Wow so many negative reactions. Nothing wrong with that in itself, it's just that most of the complaints seem so puerile and beside the point. I'm glad that the majority of mature aged comicbook readers don't think the same way as the people on this message board, otherwise this arc wouldn't be selling gangbusters and we would've we missed out on a great mainstream Morrison story that will be referred to as classic milestone for a long time to come. After you've read alot of comics you feel like something that pushes the limit and contains more level of story, and if that means going into the past or writing meta-fiction then great.
I agree the arc kind of slumped with this issue, with all that wandering around with the junkie hobo, it wasn't that interesting. But the bits with Robin and Nightwing, the thoughts from the casebook and junkie Batman in his Zur En Rah costume more than made up for it. I wonder where Jezebel is now.
Also I think I missed how Batman went from the batcave in last issue to the dumpster again at the beginning of this one?
Please, dismissing any negative reactions as puerile is puerile itself.
The story's substance isn't what bothers most people. It's that the substance is completely mangled by a poorly executed structure.
This has ALWAYS been Morrison's downfall from X-Men to Batman: he sucks at pacing and structure. Both of which are basically half of writing in any medium.
You don't have an event like Batman getting injected with meth and dumped into an alley as a homeless man, or Alfred being lynched and the Bat-cave sacked, or Nightwing lured into a trap, drugged, and institutionalized -- you don't have these dramatic beats and huge reversals and character shifts take place OFF-PAGE and then just refer to them in flashbacks that occur in static dialogue scenes. We basically just get a "evil mastermind" narrating what he's done -- instead of SHOWING HIM DOING IT!!
Aside from producing a muddled storyline that seems contrived since the writer is no longer constrained by the logic of structure and pacing and chronology, we are also distanced from the main characters as we are no longer seeing and experience what is happening to them -- we are simply just hearing about it. It's not engrossing; it's alienating. It reduces comic books from an interactive emotional experience into one where you read dialogue balloons on a painted page.
Add to this that through three issues we have questions introduced and not tended to. It is okay to introduce a narrative question and NOT ANSWER IT -- but you must acknowledge it, acknowledge the mystery. What is this Dance Macabre, did it already happen? I suppose so -- it seems. What is the Joker's role in all this? Wait, the Joker's vanished for two issues after a obscure scene at the end of the first issue of RIP.
This is what we can poor narrative storytelling. It's lazy. Show, don't tell. Simple axiom. Any writer knows it...save for Morrison apparently, who is content on picking the most obtuse strategy to simply narrate massive events that are occurring between issues. The meat -- the good stuff -- the dramatic plot -- occurs between issues. We simply get summaries in what Morrison so lazily and poorly writes in each R.I.P. issue.
So if you want to dismiss what I said as superficial, nitpicking, or besides the point, go ahead. But what I have just said is so on point, and so relevant, to the issues of R.I.P. that it's sad to think DC hasn't stepped in and fired Morrison.
