Comic Moments of the Week

Grant Morrison. If you're familiar with his work, you know that is a complete sentence. Batman, Inc. #4 is a pretty good example of the roller coaster that it is to read a Morrison book. Tracing the history of the first Batwoman while also featuring the new Batwoman, it brings in elements from different eras in Batman history. This is exactly what Morrison set out to do with Batman a few years ago. His approach is that everything that we've ever seen of Batman has, in some way, actually happened, no matter how crazy or contradictory. The result is actually pretty interesting because when Morrison writes Batman, you don't know what to expect. It could be dark, campy and lately, sexy, but always, pretty batshit (pun intended) crazy. Overall, though, it's just plain fun. Even though this issue was a little confusing at times, which is to be expected from Morrison until you get whole picture, it still had great moments, like this flashback.

Also out is FF #1 by Jonathan Hickman, another writer who can be pretty heady (Pax Romana, Nightly News, S.H.I.E.L.D.). This is the relaunch of Fantastic Four, which ended last month with issue 588, after the death of The Human Torch. I don't normally read Marvel and I wasn't reading Fantastic Four, but I do like Hickman and figured this would be a good jumping on point. I enjoyed the issue a lot, but I'm not entirely sure it's a great jumping on point. Basically, Reed Richards now heads The Future Foundation, and there are a bunch of kids, human and alien running around in the building, doing high level science genius type things. Also, Reed's father, who was lost in time is back and living with them. S.H.I.E.L.D. features Reed's dad (as well as Tony Stark's) traveling through time so I wonder if this is a direct tie in to that book. I'm sure this would all make more sense if I had read previous issues. However, in the end, it doesn't matter all that much. The atmosphere and the characters are pretty clear. Spider-man is brought in to take the Torch's spot on the team and at the end of the book there is another surprise appearance of someone who will be joining the Foundation. I'll stick with this book for a while.