That was it? Bruce got (well of course he didn't) blown up in a helicopter crash? That was the big shock ending? That tooks delays and weeks of scripting to come up with?
Comic books are stupid! Take it from someone who come next summer has read comics 20 years. Of course lately it less and less because they are getting worse all the time. Every title or event seems to be about hyped up stories. Which have unsatisfying endings and no long term effect. Every storyline is the "Biggest, most shocking ever!" Yes I said it - Comics books are fucking stupid. I have earned the right to say that.
I guess my point simply was when was the last time one of these hyped storylines from DC or Marvel lived up to their hype? These events are designed to generate hype. Not to tell good stories but constructed by a committee. Usually its the start of the event that is the main idea. One which they don't know how to resolve at the end. This was a rare case were the ending - Batman RIP - was spelled out in the title.
Or the time he was in a boat explosion after kidnapping Robin, Alfred and others on his birthday....or the time he got hit by the truck and knocked off a freeway in that recent Dini one off....or fell from a great heighth after Laughing Fish...etc. That's it? All this hype about Morrison is a Comic God....and Bruce supposedly dies in a helicopter crash? That was worth the delay in the d@mn book? That settles it....Dini is King of the Bat Books; Morrison is the Court Jester. And of course, everyone will probably meekly accept this and not doubt Bruce is dead, as Bruce and EVERYONE else did EVERY time the Joker supposedly died? Because if they didn't believe he was dead, why would there be a "Battle for the Cowl"?
The Sinestro Corps War pretty much nailed - if not exceeded - the level of its promotion. Oddly, only the Green Lantern comics regularly read like well done classic comics not-by-committee of the Marvel and DC titles today. They remind me of the core X-Men in the early part of the mid-90s. (Oddly, though, I left the Green lantern issues on the shelves today, and came home with two very good X-Men comics out of an overabundance of mostly thin titles of that stripe. I should probably go back and get them.)
Yeah, the Green Lantern storylines have been great. The current Nightwing arc has also been really good.
So he just killed him? That seems really anti-climatic. This was looking like to be a deconstruction of Batman with the 'Batman RIP' referring to the Batman paradigm. This isn't interesting... it's pedestrian.
I think that was what was meant for shock value. Not that they killed him: that they just killed him.
Ugh. Another one in my reasons why DC is dead to me list: 1) Amazons Attack 2) Infinite Crisis 3) Fake Dead Batman. Ugh, Ugh I say!
The implications from the Black Lanterns thread really have my groaning. Especially since it makes so much sense (relatively speaking). The Dark (Black) Knight. Approached by the Sinestro Corps. Recently killed. Ugh ugh ugh. So help me if the entire point of his death was to fit into that storyline. So help me.
'Twas LAME. Punches his wayy into some helicopter, explodes and six months later, the members of the black glove are hunted down by man-bats or fake-batmen. I mean, WTF?
I'm so disappointed with this series. The artwork was good, and it had potential, but the conclusion left me scratching my head even more than that Batman from Zur'n'r or whatever stuff Morrison threw in there. Morrison did a better job with the Ra's Al Ghul stuff, even though he left Damian and Alfred's storyline hanging in the conclusion, and just tacked on Talia at the end. There's no way that anyone could believe that Batman is dead for a second. He's survived through far worse, like being paralyzed and thrown off a building by Bane. Who exactly was Dr. Hurt? I didn't get any of those references. I'm assuming he wasn't Dr. Wayne, but he said he wasn't that other guy either, so who was he? I liked the Jet character but I wish Morrison had given her a better motivation or fleshed out her betrayal a bit more. The other villians he created were interesting, but also lacked this type of development as well. Strange enough the only RIP stories I liked where Dini's, which did a great job of making Hush a villian I could get into, and the Nightwing and Robin stories. Morrison totally jacked this one up, and from what I've read of Final Crisis, he's mucking that up too. He's a very creative guy, but sometimes I just want a good, solid story. The death of Captain America, though I doubt Steve Rogers will stay dead, was done far more straightforward and convincingly than RIP. When Dick took over during the Prodigal storyline, that was done better too.