Batman #681

Batman #681
Written by Grant Morrison and Illustrated by Tony Daniel
Published by DC Comics

The comic starts off with Batman captured. He’s in a trap all tied up and buried in a coffin. Then the book keeps switching to go back in time when he was training. There’s a creepy old guy telling him that he is working for a dark master. He tells Bruce Wayne that he poisoned his tea and that he’s going to die in a couple of minutes. But what really happened was that Bruce said he switched the cups on the old man when he blinked so that the old man was really poisoned but Bruce saved him.

Robin is getting into a fight with the bad guys from the Black Glove and it looks like he’s going to lose but then all of these Batman type heroes from different countries come to help him. Nightwing is still captured and the bad guys want to destroy his brain but he breaks out and saves himself.

I really like how Batman breaks out of the coffin. He is saying that he’s really tired but can hold his breath for a long time and that the dirt weighs 600 pounds but he uses all his strength to break out. Then Batman goes after all of the bad guys and starts beating them down. Nightwing shows up to start helping him and tells Batman that he looks tired.

All of the bad guys are making bets on whether Batman will die but Joker bets that Batman will win because he always wins. Joker escapes before he can get beaten up by Batman or Dr Hurt and drives away in an ambulance that he stole. Then the little kid who says he’s Batman’s son is driving the Batmobile and smashes into the ambulance and makes him crash off a bridge.

Then Dr Hurt is fighting Batman and starts telling him that they have to work together and that Bruce has to stop being Batman. Batman takes off his mask and cape but goes after Dr Hurt. Dr Hurt tries to escape in a helicopter but Batman catches him and breaks through the window. The helicopter crashes and Batman is missing. The book doesn’t show you what happens to any of them. One of the last pages is Nightwing holding Batman’s cape.

I wish that they would have said who Dr Hurt really was. He says that he’s Bruce Wayne’s dad but Bruce doesn’t believe him. The Joker thinks that he’s the devil when he talks about their playing cards. And there are a lot of parts where people are talking about the devil and the biggest evil and stuff so Dr Hurt could be the devil but they don’t say for sure. Then the story is six months later and some of the people from the Black Glove are beating up police and the guys are saying that Batman and Robin are dead. I don’t get that’s true because the Bat-signal gets lit which means Batman and Robin are called so they aren’t dead. The last page is Bruce remember when his parents were killed after his parents took him to the Zorro movie.

I really like the art in the book. There were a lot of good looking pictures. I like the one where they’re ready to stick the needle in Nightwing’s brain but he busts out. I like when Batman jumps to the helicopter. I also thought that Batman looked really cool when he was standing up in the dark after coming out of the grave. Joker looked really scary in all of his pictures and Nightwing looked very cool when he was standing on the roof holding Batman’s costume.

It was a pretty good issue. Batman wasn’t as crazy as he has been in the purple and yellow costume and there were some good fights in it but I wish they would have said who Dr Hurt was.

My Rating: 9.5 out of 10