COMICBOOK REVIEW: BATMAN INCORPORATED VOLUME ONE + New Launch
“Crime fighting goes global.”
BATMAN INCORPORATED tells the story of Bruce Wayne, the original Batman coming back from the future he was hurled into and realizing that the threats coming to our world cannot be fought by one single man but instead an army.
So Bruce Wayne begins his crusade on crime by making Batman evolve from an idea into a force of militaristic, economic and multi-nationalities to form a movement where there will be a Batman in every city across the globe exacting vengeance and instilling fear in all of crime.
This leads to Bruce openly addressing to the press that he is using Wayne Industries to fund BATMAN INC in order to clean the streets of Gotham to Tokyo to Argentina and more. It’s truly great to see all the Batmen ranging from all different walks of life as they’re recruited by Bruce personally to swear the oath of protection against crime and all that stands in the way of global security.
The book is a little hard to follow due to the sheer amount of content, characters and backstories that are building in this story. This is Batman no longer prowling Gotham but heading into Japan with Catwoman and fighting giant squids and going to space stations and other crazy places as the world is slowly being corrupted on all levels by the primary antagonist of the story, LEVIATHAN.
LEVIATHAN is a secret organization led by an unnamed figure who plans to destroy everything because of a personal vendetta towards Batman, but who is it? The answer will surprise you. It’s great to see Batman’s past come in force and stand against an army of batmen and AI robots as a force of technological nature that has agents in every system all over the world.
The artwork is also equally beautiful and varies from style to style never leaving your eyes looking for the next panel as something crazy or badass happens. Seeing an African American Batman soaring through slums fighting criminals or a Japanese Batgirl taking on Yakuza is just simply put, awesome.
Tons of characters from Batman’s history are also featured in this book from Catwoman, Robin and Alfred to obscure lesser known characters like El Gaucho, Man of Bats and Little Raven. The book feels like a combination of all the classic Batman with all the new making a crazy cocktail of nerdgasm in one single series.
The book also plays right into my favourite villain in Batman’s rogues gallery and takes the whole concept of ruling the world to another level. The amount of detail and dedication to the project shines especially when reading the extras, writer Grant Morrison puts in at the end of issues to further flesh out the characters and lesser known plot points so if you felt lost you can just catch up in a few short paragraphes anyways.
There is really nothing much to say that is fundamentally bad about this book. The biggest drawback is it will be daunting to new readers to get into and even with helpful descriptions of who this random character is when suddenly four other characters you’ve never seen before are shown this is a book that, if you love Batman like a lot, will just be crazy good to you.
Batman is fighting ninjas and other crazy assassin’s, villains that are wildly crazy and driven for utter chaos and a huge amount of heroism with dashes of fantastical fights and there’s even an issue where the entire book goes computer generated and cyber Batman kicks the shit out of viruses and stuff too.
This book is just bananas. It’s daunting to get into but once you do you’ll just be reading page after page absorbing as much information as you possibly can. And like I said, the main villain is full of so much win it’s crazy.
BATMAN INCORPORATED is great stuff if a little intimidating to start up on. But if you do, you’ll have a lot of fun seeing Batman go global. HAIL LEVIATHAN!
OVERALL SCORE: 9.5 out of 10
BY MILAN JEGENJAN
