From a thread in Moving Pictures that was originally about The Death and Return of Superman:


Many long-standing Batman fans just cry out "He's a hack/He Ruined Batman" because the changes he made across his two times writing Batman as a character were bad on SO MANY levels, the fandom that rejects him, asked to highlight what he didn't like, would take the highlighter and rub it over THE ENTIRE COMIC. In the way that Alan Moore's Watchmen is perfect in almost every single choice it made, Grant Morrisson's All Star Batman & Robin and later on main-line Batman story arc that hit a mad crescendo in Final Crisis just kept making bad choice after bad choice that turned a lot of fans off.

I could sit and write out a breakdown of how rotten All Star Batman & Robin was for you, but Linkara already has two great videos where he does just that. Issues 1 and 2 and then Issues 3 and 4. The long and the short of it is, this series was such an awful version that the publishers later backpedaled and said it was a parody of Batman and Robin. Note: The original intention of the All-Star line of titles was a modernized reboot, akin to Marvel's Ultimate Universe line of comics. But GM made so very many missteps in ASB&R that the publishers had to apologize to the fans and state that it was not to be taken seriously.

Now, let's go on to a more recent GM Batman work: The Black Glove. This was the lead-in to Batman: R.I.P., which in itself was a lead-in to Batman's part of the storyline in Final Crisis.

The Black Glove was a confusing mess. He chucked the known canon of Batman's past out the window and created his own, where there was a whole cast of Bat-Men around the globe, who were inspired by Bruce Wayne and had taken up their own version of the mantle in their homelands. The most memorable of these versions was a British pair called Knight and Squire, which looked like Batman and Robin dressed to infiltrate a Ren Faire. The storyline was constantly and erratically jumping between the present and the past, taking place on this tropical island that had never been mentioned in the comics before or since, and had a "And Then There Were None" trope where various members were being killed off each time everyone split up. The culprits? The Black Glove, a new group of villains that worked in the shadows and apparently had rich people betting on who would die next, and who would escape with their lives. Why? For the profits, and to fuck with Batman. Actually, a great deal of what the Black Glove did and said was incredibly confusing, the plot was incredibly difficult to follow, especially spread out the way it was, and GM wasn't giving anyone any hints as to what was true or false about them and their motivations. In Batman R.I.P., Bruce Wayne actually went mad, and became Zurr-En-Arrgh or something like that, a batshit crazy version of Batman that wore a psychadelic purple suit and was getting tips on where to go and what to do from a hallucinatory Bat-Mite. Why? Because Dr. Hurt (who may or may not have been part of The Black Glove, and some people claim was Darkseid in disguise but I don't see it) tried to mind-control Batman, and Batman was so damn crazy prepared that he had set up this alternate personality as an override if anyone pulled something like that. When did he set that up? It was never mentioned before. Fuck, it wasn't even explained at first WHY Zurr-En-Arrgh was now running around Gotham being crazy in Bruce Wayne's body at first. The explanation came towards the end of that part of things. But anyway...

...moving on. The head of The Black Glove reveals himself, and claims to be Thomas Wayne, which is either a blatant lie stated to fuck with Bruce more or else GM REALLY decided to piss all over established canon. Either way, we never get an explanation for the statement because the helicopter that The Black Glove and Batman is in explodes in a fiery crash, and that's it, Batman is dead. Only no he's not, because...

...In Final Crisis, we see Batman in a laboratory on Apokalips, the war machine planet of Darkseid. He's in a glass cylinder with a breathing tube and electrodes attached to his head over his cowl. How did he get from the exploding helicopter to here? No explanation is ever given. Why is he in this tank? They're trying to clone him, and they're trying to extract all his skills and copy them into the clones. Only because this is The Goddamn Batman, the clones look at the memories Bruce had up until his capture and just die from the overwhelming awesome of it. (No, really.) Then Batman wakes up and breaks free, rejoining the Justice League to figure out WTF he's been missing. He's been missing Darkseid killing off New Gods left and right, and taking over the mere mortals of Earth with something called the Anti-Life Equation. Batman stages a plan to stop it all, and this where GM did something that truly drove home the point he doesn't understand Batman:

He has Batman shoot Darkseid to death. See, there was this magic bullet that Darkseid made to kill one of the New Gods. Batman found it, re-shelled it, and fired it from a special pistol to kill Darkseid. And right before firing, he had Batman say "Congratulations, you're making me break my one rule. No villain has ever done that."

For the second time in his career, GM has totally missed what Batman's core values are. The first time was in All Star, where Batman kidnaps a small boy whose parents were just killed in front of him, calls the boy retarded, and swears at him. Why did he act out like that? Because the boy asks why he's being kidnapped. Having Batman smile sometimes is fine by me. There were points in several great Batman stories (including recent ones) where he smiled, and a couple where he even laughed. But having Batman use crude language and curse, having him act like an insensitive prick to someone who was just a victim of the same crime that made him who he is... that was unacceptable. Then in Final Crisis, Batman uses a gun, and takes a life. Yes, I know, Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns had Batman turned into a killer, or at least a man who trains others to kill. But Batman hadn't picked up any firearms to do it. Batman wielding a gun is supposed to be one of those "never gonna happen" scenarios in comics, like Spider-Man being on time for a date and no villains interrupting it, or Jimmy Olsen doing something useful. But GM decided to ignore that, and the editing staff let him get away with it. Batman "dies" at the end of Final Crisis, being burned to death by Darkseid's Omega Beams. Only, the editors decide they CAN'T have that happen, and so they throw in a contradictory (and unexplained) final set of panels where Bruce Wayne is painting the JLA team logos on a cave wall in the prehistoric past. This leads into:

The Return of Bruce Wayne, which like the other GM titles, was a confusing mess with gaping plot holes that made no sense and actively conflicted a lot of things that went before it, up to and INCLUDING the conclusion to Final Crisis. I still don't understand what happenned here and/or how it fits, but it hardly matters because as soon as Flashpoint threw the Retcon switch again, it looks like all of that got edited away and we were returned to Bruce being the one and only Batman, Dick being Nightwing, Tim being Red Robin, and Damien being Robin.

So, the major problems with GM over his takes on Batman are: He radically changes core aspects/key values of the character. His stories made no damn sense and crammed in a bunch of characters that were never used before OR after because they were never properly explained and in most cases entirely pointless. He threw in an arc motif (red and black checkered pattern) just to further confuse the readers, and intentionally had it go nowhere. He threw in an arc phrase about a hole that no pieces fit into or some shit, and then slapped in a last-minute explanation that made everyone go back and say, "WTF? Is this asshole telling us now that the whole insane thing is because of Darkseid? That doesn't make any damn sense!" He actively BROKE the character, tried to kill him, and then when the editors FINALLY said "No" to him on that one aspect of the story, he created something to change the character's fate that was even more of a crappy ass pull than the preceding plot that led to his death(s).

I dislike Quesada for having magic retconned Spidey revealing his identity publicly, in the process erasing his marriage to Mary Jane to resurrect Aunt May. I hated it even MORE when "One Moment in Time" retconned the retcon by saying laying out just HOW the wedding to MJ never happened. But I still read Spidey, because those are two bumps in some otherwise good stories.

I dislike Morrisson to the point where if he's writing it, I don't pick it up now. I made ONE exception from this with the New 52... I picked up Action Comics to see how he'd reboot Superman. Surprise (not)! He made him an arrogant prick who abused his powers to do whatever he saw as the right thing. Took him from the ultimate example of Lawful Good to a character riding the line between Neutral Good and Chaotic Neutral. I chose not to keep reading it after the first two, and it confirmed what I already had decided about GM... that he's not interested in making characters as we all know and love them, he wants to make characters HE identifies with, and then put them in the established character's role and fuck anyone who notices the differences and disapproves.

I gotta hand it to ya, Doc, that was comprehensive.

Thank you. I was a modern literature major in college, so one thing I know how to do is examine storytelling, and explain what about a given work is good or bad.

I could probably write a full 25-page thesis analyzing the failures in GM's Black Glove/RIP/Final Crisis/Return of Bruce Wayne story arc, but that would require me re-reading the comics, which I would rather avoid doing.

Grant Morrison didn't write All Star Batman & Robin. ASBR was written by Frank Miller and illustrated by Jim Lee. Grant Morrison wrote All Star Superman which was illustrated by Frank Quitely and adapted to an animated film by Wayne McDuffie.

So he takes staid, cookie-cutter, story-by-committee characters and actually tries to do something new with them or bring his own ideas to the table? I like that approach.

In any case, I skimmed your post, and your beefs seem legit (I've never read any of the stuff), but if your main argument against his changes is the fact that he wanted to change things, then you lost me.

Thanks, that was confusing me. Frank Miller went loco a long time ago.

There are things you can change about a character that make sense and stay true to the character. Superman killed. He suffered horrendous and crippling guilt over it. It made sense within the parameters of the character. The scene described sounds like action hero movie quip killing. I haven't read the issues either, so I don't know if a line was crossed with Batman. Everyone would raw that line in a different place, anyway.

All Star Batman I have read, and I agree. The character there is so far removed from any incarnation of Batman as to cease to be the character. Adam West's Batman has more in common with the Dark Knight Returns Batman than All Star Batman has with any Batman. He's cruel, abusive, brutish and lacks any of the motivation that would be necessary to send someone out to defend victims from predators. Parody or not, the feeling one gets from reading it is that Miller is intentionally seeing how far he can push.

People are turned off by a change that alters a character beyond recognition. There's a reason you read a Batman story. You want to read about Batman. If he's acting like Lobo, then the writer should be writing a Lobo story.

There's a difference between taking a known property and looking at it in a new way, and taking a known property and overturning its core values. Batman does not shoot his enemies with a firearm. Superman is supposed to be the ultimate good guy. BOTH are in the business of SAVING lives, which is why they work together despite having a wide gap between their ideologies.

As a counterexample to my "They changed it and it sucked" attitude, let's look at Batgirl... Barbara Gordon was made Batgirl again in the new 52. They didn't explain how right away, but after a few issues they made it clear that The Killing Joke was still canon, and Barbara regained use of her legs through and experimental procedure she had to fly to South America to try. My sister is rejecting this title outright because she was in LOVE with Oracle, who was a superhero despite being crippled. I actually think this is an interesting turn for the character, especially because she's carrying all the baggage (and all the experience) from having been crippled and having been stuck as Oracle. She's on a journey to regain her confidence in physical abilities, and that's causing her to push away people who want to help her. It's a great read so far, and part of why it's great is because Barbara Gordon the person is still the same character. What GM did to Batman in Black Glove/RIP/Final Crisis/Return of Bruce Wayne made Bruce Wayne the person into something entirely different.

As for mixing up who wrote All Star B&R, my bad. I was mixing it up with Batman & Robin, the comic title that was started shortly after Final Crisis, also written by GM and also something I was turned off by the writing style of.

OT: My issue with changing back to Batgirl is that it's ultimately pure selfishness. Not her regaining the ability to walk, mind you, but her decision to become Batgirl. She did more damage to the bad guys in one afternoon as Oracle than she had during her entire career as a costume-wearer; leaving her console behind actually means letting the bad guys win more.

The point is that he doesn't respect property characters or the stories that have come before them. If he wants to do his own completely different thing than he should be doing creator owned work or out of continuity stories. People change over time. They typically don't drop everything they are doing to have new personalities overnight. His New X-Men run was particularly bad about that. Also if there are loose threads it is your job to tie them before moving on when you take on a property like these. These are progressing stories not a new series each time a new creator comes onboard.