Batman Inc: Well, Morrison's doing that thing he does when he's in the home stretch, throwing out all his remaining ideas at once. #5 was a return to the Damian-as-Batman future. He goes full on Revelation here, and there's a more-than-passing resemblance to his final X-Men arc.
Barbara's in a wheelchair again, meaning he's either explicitly ignoring the New 52 status quo or implying that she ends up BACK in a wheelchair. Or maybe it's just a "Something is wrong" red flag.
Because it also sure seems to flat-out contradict Batman #700 -- which depicted Damian, not Bruce, in the mentor role to Terry McGinnis -- and I really don't see how that can possibly happen after the events of this issue.
I'm also kind of curious how much of this Morrison planned, coincidentally, in advance of Dark Knight Rises and how much, if any, was influenced by the movie. Because this issue climaxes with [spoiler]Gotham being nuked, mushroom cloud and all, and Talia al Ghul being behind it[/spoiler].
I mean, of course the thing about dystopian futures is they're ALL things that are never going to happen. Bruce is always going to be Batman; we KNOW he's not going to die and leave the mantle to Damian (or that if he does, the status quo will get reset later). But for Morrison's purposes, I'm curious what's "real" and what's not in these different visions of the future he's set up, and whether he'll explicitly end the series with Damian preventing Bruce's death or, instead, leave it with the implication that it could still happen.
Damian could still die, of course, but that's not my best guess. For one thing, Dead Robin is so fucking played-out at this point; for two, Morrison's repeatedly stated in interviews that his original intent was to kill Damian off but that he changed his mind, and that doesn't seem like something you'd say in interviews if you were still planning to kill him off.
I'm more interested in seeing Bruce turn out to be wrong. He's resisted the idea of Damian becoming Robin from the get-go (it was Dick who allowed it, while Bruce was "dead"), and now he's insistent that the only outcome is a bad one. It makes for an interesting contradiction from the Inc status quo -- Batman wants all the Batmen he can get, EXCEPT THAT ONE -- but, well, it IS a contradiction.
I think we're definitely in a period right now that's playing the "Bat-Family is a good thing, Batman shouldn't just be an angry loner" angle. And I hope that continues. Because while there's something to be said about Angry Loner Batman, it's pretty damn played-out, and I'd much rather see Friendly Batman for awhile.
Which may be a moot point as I'm not sure how much I'll be following Batman once Morrison's out. Snyder's got some interesting ideas but they've never quite gelled for me, and Layman's doing pretty great work over in Detective but I don't know if he's there for the long haul or not. Guess we'll see.
