Batman R.I.P.

Grant Morrison, writer

Tony S. Daniel, Lee Garbett, artists

DC, 2010

224 pages

$14.99

Buy it from Amazon.com

Here’s a quick list of fun things found in this immensely enjoyable comic:

* Opening a story called Batman R.I.P. with a splash page which reads “YOU’RE WRONG! BATMAN AND ROBIN WILL NEVER DIE!”

* A bunch of weird supervillains from around the world sweeping into Gotham City to take it over as a joint venture

* Batman coming home from a long night of crimebusting to bang his gorgeous model/aristocrat girlfriend

* Robin thinking that’s kinda weird

* The Joker drawn as a nightmarish cross between the Thin White Duke, a Cenobite, and bell hooks

* Bruce Wayne’s girlfriend methodically explaining away the majority of the Bat-mythos as signs of debilitating mental illness

* Graffiti shutting down Batman’s brain

* A hunchback and a bunch of guys dressed like gargoyles pounding the snot out of Alfred with clubs

* Batman embedding within himself a back-up personality just in case his regular personality is in some way compromised

* Said back-up personality making a multi-colored costume for itself out of garbage and then running around braining villains with a baseball bat

* The central clue/metaphor being revealed as a pun on the femme fatale’s skin tone and hair color

* Said femme fatale’s leering facial expression when her villainy is revealed

* An impeccably choreographed martial-arts battle between Robin and a killer mime from France

* Villains who are all drawn look like they’re having the time of their lives until the precise moment Batman and his friends arrive to kick their asses, which they in turn are drawn to look like they were born to do

* Doctor Hurt repeatedly referring to himself as Doctor Thomas Wayne and no one believing him

* Jezebel Jet saying “What’s that sound?”–cut to a silent panel of her plane being swarmed by an army of Man-Bats

* Ending with a two-issue Lynchian psychogenic fugue induced by New Gods from Apokalips that simultaneously reincorporates the goofy old Batman adventures from the Silver Age and presents a bunch of shoulda-woulda-coulda alternative realities and ends when a chainsmoking orange person shoots a giant psychic lump of clay repeatedly because Batman has proven too awesome to psychically pirate and clone

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