As a fan of Grant Morrison he certainly has not had a great time since the new 52 started. Action Comics is just a mess and Morrison quickly abandoned his original premise of the series quite quickly. Now we have the return of a series that has a quite confusing continuity issue inside. This series is still a continuation of the story that started before DC relaunched in September and apparently some characters are still wearing costumes BEFORE the relaunch. All I have to say is….SO WHAT!? JUST ENJOY THE STORY COMIC!!!

Just like how I thoroughly enjoyed this issue. Morrison has still not lost his touch with Batman and god help us when he does leave the character. This issue is just one big, non-stop action film as Batman and Robin fight countless gangs involved with Leviathan. We open on a slaughterhouse that Morrison paces the fight very well and gives Burnham some nice imagery to layout (more on him in a bit). Then we get an inside story on a hitman bent on killing Damian for the sake of Talia. While the narration is a bit sporadic (like most narration Morrison writes) but Morrison does a nice job making me interested in this guy’s plight. While the ending doesn’t do anything for me dramatically (and it’s the one weakness of this entire issue) I am interested to see just how it ties into the opening page of this issue.

Speaking of Chris Burnham (just go with my here) how about that Chris Burnham!? The moment this issue begins you know that Burnham has now turned himself into one of the best artists in the industry. Well it probably helps that Burnham had a ton of time to do this issue but still it doesn’t detract from what happens. People have compared his art to Frank Quitely and boy does it show here. Every page just has so much energy and imagination going on. You can hear the soundtrack playing in the background as Damian and Bruce start chasing and fighting the Goat Gang in the slaughterhouse. It must have been a pain in the butt to keep track of all the blood flowing in the opening sequence but Burnham keeps the pace well. There’s other fantastic pages in this issue like ‘The Hood’ (no not him) infiltrates the Batcave club or having the skyscrapers act like panels (with a Robin design that SHOULD stay as the Robin logo). Everything about this book is just gorgeous to look at and if this is just the first issue of this final run of Batman INC, I can’t wait to see the madness Burnham has in store for the next few issues.

It’s amazing how Morrison is such a pro when it comes to Batman. He has written so many great comics in his career but it really seems like Batman is his go-to character to write some of his best material. This issue, continuity issues aside (RELAX!!), was just a blast to read. Even if the issue was boring to read you wouldn’t be bored looking at this issue with Chris Burnham’s wonderful pages. We apparently have only eleven issues before Morrison’s and Burnham’s run on Batman is over….So right…let’s make this count boys!