Batman Vs. Ra's Al Ghul #1

[superboyprime]

"Well, if you've been paying attention to what I've been doing, you saw that I did a thing called Batman Odyssey, where I took a whole lot of pieces of Batman's life and gathered them together and swept them out of the driveway and put them in a little pile and told a story. It was 13 chapters, and it seemed like I was alluding to stuff. That story continues to my Deadman series that came out fairly recently with six issues where he pretty much yells at everybody. You learn a few new things about Deadman in there, and there's some enmity between Deadman and his parents, and they have something to do with Ra's al Ghul. He doesn't get to track down his brother and sisters, but now he must go to the greatest detective in the world. And I think we know who that is." - Neal Adams

Comments

[tinygaylaura]

This seems like it will be a worth successor to Batman Odyssey in terms of sheer incoherent lunacy

[tcampbell1000]

No one

In the history of the superhero genre

In the history of any and all comics

In the history of the written word

Child or adult

Human or AI

Stone sober or coked out of their minds

Has ever

EVER

Written like Neal Adams does.

[tinygaylaura]

It's a window into a world of madness we are never going to fully experience but can appreciate and be a little bit afraid of

[tcampbell1000]

Truth.

[mazway_75]

Was Neal Adams always this nuts and we never knew or is this a recent development?

[mrstatham]

I think beforehand he was kind-of constrained by having someone else do the writing; I think he's such a revered artist now that even with things the way they are at DC someone just said 'eh, let him write too'.

[thanekos]

Neal Adams puts the pauses in his characters' dialogue, and by god, he sticks to them.

[shakalooloo]

The dialogue is just as bonkers, but the plot here seems to at least make a basic sense.

Who are the two Robins? They look so similar, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they're clones of Tim.

One hell of a brow on Ra's al Ghul here. Are we sure it's not Vandal Savage?

[tinygaylaura]

I have to challenge you on that when it appears that Bruce didn't tell two of his actual children that he's Batman despite the fact they are fighting crime alongside him as Robin

Either that or they don't recognise their own father when he's not dressed up like a bat

And where the story starts with Batman fighting a cyborg horse with jaundice which is then murdered by Ra's Al Ghul whose pretending to be a police consultant and then Batman fakes his own explosion death

[shakalooloo]

They clearly know Batman = Bruce Wayne given their shocked reactions to the latter entering the scene. That they don't blurt out that they know immediately is merely good acting.

The freaky cable guy isn't that weird compared to some of the villains Batman faces, and if the Joker can put on a top hat and disguise himself as a crime guy, I'm sure that international lord of assassins Ra's al Ghul should be capable of something similar.

Generally, the story makes more sense than some Hollow Earth expedition with lizard people and neanderthal Batmen on giant bats, is what I'm sayin'.

[starwolf_oakley]

I make jokes about Grant Morrison's Magic Mushrooms.

Neil Adams is on a WHOLE other wavelength.

I don't know if this matters, but the two Robins are in slightly different costumes.

[donnblake]

But the important question: Is there a level of the fiction on which this story is being narrated by shirtless Bruce Wayne eating a banana?

[tinygaylaura]

Or trying to sell us a coffee maker?

[bradygirl_12]

Here we go again!

[mazway_75]

Atop the Fourth Wall is prepping the video on this as we speak.

[tinygaylaura]

I hope he covers some more issues of Batman Odyssey as well

He hasn't even gotten to the truly batshit stuff in that series yet and I can't wait to see him react to Batman finding out the Egyptian gods hid the Library of Alexandria in the Hollow Earth and there are now wizards and aliens living in it who are willing to sell you automatic weapons