I’m disappointed in Batman RIP.

I watched the finale of The Shield the other night. It was nothing I expected and everything I wanted out of the end of that series. Loose ends were wrapped up without it being obvious or rushed, characters moved logically in their arcs, and I was left with an overall sense of both completion and wonder. What’s next for the cast? Where are these characters going to go?

Like The Wire, the ending to The Shield was well-done and elegant. We found out what we needed to know, some of what we wanted to know, and it all made sense. It fit together.

It’s kind of funny that I read this the night before I read Batman #681, which was basically the opposite experience.

I thought the first half of the book was pretty good. The action kept going, the story cracked, and the typical Morrison Batman got to play his “I suspected all along” card. I don’t buy his admission that he never loved Jezebel Jet (that was very much a “I’m rubber, you’re glue” scene), but the rest of it worked. He was ready. He didn’t know what he was ready for, or when it was coming, but he was prepared for when it got there. The reveals were nicely paced with the Club of Heroes, too.

Just going on the first part of the book alone, it’d be one of the better issues of Morrions’s extremely rocky and uneven run. It’s good, but not Morrison Good. It isn’t that far from Rock of Ages or one of the better Chuck Dixon issues.

But, my problem is with the reveal of who Simon Hurt really is, the “death,” and the feeling of anticlimax I was left with. Those reveals and scenes dropped the book down to hovering just above average for me. Grant Morrison promised that the reveal of the Black Glove’s identity would be the biggest surprise for Bat-fans in 70 years and blow the lid off the series and so on and so forth.

Turns out that the Black Glove is a group of five rich people, and Simon Hurt is an actor named Mangrove Pierce, who must be nigh-on fifty years old and hates Bruce Wayne enough to try and ruin his life. I just checked– all the lids are still on the series and I have yet to spittake.

The reveal is the worst sin a comic book can commit- it’s boring. Hurt claims to be Thomas Wayne, but Batman tells him that no, you’re wrong, you are actually Mangrove Pierce. Hurt replies that Pierce is just the skin he’s wearing, bringing the idea of fictionsuits to my mind, and that he is actually just the hole in things.

I mean, really? That’s it? He isn’t Alfred, Robin, or anyone else that anyone has any reason to care about? He’s some rich, and old, jerk who looks just like Bruce Wayne and his father? That sucks.

I wonder if I’m not being fair to the story, but then I remember that Morrison’s run has been seeded with all kinds of clues and allusions and depth. It’s clear that something is supposed to be there, but what we got in Batman 681 was nothing. Less than nothing, in fact, considering the build-up to a nothing reveal.

Simply put– We, as readers, expect more from Morrison. He’s built a rep for writing comics that are interesting to talk about, and feature topics that can fuel conversation for weeks or months. Tim Callahan wrote a must-have book on the man’s work.

Fantastic Four: 1234, New X-Men, and The Invisibles alone have all dealt with the idea of ultimate evil and identity and done it fairly well. My guess for the identity of the Black Glove was that he was Batman’s tulpa, as seen in FF:1234. After enduring Thogal, Bruce expelled all the negativity that’s followed him around since his parents died. (One of the best bits in Year One is the picture of Bruce’s eyes just after his parents were shot. His eyes are not sad, or despondent, or closed. They are open, angry, and resolved. That is the moment Batman was born, though he wasn’t given shape until nearly twenty years later.) Expelling the energy healed Bruce, but all that energy needed somewhere to go.

David Uzumeri had a fun theory about Alfred being the glove. Graeme McMillan and Jeff Lester told me it’d be either Robin or Alfred one night, and had various reasons why. We’ve talked it over for plenty of hours and dozens of emails. Batman RIP 1-5 gave us plenty of things to chew on and discuss.

Batman 681 just gave us something to be disappointed about. Geoff Klock nails a lot of the reason why here, and I agree with his points. We got a lot of build-up for a payoff that would fit pretty well on any generic mid-90s “Superhero… no more!” story, complete with the exploding helicopter and leftover bit of costume.

I was expecting the next New X-Men (solid story, uneven art teams, good payoff), but I got the next Knightfall instead. A well-written Knightfall, but a Knightfall nonetheless.