Batman and Jeet Kune Do

The follow up to R.I.P, Last Rights, arrived today. Whatever momentum was muted by the last issue has been renewed with a twisted silver age smile. I'm a bit giddy after reading it, the mark of a true comics fan. During Morrison/s run, one thing that he's gone to great pains to establish is Batman is prepared, always. There is no such thing as an unprepared Batman. The guy has put himself in isolation chambers and death trances so that he could be prepared for the day someone dopes him up with weapons grade meth and street heroin, not to sound reductive but would a death trance really prepare you for everything. Batman is human; he still makes mistakes, and he can still lose a fight. At some point there is an inconceivable, a thing that must be missed (similar to the irrational, the thing that cannot be...but is). In this respect Batman has become a true practitioner of Jeet Kune Do.

JKD eschews form for practicality, a JKD fighter is a new fighter every moment. Why? He has transcended form. HE has the ability to improvise. to conceptualize, to adapt any given situation even if he hasn't trained for that EXACT event. Batman has adopted this philosophy (whether he names it as such or not, or if Morrison names it as such or not) writ large. Doesn't have an antide for a poison on hand? He can improvise one. He didn't practice escaping death trap 542? It's ok, based on his knowledge of death traps in general, and traps 15, 972, and 400 specifically, he can create a solution. R.I.P appeared to be a large elaborate multistage death trap that began with a psychological assault long bere he was imprisoned physically, but in Last Rights part 1, maybe Batman didn't escape the death trap, at least not the death trap we thought he escaped.

One of the famous Silver Age conventions, the one I think most contemporary readers--myself included--loathe is the ole' "it's a dream!" shtick, and with good reason. It's cowardly, nothing more than cheating, an unwanted concession to the status quo, and since we are clearly in a Neo Silver Age Morrison finds it appropriate to bring the damned thing out of the closet...but with a few modifications. R.I.P was noted for blending in a lot of the goofball silver age stories, but in Last Rights we're finally understanding why (this ties in with Final Crisis). Batman is being mind raped by toadies of Darkside, a god, supposedly folks waaay out of Batman's league.

(How does one prepare for a deathtrap designed by gods, who could theoretically, design an infinite number of deathtraps within deathtraps, a Matrix trilogy of deathtraps and torture, torture and deathtraps, and what if those authoritarian anti-life praising gods wanted batman's courage, his spirit, his intellect, all the things that make Batman Batman and mass-produce for an army? Could Bruce really have prepared for that? That isn't just out of left field, that's the left side of the Negative Zone (which would make it the right side ). He may not have been able to prepare for such an ordeal specifically, but he could train himself to generate false memories in the event of a mental probe, which is exactly what I think is going on.

And this has ramifications for R.I.P. Maybe the story didn't happen the way we were told, maybe the version we got is the Apocalyptian death trap version, thus fucking up their plans for a clone army. That, or the silver age hallucinations were a stew of false memories activated in R.I.P. because the given situation was similar too some idealized trap Batman HAD prepared for., and his only way out of Final Crisis is to invoke a similar strategy.