A Chill Whistles Through the Autumn Air, the Crossover Arrives: Jog has eaten his 10/31 candy

The best part of Kabuki: Circle of Blood is where the bad guy assassins are all karaoke singing to INXS. Just thought I'd get that out there.

Batman #670: You know crossover anticipation is low in my heart of hearts when a new Grant Morrison comic comes out, and I don't even read it until three days after it's bought. Never mind the upcoming Peter Milligan material I'm not sure I'm even going to buy. And you know how I am with Peter Milligan.

Still, this 'prelude' to The Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul is as OKAY an issue of Batman as any I've read. Morrison goes for the same slow-burning start he's hit on every storyline of this run, but he's an old hand at setting up big stories like this, and divvies out setup with a miniumum of convolution. Nothing all that unexpected happens: Ra's Al Ghul is possibly resurrected, Batman alternates between hitting people and sputtering variations of he... can't be! to I-Ching. All is drawn by Tony Daniel (pencils) and Jonathan Glapion (inks) in an unobtrusively bland manner.

All that said, I've really started to like Morrison's work with Damian, Batman's literal son as the Jason Todd misbehaving Robin to the nth degree. I like that he never takes his ad hoc costume off (half bright, half dark, all shit), and how he's developed an odd dependence on Batman to be his ass-kicking father-as-God ideal, resulting in his issue #666 realization of 'Batman' as a childishly x-treme king of blood and traps. Just a good, fun bit of ongoing character development, although less careful hands than Morrison's could quickly make him intolerable.

And that's the game you're bound to play with the line-wide crossover. Yeah... I might stick with Milligan's Robin issues (he did a good Damian too in that Annual), but I'm also interested in seeing how Morrison picks up the threads for those who don't read the whole thing. Time will tell.