3 out of 5

While there’s no real stand-out story in this ish, the Bats Inc special sort of drives home how much Grant Morrison contributed to the Batman world – not just in terms of the characters highlighted here, but in terms of the whole vibe that will forever be exclusively his… and that the writers try their best to stay true to (especially Burnham, who I’m going to have trouble not viewing as having grown up a bit under Grant’s wing) but, well, on the whole it’s an echo of a man whose writing might vary in effect, but has almost always brought a steady stream of creativity to the table.

Grant’s whole Batman run reads, to me, like his Invisibles – starting out with cohesive, exciting ideas that soon become fractured by Morrison-ness… further jarred by a rotating cast of not-exactly-similar pencilers and a lingering belief that every arc is building toward a conclusion, before finally settling into what resembles a formula for the last go before the true resolution.  This last go, for Grant’s Bats, came as Batman Incorporated, and it was indeed that series that made me go back and read (in part re-read) what came before with a more open mind.  Even though his stated goal was to try to summarize the entirety of Bats history into one conceivable whole, held next to the pop energy of Incorporated, it also seems that Grant had to rid his take on the character of all the past ‘ghosts’ so that Bruce Wayne had a clear path for the future… and within the pages of that series we got this International ring of Batmans who played valuable roles, but had such lush personalities that it was sometimes a shame we had to stay so focused on Leviathan the whole time.

Thus our special: several writers giving a few pages on various Batmans, ‘framed’ by the man himself reviewing these ‘cases’ in the batcave.  Joe Keatinge’s ‘Knight and Squire’ tale is sort of what I would’ve wanted, acting as a springboard for stories to come, but the other ‘here’s what these heroes have been up to’ shorts are good because we realize we actually do know all these random heroes thanks to GM’s wealth of imagination, so it’s just sorta fun to see ’em in the spotlight for a few minutes.  Burnham does his best Grant impression with a weirdo bad guy and zip-zap antics, and Didio’s Bat Cow short is cute, but, there were deeper guffaws to be had from that if we had just gone weird with it.  A final word from Morrison needed one more page, but it feels warm and honest and it has been a pretty impressive experience to have on writer just takeover such a major character and put them through so many twists and turns.

Not required reading at all, simply a pleasant farewell.