BATMAN R.I.P. the conclusion - Hearts in Darkness
(AKA Batman #681)
p. 1 But that's the thing about Batman. For me, it was a long wait between this issue and the last one. Grant Morrison had been putting Batman through hell - his mind violated, put on drugs and humiliated, every part of his life invaded, and now the love of his life betraying him - but I was hoping that at the end of all this hopelessness, Batman would still find a way to be the unstoppable Batman Morrison had been writing about earlier. He really delivers, as you'll see. But when I read "But that's the thing about Batman," I knew we were about to hear why he was better than the Black Glove.
p. 2-3 "The superior man thinks of evil that will come and guards against it." Quoted from the Book of Changes by blind warrior monk I-Ching in Morrison's prelude to The Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul. See, it DOES tie in!
p. 5 A back-up human operating system. We see in this flashback that the Thogal ritual is what alerted Bruce to the suggestions Dr. Hurt had implanted into his mind, and that that is when it first occurs to him to come up with the solution which ended up being the Batman of Zur En Arrh. Bruce underwent Thogal during 52, which means that this flashback is happening before any of the events of Morrison's run. He's been prepared a long time.
p. 7 Dark Ranger. Formerly Scout. The Ranger from the original Club of Heroes story had a sidekick named Scout who didn't make it apparently to the reunion penned by Morrison. But now we see that he has taken over after the original Ranger's death.
p. 8 The Club of Heroes, clockwise from top left: Squire, Raven Red and his father Man-of-Bats, the Musketeer, El Gaucho, Dark Ranger, and the Knight.
p. 9 I switched the cups. Force of habit. THIS.
p. 17 apophenia. The experience of seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data.
p. 19 It was the bad I was attracted to all along. We now see that Batman has suspected Jet ever since she said, "I want you to know I understand," which was way back at the tail end of the Batman and Son. I mentioned earlier that Bruce Wayne's girlfriends usually suffer one of two fates: getting dumped or getting killed. I neglected to mention a third possibility: they're evil. The women Batman tends to fall hardest for - Catwoman, Talia, Poison Ivy - are on the other side of the law. He was smart enough to notice his tendency to be attracted to the Bad Girl, and used that evidence to figure out that Jet must be hiding something. So everything up to this point has been Bruce leading her into his own trap.
p. 21 Nicely timed. THEME ALERT - This is a preview of a theme that will continue into Morrison's next arc, Batman and Robin. Although Batman succeeds because of an insane level of preparation, for Dick Grayson it's improvisational - all in the timing.
p. 25 I skinned Mangrove Pierce alive and wore him to Mayhew's party. We discover the identity of that poor guy being flayed in the background of page one of the Club of Heroes arc.
I am the Hole in Things. This is the clearest explanation you're going to get of who Dr. Hurt really is. (For now.)
p. 26 Then I curse the cape and cowl, as you will soon! The next time you wear it will be the last! When a guy like Grant Morrison starts a series called Batman R.I.P., bat-fans start to get nervous. As you'll see, the ending of RIP is left ambiguous. Batman's very final adventure happens in the pages of Final Crisis, a miniseries encompassing the entire DC Universe, also written by Morrison. But it does seem that the end he meets in that story is caused by this cryptic curse from Dr. Hurt. (You will not need to read Final Crisis to understand Morrison's Batman epic. More on that a little later.)
p. 31 GRUESOME SLAYING OF BELOVED CARDINAL. This newspaper seems to confirm that the Joker has already begun "collecting his winnings" from the fingers of the Black Glove.
Impossible. And we cycle back to the very beginning of Batman RIP, where the next line you'll hear is, "You're wrong! Batman and Robin will never die!"
However, these two are liberally draped in shadows, so it is hard to see whether this is Bruce and Tim as we'd expect, or whether Bruce is gone and a new person (or a new pair) have filled the roles. All will be revealed, but for now you get to wonder.
p. 32 What? After all this time, the true origin of Zur En Arrh is revealed to be a garbled version (perhaps only half heard by Bruce) of "Zorro in Arkham." This is the phrase muttered by Batman during the isolation experiments, and identified by Dr. Hurt as something useful for attacking his mind. So Zur En Arrh is really discouragement and insecurity. Before he becomes Batman, before he even has a reason to become Batman, Bruce's life's ambition is undermined by his own father. Zur En Arrh is the sneaking suspicion that Batman is silly, that dressing as a bat and fighting crime is ridiculous, that - as Jet suggests in the Batcave - Bruce's money could be better spent on something less theatrical, in short, that Bruce shouldn't be Batman. Morrison has said that he wanted the villains on his run to be a pair of nightmare parents - an evil mom and an evil dad. The evil mom is Talia, and the evil father is Dr. Hurt, masquerading as Bruce's real father. But in a sense, the real Thomas Wayne is the villain for being the realistic adult who's curt comments undermine Batman's reason for being. Metatextually, Zur En Arrh is the bat-fan who likes their Batman a certain way and scoffs at the Silver Age nonsense of weird alien tales and fifth dimensional imps, or even the Adam West TV show, not believing that Batman can survive contact with that silliness. But the truth is that Batman does survive. He's been a grim avenger, a campy overactor, an ordinary mortal fighting street level crime, and a superhero saving the world with the Justice League. And the thing about Batman is that all of those interpretations work. Batman beats Zur En Arrh the same way he beats everything - by being prepared to survive. As sure as he'll get out of a thousand death traps, he'll go into any setting - dark/colorful, realistic/out there, goofy/grim - and come out alive.
The next little section of Morrison's epic, Last Rites, pursues this idea of a constantly changing/adapting Dark Knight, and sees what it looks like when it's all put together. See ya!