Outline
Discussing the genesis of the storyline and its linkage to the rest of his run, Morrison notes that:
I can tell you this much – this is the first story I had planned when Peter Tomasi, the editor at the time, asked me to do Batman, which must have been two years ago now…or longer. And the very first story title I noted down was "Batman R.I.P." I had a particular image for the cover, which Alex Ross has done a bang-zoom, thousand-times-better version of for the second part of the story. So it came from there…and out of that notion came the idea for the big overarching story I’ve been telling since I first came on the book. Everything…the "Zur-En-Arrh" graffiti, the Joker prose story, the Club of Heroes…every detail that’s been in the book for the last couple of years is significant, everything is a clue to the grand design that’s unfolding.In an interview with Comic Book Resources, Grant Morrison explained that Batman's fate in the story is "so much better than death. People have killed characters in the past, but to me, that kind of ends the story! I like to keep the story twisting and turning. So what I am doing is a fate worse than death. Things that no one would expect to happen to these guys at all. This is the end of Bruce Wayne as Batman."
Morrison talked about "Batman R.I.P." at the April 2008 New York Comic Con "Spotlight on Grant Morrison" panel. "When we begin to suspect the identity of the villain, I think it's the most, like I said the other day, it's possibly the most shocking Batman revelation in 70 years."
DC Universe #0 shed some light on the potential plot of the series, with a scene between Batman and the Joker written as a prelude to the upcoming storyline. In the sequence, Batman confronts the Joker about the mysterious "Black Glove," villain(s) who were behind the attempt to kill Batman during Morrison's "The Black Glove" (International Club of Heroes) arc in Batman #667-669. The Joker, nonchalantly dealing out a "dead man's hand" from a deck of cards, taunts Batman regarding his fear of the mystery villain and how the Black Glove intends on destroying him.
Read more about this topic: Batman R.I.P.
Famous quotes containing the word outline:
“The outline of the city became frantic in its effort to explain something that defied meaning. Power seemed to have outgrown its servitude and to have asserted its freedom. The cylinder had exploded, and thrown great masses of stone and steam against the sky.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“I am fooling only myself when I say my mother exists now only in the photograph on my bulletin board or in the outline of my hand or in the armful of memories I still hold tight. She lives on in everything I do. Her presence influenced who I was, and her absence influences who I am. Our lives are shaped as much by those who leave us as they are by those who stay. Loss is our legacy. Insight is our gift. Memory is our guide.”
—Hope Edelman (20th century)
“It is the business of thought to define things, to find the boundaries; thought, indeed, is a ceaseless process of definition. It is the business of Art to give things shape. Anyone who takes no delight in the firm outline of an object, or in its essential character, has no artistic sense.... He cannot even be nourished by Art. Like Ephraim, he feeds upon the East wind, which has no boundaries.”
—Vance Palmer (1885–1959)