PREPARE TO BECOME FICTIONAL!: MORRISON BATM-ANNOTATIONS: BATMAN & SON

[Batman & Son]

52 #30 - "Dark Knight Down"

So Bruce, Dick, and Tim have been traveling the world to recreate the journey that built the batman, and they believe it's happening because he wants them both to become the new batman and robin.
Dick and Tim intercept an intergang weapons shipment in North Africa.
Bruce has dipped out on Dick and Tim towards the desert, the empty quarter, to have the ten eyed tribe cut out his demons accumulated through the grim-dark age since the death of jason todd.
Dick returns to Gotham and Tim finds Bruce in the desert, who claims that Batman is gone.

52 #47 - "Revelations"

In Nanda Parbat, Bruce has entered the Thogal ritual for 7 days in darkness. A ritual of spiritual purification. The Ten Eyed Tribe have cut his demons out, demons that provided some comfort and protection. Bruce & Tim climbed the 9999 steps of Nanda Parbat. Will Bruce survive?
Tim waits outside the cave, and the monk tells him a riddle: there is a goose in a bottle, how will you get him out without killing the goose or breaking the bottle?
Tim answers the monk's riddle: the goose is only in the bottle because he said so; the goose and bottle are mere words, now the goose is free...
Bruce emerges from the cave with a smile on his face.
Batman has been put in a box by his creators since the 1940s. Grant Morrison is saying that box does not exist, freeing him to evolve as we segway into the greatest run on the character.

Batman #655 - "Building a Better Batmobile"

Batman impostor shoots Joker in the face. Ex-cop who snapped.
Zur En Arrh graffiti.
Crime Blitz: Batman's return from abroad puts away all of his rogue's gallery in Arkham.
Action for Africa...
"Growl in your voice": we are at prime batman; the personas of Bruce Wayne and batman are achieving a symbiosis never before seen. Tim even suggests the idea to him.
New Batmobile being built...
Francine Langstrom is kidnapped, a blackmail to Kirk Langstrom, formerly man-bat, to deliver his were-bat serum.
Earl of Wordenshire = Cyril Wordenshire the Knight, Batman of England!
Kathy Kane, Julie Madison, Vicki Vale, Silver St Cloud...
Man bat commandoes!

Batman #656 - "Man-Bats of London"

Jezebel Jet, super-model turned leader of small African nation...
Aunt Agatha Wayne!
Prime Minister's wife...
Talia's secret lair in the London sewers...
Ra's is dead, Talia has picked up the mantle...
Batman and Talia banged back in O'Neil/Adams run: apparently it wasn't consent, but a eugenics experiment to birth an heir to the Al Ghul empire.
Talia drops of the kid with Bruce while she retreats with the PM wife to hold the world hostage to "a new kind of terror".

Batman #657 - "Wonderboys"

Damian Wayne!
Talia was busy running her criminal empire, so she wasn't with Damian. He's essentially like a twisted Bruce, raised by evil with absent parents, except they're not dead but super screwed up.
The Spook!
"Where's he holding his hostages? The fifth dimension? The land of the dead?"
Damian is cursed by LOA indoctrination; his programming has made him tribal. Just like Bruce tells him, his rage is born out of fear. He just got a dad, he can't help but want to be the center of attention, and he'll get it at any cost, even eliminating rivals for his father's love and approval.

Batman #658 - "Absent Fathers"

Kirk Langstrom reverse-engineers cure to man-bat serum...
Bat-rocket allows them to perform sub-orbital halo jumps!
Talia uses pm wife as a blackmail for Gibraltar, outpost between Spain and Morocco...
Batman's tolerance for Damian comes from an empathic connection: just like Alfred did to him, Bruce wishes to pull Damian from the pit and save him from the same darkness that almost devoured him.
Bulu, Talia's own Ubu expy!
Talia uses the world as her game board, 5-dimensional chess, plans within plans, wheels within wheels, just like Batman. Either she has the dark knight, or no one does. She doesn't even care about Damian, she just uses him as a pawn to manipulate Bruce.
Did she let the torpedo hit the sub, or did she detonate it herself? What button does she push on her wrist?
Poor Damian, a casualty of a life he never asked for.

Batman #663 - "The Clown at Midnight"

Joker is different. Super messed up following the events of #655. Numerous surgeries, speech therapy, brain trauma...
"Who's working with you?" ... "D.E.A.T.H.H.A.H.A"
Wisakdejak = Cree Indian trickster god...

Nerve agent of aerosol poison activated when red and black flowers are brought together.
The Lamas in Nanda Parbat, we saw them in 52 #47.
Batman uses mediation in his detective process, slowing his breathing to enter supreme meditative state.
The dwarfs are the same ones from Killing Joke??
The pattern = red and black, snake scales, rebirth, life and death transformed.

So Joker uses his own kind of meditation, but instead he wills his metamorphosis. He is the joker maggot, trapped in a cocoon, wishing to be born.
Counting backwards to midnight...

The flowers, a death rosary...
"She loves his shattered thoughts, imagining them in all their labyrinthine, jeweled disarray as unknown cities on a distant planet, and she, the girl explorer, lost among sinister wonders."
Superpersonas...

Joker has immunity to all poisons that would kill most men.
Bogeyman of this dark century...
Satire Years, Camp, New Homicidal = eras of the joker!
He's been disfigured by the plastic surgery, his massive chin is gone, stitches holding his visage in place like thread on a quilt.
His warring personalities clash for control, who will ascend control of the clown? It's always a new one, a predator-persona that purges the labyrinth and makes it his own kingdom until the next cycle.
Batman #1 = OG criminal serial killer from the Golden Age!
Batman #67 = satire years with dick as robin, throaty theatrical!
Batman #11 + Batman #251 = aristocratic clown prince of crime!
Killing Joke + Arkham Asylum + Hush = comedian, ringmaster from hell!

The Clown at Midnight, the Thin White Duke of Death, Jack of all Crimes, Knave of Razors.
A diseased demon jester from a negative world beyond all human laws: could this incarnation be influenced by frequencies from the anti-matter universe?
Andalusian Dog style = Luis Bunuel's "Un Chien Andalou"
Robin dies at dawn, batman dies at midnight!
The plan was to kill Harley; her death will cement his rebirth and shed the skin of his former super-persona.
Joker and Batman try to find meaning in a meaningless world. Joker wants Bats to give into the chaos, and finally get the joke!

Batman uses semi-hypnotic repetitive phrases to draw in his enemies into similar patterns so he can take them down predictably.
"Like a bad dream waking up and finding out that it's real."
"Red and Black. Like a bat. In a dream. In a window."
Absolutely brilliant. This is the best Joker story I have ever read, hands down. Some of the best prose as well.