obsessed with the idea--the very concept (!!!) of Batman himself--that he willingly sacrifices himself rather than betray Batman's secret to "unworthy" scum like Rupert Thorne.

This obsession becomes one of Strange's defining character traits, following him through the post-CRISIS re-imagining where he is no longer a mad scientist, but a dangerously insane pop psychologist who becomes obsessed with becoming Batman. I normally dislike the writing of Doug Moench, but BATMAN: PREY from LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT is, for my money, one of the finest Batman stories ever (and why the hell is it out of print?!), and truly established Strange as a formidible opponent.

But no one remembers this. No one has any idea how to write Strange, and instead we get the watered-down versions of the character that we've seen in Will Pfeiffer's CATWOMAN and other minor recent appearances. The Mad Hatter is a bigger threat than Strange (and it kills me to say that, as a Jervis fan, but that's a rant for another time).

Hugo Strange is a formidable opponent expressly because he has a unique wealth of knowledge and insight into what makes Batman tick, and how best to exploit him. Ra's may know who Batman is, but he was no interest to attack the Detective in the ways that Strange, the Joker, nor Dr. Hurt do. But if Hugo Strange ever truly got his act together, he could have pulled off a scheme that even the Joker would have had to respect (to a point).

Because if anyone could come close to the Joker for breaking down Batman psychologically, it'd be Hugo Strange.






And that's what really burns me about BATMAN R.I.P. Because if Grant Morrison had simply used that character instead of creating an ambiguously one-note enemy with Dr. Hurt, then this truly would have been a Batman story that touched right at the roots of who he is and how he came to be.

That end of that last line is a reference, but it's okay if you don't get it. Because unlike Grant Morrison, I don't expect you guys to have read every single obscure Batman comic to understand what I'm writing.

...

God, it feels good to get that out, even if I'm still nervous about any backlash I might get from Morrison fans. Henchgirl asked, "You're just posting this to your LJ, right? Because if you post this at scans_daily, you're gonna get your ass handed to you."

I think many would agree with me, but I'm definitely not up for that level of fighting. Not with those kinds of fans just yet.