Japan to release a coloured Batman statue for Arkham City’s Collectors’ Edition

Just like always, Japan has to have the most special of common things. And in this case, they will be receiving a coloured version of the Batman statue for the Collector’s Edition of Arkham City.

 

This launches in November for Japan, a month later than the rest of the world. They say the statues are more or less the same, only coloured. But who are they kidding? The coloured version is so much more detailed! Especially the cape! Curses!!!!!

This song’s talking about you Japan.

Even Grant Morrison gets confuse sometimes

Here’s an interview with Grant Morrison from IGN. Note that the interview was done before Return of Bruce Wayne #6 was released.

Batman’s Corporate Empire

Grant Morrison discusses bringing back Bruce Wayyne and how the hero’s mission changes with the launch of Batman Inc.

November 10, 2010

by Dan Phillips

Grant Morrison has been the guiding force behind the Batmanfranchise over the past few years. First he broke down the Dark Knight in “Batman RIP”. Then he banished him to the distant past in Final Crisis. Then he established a new Dynamic Duo in the form of Dick Grayson ad Damian Wayne. And now the latest phase of Morrison’s Batman epic comes to a close as Bruce fights his way home and fends off the latest attack from Dr. Hurt and the Black Glove.

But this is hardly the end for Morrison on Batman. Following the release of Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #6 today, Morrison begins the next phase of his story next week with the one-shot special Batman: The Return and the launch of a new ongoing series called Batman Inc. As readers saw in Batman and Robin #16, Bruce’s new mission involves using his fortune to fund and train an army of new Batmen across the globe.

We recently chatted with Morrison over the phone about the end of one storyline and the beginning of another. Morrison discussed how his plans for the Caped Crusader have evolved over the years. He also explained how the Bat family will be altered by Bruce’s return and by the start of his grand new mission.

[Note – This interview was conducted before the release ofThe Return of Bruce Wayne #6 and Batman and Robin #16.]

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IGN Comics: You described “Batman and Robin Must Die” as the tragedy of “Batman RIP” repeated as farce, and it definitely seems to be playing out like that. How would you describe Batman Inc? How does it fit into the tapestry you’ve been weaving these past few years with Batman, Batman and Robin, Final Crisis and The Return of Bruce Wayne?

Morrison:Batman Inc. seems like a whole new direction, because all that other stuff kind of comes to a point and ends the whole Dr. Hurt side of the story. So all of that stuff – the supernatural Batman, the sci-fi Batman – it’s kind of all over at that point. I think I’m taking it to its logical conclusion. Obviously I wanted to bring Hurt back, have the villain do his thing, have his come-back and then finally his take down. The whole story was always set-up that way. But with Batman Inc., we kind of just wanted to start completely fresh like we did with Batman and Robin. It’s a completely new take on Batman, with new stuff, new situations, a new storytelling style – everything about it will hopefully feel fresh. That was the idea for it.

IGN Comics: I know the Batman Encylopedia has been great help to you in writing the Bat books up until this point – –

Morrison: It’s my trusty companion!

IGN Comics: Now that you’re striking off into new territory, what are you looking at as inspiration? What are some of the ideas you’re trying to explore with Batman Inc.?

Morrison: Well, straight-up obviously we’re looking at the Bat-manga stuff, so I’m not really striking out too far. Because again, we’re looking at something in Batman’s publishing history that maybe hasn’t been touched on for a while or ever touched on. So I wanted to incorporate all that stuff, because I love it so much. The villains are great, with people like Death Man and Professor Gorilla. [laughs] There are a lot of great villains there. But I found that stuff really interesting, and I wanted to bring it in to this big umbrella concept of Batman. And then the second storyline is set in Argentina, so we’re using a couple of the characters like Scorpiana, who appeared in “Batman RIP”. Beyond that, I think many of the characters you’ve seen, like Chief Man of Bats and his boy. So there will be little touches on things you’ve seen before, but we’re again doing a lot of new villains, new machines, new vehicles. And it’s another new style of storytelling.

IGN Comics: I’ve heard Dan DiDio describe Batman Inc. as Bruce Wayne franchising the Batman persona. What do you find interesting about that concept/premise?

Morrison: Well I was looking at the way culture was, and how people were kind of idolizing the billionaire hero. I also like the Tony Stark tech aspects of Batman, and wanted to bring some of that in as well. Andy Diggle did a good story a couple years ago where it was a very hi-tech, Batman with robots type of thing. So I figured I hadn’t really touched on that aspect of Batman yet, so that was one of the things that played into it. Another thing that played into it was the Magic Christian, which is a Peter Sellers movie I love. I liked the idea of what would happen if a radical progressive was a billionaire? What would he do? And the big thing was, really, because we were bringing back Bruce Wayne, I thought it was important to foreground the idea of Bruce Wayne. A lot of what came before was about the myth of Batman. Batman Incorporated takes it back to the ground level and grass roots, and feels a little more like Christopher Nolan or Denny O’Neil’s Batman to start with.

In terms of the concept, because we were foregrounding Bruce, I began to think about the concept of what would happen if Bruce applied his techniques to the Batman operation? Bruce is obviously a corporate CEO, billionaire and playboy superman, so what would Batman look like when that guy applied everything that he normally applies to Waynetech to Batman’s mission and way of life? Suddenly, that got me on this different way of thinking about it – it was basically Bruce getting to these various Batmen types and giving them the money and Waynetech providing them with tanks and all this fun new stuff. I also love the idea of Bruce using the Batman symbol as The Red Cross or the McDonalds logo, the idea that people would see his agents with this symbol, which obviously carries a lot of weight.

IGN Comics: In Batman and Robinyou’ve been dealing with Dick learning how to fill Bruce’s shoes, getting accustomed to the role of Batman. With that coming to fruition at the end of your run on that title, and with Bruce coming back and allowing Dick to remain as Gotham’s Batman, will you be dealing with any issues that might come up between Dick and Bruce having to share the mantel?

Morrison: Well that kind of gets dealt with in Batman: The Return, which I’m doing with David Finch. You see a little of that play out. But no, we wanted to make it work so that they can exist and it totally makes sense.

IGN Comics: You mentioned a little about how you arrived at the idea for Batman Inc. Working backwards a bit, can you talk about how your plans for Batman have evolved since you first took on the property. It seems like your plans have grown and taken on new depth and new directions since you started. Is that the case? Was Batman Inc. always a logical extension of everything you had planned for Batmanwhen you started? Or have you shifted your plans as they’ve grown?

Morrison: Well it’s definitely not a logical extension. I never thought I’d be doing this book when I started out. It kind of grew out of the way things were working. And it kind of grows back into seeds that were planted quite early on. So it all makes sense. Basically for me it’s always been about the logic of the story, even if that means forgetting what I had planned. I originally planned to stay on this book for two years, but as it turned out the stories were a lot more interesting and more complex and ended up spinning off into all these different things. It has grown, but hopefully it’s on the same course. Things have gotten bigger and the branches have grown off, but I think the story has become big enough to sustain all those branches.

IGN Comics: Let’s continue to move backwards a bit from Batman Inc. You say you’re bringing an end to the whole story of Dr. Hurt and your exploration of Batman as this mythic idea on your way to grounding the character back in that Denny O’Neil, Christopher Nolan lens. It seems like as you’ve been building towards this big finish, everything has been dovetailing back on Final Crisis, Darkseid, “the hole in things,” Orion references, Dr. Hurt and Thomas Wayne. I’m curious how, from a conceptual standpoint, some of this will come to fruition in these next couple issues.

Morrison: All of it will. [laughs] It’s funny, I’ve read all the books chronologically, and it really is a mind fuck. [laughs] I basically had to do this to put these finishing touches on it. Reading the first run of Batman, then read Batman #701, then go back to Final Crisis, then back to “RIP”, then back to Return of Bruce Wayneand the paintings on the wall – reading it like that, it suddenly becomes this weird hologram effect. So yea, it has been a big ol’ complex story, a ol’ puzzle box. I needed to bring all of that to a conclusion. I actually think every single thing gets paid off.

IGN Comics: I can definitely attest to the whole mind fuck aspect. Reading all these books in preparation for out discussions, my mind is usually left spinning by the time I sit down to come up with questions. [laughs] But I’m specifically interested in how the Darkseid and Final Crisiselements will play back into the climax. I mean, you really seemed to close the book on Darkseid and the New Gods inFinal Crisis, but you seem to be constantly re-opening that book with your references to them. Can you give fans any idea of just how these particular elements will play into the big climax?

Morrison: Well, basically Return of Bruce Wayne #6 is Batman meets Kirby, I guess. It’s me asking what Batman would be like if Jack Kirby had done it. Not only visually, but how he would have thought about it and approached it – what he looks like and what he can do. Yes, the whole Darkseid thing finishes and everything plays into. Obviously Darkseid is this dying god, and though he’s kind of gone now, the hole still exists and is still there. It’s been about the death of that big bad idea of the evil god vs. the Batman concept, and that mythic struggle gets resolved in Return #6. And it comes right back down to earth with Dr. Hurt, who is this kind of earthly representation of all that.

IGN Comics: Right. He’s the one trying to fill the “hole in things.”

Morrison: Yea, and you find out exactly why. And he’s always been there, and there’s a lot of imagery with the hole and the coffin that will just keep getting tighter and tighter, and inReturn #6 we find out why specific images keep recurring and what’s really going on.

IGN Comics: I’m fascinated by the way you use continuity in your stories. While you never seem to be beholden or a slave to continuity, you’re also extremely faithful and precise to the continuity you do use. Particularly in Return of Bruce Wayne. Can you talk about your approach to continuity in this miniseries, specifically the history of Gotham and the Wayne family? Again, I know Greenberger’s Batman Encyclopedia has been a big help.

Morrison: There’s obviously been a lot of information over the years, and in the seventy years of Batman stories there have been a lot of references to the relatives and all that stuff. So I started building up this map, which was before I saw the Greenberger book, which was great, because he compiled the lists of all this stuff. I tried to do the research really thoroughly. The problem is, with so many stories out there, a lot of them really contradict one another. One of the problems I’m trying to resolve is that Kathy Kane, the original Batwoman, the current Kate Kane Batwoman and Martha Kane, Bruce’s Mom, are somehow all related, which just seems really incestuous to me, and I’m not sure I like it. [laughs]

So I’m looking at things like that and trying to be very thorough in tying this whole Batman mythos into one big quilt. You constantly find these mistakes, and also realizing you missed an issue here and there when it’s too late, and then cursing yourself for doing it. I’m trying to be very thorough and make sure that if I mentioned someone like Mayor James, that there actually was a Mayor James in some story from the nineties or whenever it was. I’m trying to make sure that if you check out a reference, you’ll find a Batman story that supports that reference. But again, there are complications, and when they pop up I try to use them in some way that makes sense.

IGN Comics: How do you balance that precise continuity work – some would almost call it housekeeping – with not only the subtext you weave throughout all your Batman stories, but also the big, blockbuster action adventures you’re telling on the surface? Is that a difficult balancing act to pull off?

Morrison: I guess. Over the years of doing this I guess that’s just the method I came up with. I’m not satisfied, and I don’t think the readers are satisfied, if you don’t get a lot out of your comic book. The more you read, the more you should get out of your comics – like a really good movie, book, poem or album. To me it’s part of the job to put all this stuff in there. I don’t find it difficult at all. I find it rewarding to weave all the different things in there and creating all these exciting connections that I didn’t even expect. Coming up with these connections leads to an entirely new way of writing a scene. It’s all pretty exciting and organic.

IGN Comics: Let’s finish up by talking some more aboutBatman Inc. When you’re working with an artist you always seem to have a firm idea of the type of visuals you’re going for, and how best to tailor the story to an artist’s strengths. I remember talking to you about the high-octane kung fu scenes you had planned out for Frank Quitely in Batman and Robin, which turned out awesome. What do you have planned for your collaboration with Yanick Paquette?

Morrison: The first issue is already in, and it’s astonishing. It’s even more compressed than the Batman and Robin stuff. It feels like you’ve read four comic books. But we find a way to make it work. I think it’s partly because Yanick’s work is just so dense, it’s like this super virtual reality. The shots of Japan are just so graphically accurate and filled with detail, with people in the streets and flashing lights. It feels like if you went into a manga store you could read every title. It’s such a dense world and the locations are so precise, it feels like we could just do so much stuff in it. It allows you do shift from scene to scene in quite major ways. I’ll say that the last page of it is a surrealist classic. Yanick also draws great girls and big, beefy Batmen. So there’s definitely a Mission Impossible sexiness to it, I think.

 

 

 

 

Batman water bottles in Japan

Look at this pictures i got off the Bat Blog:

sure it’s interesting to see a Batman water bottle like this, but at the same time it’s kind of weird to know you’re constantly groping Batman’s body, without the head! I don’t understand why can’t they just include Batman’s head on the bottle cap? Unless they are going for the whole Jean Paul Gaultier perfume bottle looks.

Do you think they have a Batman perfume somewhere on earth?