Some readers may be under the impression that I adore everything Grant Morrison does.  Well, that would be going a little far.  Seven Soldiers was hit and miss.  JLA was wildly overrated.  Sebastian O makes me want to throw things across the room.  They aren't all winners.

But even a bad Grant Morrison comic tends to be bad in an interesting way.  There will be new approaches.  There will be big ideas.  Even if they don't work, the concepts tend to be intriguing.

Which makes his debut issue of Batman something of a surprise.  It's not bad.  In fact, it's quite decent.  But there's nothing wildly different about it.  It's just Grant Morrison happily doing a Batman story.

The comparison with All-Star Superman is striking.  Admittedly, Morrison isn't exactly reinventing the wheel in that book either.  But he's trying to bring the broad-stroke craziness of the Silver Age into the modern era, which is a bold and interesting approach, diving head-on into the sort of cheerful silliness that other writers tiresomely insist on trying to eradicate from history.

In contrast, teamed with Andy Kubert on Batman, Morrison has written... a Batman comic.  It starts off promisingly, with a pre-credits skirmish against the Joker that includes the line "I finally killed Batman!  In front of a bunch of vulnerable, disabled kids!"  But then we get back to well-trodden territory.  Batman has lost sight of his Bruce Wayne persona, and the Batman personality has taken over.  Instead of playing this as a dark psychology story, though, Morrison has Batman trying to rediscover his international playboy side.

If the idea is to draw out that side of the character, and to develop the Bruce Wayne persona that writers have tended to ignore in favour of Batman, then that's fair enough.  It's a sensible enough direction for a character who often becomes a caricature of angst.  But it's hardly a striking new take on Batman, or anything that moves us off the beaten track.  It's just a decent superhero comic.

Artist Andy Kubert has never been one of my favourite artists.  He's come a long way from his early nineties run on X-Men, which was big on posing and low on anatomy, body language or flow.  But those tendencies remain, albeit to a lesser extent.  His art has plenty of movement, but not much drama.  Still, while I don't find him much of a boon, he doesn't detract much from the story.

There are lots of good details in this issue, notably Bruce's conversation with Alfred in the Batcave.  ("I thought I saw Killer Croc..."  "An easy mistake to make.  Why, just the other day I had a rather formidable nun down as the Penguin, sir.")  It's an interesting take on the character which tries to pull him back from the extremes of personality he often displays.  In fact, it's a good Batman story generally.

But that's all it is - and we've come to expect something bigger from Morrison.  It can't help but underwhelm.

Rating: B+

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