Detective Comics #839

Detective Comics 839 brings to a close perhaps the oddest crossover event of 2007, and maybe the entire past decade, I dunno. I don’t think The Resurrection of Ra’s Al Ghul was good, by any means, but it may have had enough cool moments and potential to not be actively bad.

The prevailing feeling I get walking away from it is that the whole mess was somehow dictated by a creative mind that just isn’t very skilled, and that these four writers–Grant Morrison, Fabian Nicieza, Peter Milligan, and Paul Dini, all of whom have the ability to write really great comics when they want to–were somehow forced to simply make the best out of the crap sandwich they were fed.

I don’t know enough about what happens behind the massive steel closed doors of DC Comics to know if that’s true; the gossipy brat inside me wants to propose that Dan DiDio typed up a god-awful outline in an afternoon and crammed it down these writers’ throats, but there is absolutely no evidence to back that up.

I will say it seems very telling that there were no big self-congratulatory interviews on Newsarama for this event, at least, none that I can recall. No stories of big fun creative conference calls where everyone is blown away by Morrison’s creativity and there’s lots of good-natured chop-busting amongst talented guys. It seems to have been simply pushed out there and left to fend for itself.

Which is a shame, because as I’ve said before, there was POTENTIAL. The idea of Tim Drake’s pent-up angst and anguish over the deaths of his best friend and father suddenly cresting to a head when confronted with the power of the Lazarus Pit at his disposal; the avenues this opens up in the way of Ra’s seducing Bruce’s true adopted “son” while Bruce is left with his flawed and twisted biological son to deal with; Morrison returning to Nanda Parbat once again to explore its mysteries and characters as he did in 52.

Instead, even the parts that seemed to play to Morrison’s strengths were ham-handed and mucked-up. I still wonder this: If there was a fucking LAZARUS PIT in Nanda Parbat, why isn’t Vic Sage still alive? Or at the very least, why didn’t it get mentioned when he was dying there? Or even a passing line in the Resurrection storyline, admitting that the writers recognize this minor flaw in the logic of the fictional universe, and have at least concocted a dumb excuse to gloss over it?

Moreover, why did this city of great intrigue and mysticism suddenly become a place where anyone can just show up whenever they want and beat the tar out of ninjas?

Ugh. The more I write, the less I like. At any rate, the Batman titles seem to be returning to some kind of status quo that has little to do with the event’s missteps and stumbles, so we can at least sorta pretend it never happened.