Books: Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?

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Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?
Written by Neil Gaiman
Art by Andy Kubert
2009




Available now from Islington Libraries
You can reserve this item for free here:
http://www.library.islington.gov.uk/TalisPrism/

In 1986 Alan Moore wrote the "last ever Superman story" called "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" (which - if you like - you can read in DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore). In 2009 Grant Morrison though that it would be fun to kill Batman and so the powers at be at DC thought it would be a good idea to ask Neil Gaiman to write the "last ever Batman story."

Gaiman - who made his breakthrough with his now-legendary Sandman series - hadn't done any comic writing for quite a while: having since graduated to novels, screenplays and writing episodes of Doctor Who. But as he so pleasantly describes in the introduction: he'd always been tempted to write a 'proper' Batman story and the chance to put somekind of capstone on the last 70 years of the legend of the Dark Knight proved much too much to resist.

What we have then are two slender issues of Batman (Batman #686 and Detective Comics #853) which together tell the final story of Batman. As benefiting a creature of the dark and mysterious: this isn't a clean-cut tale like it's Man of Steel counterpart: instead slightly strange and off-kilter and contains a slithery mixture of two of Mr Gaiman's pre-occupations: Dreams and Death.

Supplemented by some odds and sods (2 issues isn't much after all) which includes a black and white story with bone-crushing art by Simon Bisley and a delightful nostalgic Riddler story which harks back to the wild and crazy days when Batman was played by Adam West and nobody died.

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Links: Comic Book Resources Review, The M0vie Blog Review, Wired Article: Neil Gaiman Writes a Final ‘Love Letter to Batman’, Comics Cube Article: Retrospective: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?.

Further reading: Batman: Batman and Son, The Sandman, DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore.

Profiles: Neil Gaiman.

All comments welcome.