Aside from all the Secret Invasion, this week also brought the latest issue of Batman RIP.

I’ve always been a fan of the Bat-books, however due to budget concerns, I tend to avoid picking them up.   I prefer to simply trade-buy arcs that looked interesting.

However, all the hype about Batman RIP got to me, and so I thought I’d pick it up.  It started off promisingly, with Bruce’s secret being revealed to his latest girlfriend, while the shadowy Black Glove plots his downfall.

There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on, regarding the Waynes, and how Bruce’s vision of them may be rose-tinted.  There’s certainly a lot of deconstruction of Bruce’s character going on, with major hints that the trauma of his parents death affected him far more deeply than he realised.

Its all pretty interesting stuff, however this latest issue was just weird.  And not in a good way.  It certainly takes Bruce to a low point.  Following the activation of some sub-concious, post-hypnotic command, Bruce seems to have lost his memory, and is a down-and-out while the Black Glove takes over the Batcave and takes Alfred prisoner.  Nightwing is captured and imprisoned in Arkham (interesting, since this has been rumoured to be Bruce’s fate) and Robins on the run from a group of attackers.

The problem is that the post-hypnotic stuff seems a bit vague, and isn’t really making sense at this point.  And the ending of the issue was just really odd.   I’ve got a lot of faith in Morrison though, so I’m hoping it all makes sense as the story goes on.  I’m not convinced the integration of silver-age parts of the mythos is working as well as it does with Superman however.

Well, its been a busy couple of weeks, with a tonne of Secret Invasion stuff.

First up was Mighty Avengers, which filled in some of the backstory as to how and when Hank Pym was replaced. To be honest, this was the first MA issue I felt was a bit missable, although I can see how knowing when he was replaced was important to the rest of the story. The new serum he gives to Janet at the end of the issue is probably going to be significant later on though.

The issue did play into this week’s Avengers Initiative well though, which further filled in some of the gaps with Hank-Skrull’s backstory. I loved the running gag with the Skrull using his superskrull powers to escape various near-death situations and then having to explain it away with “I shrank really small”. The standout part of the book though was 3-D Man. Formerly Triathalon, I remember him being a character I didn’t care about back in the Busiek run. Although here he came across really well, when he discovers that he has the ability to detect Skrulls and finds an infiltrator on his new team.

This paid off well against the other plot thread, with good-guy Skrull Crusader realising that Hank Pym is a Skrull infiltrator, but then also realising he’s left it too long to reveal he’s a Skrull himself once the Invasion begins. Great title. I really need to pick up the trades of this series.

New Avengers followed suit with filling in the backstory. This time it was Spider-Woman and her replacement by the Skrull Queen. This one definitely ticked the boxes for me. Nice art, and we get a good look at how deeply involved in events in the MU the Skrulls have been. We also have them specifically single out the mutant population as a significant threat, which leads into House of M. I’m not going to be too surprised if we find out the Skrulls managed to influence Wanda into her “No more mutants” moment, as we now know that was a big win to the Skrull plans.

Meanwhile Secret Invasion Fantastic 4 #2 continued the story of Ben and Johnny trapped in the Baxter building, which was transported to the Negative Zone by Lyja in Secret Invasion #1 (something I hope is dealt with properly in the main series, as its a big event which has currently been completely ignored in the main narrative). This was a cracking read, largely due to the witty internal dialogue from Johnny. We also see him start to get through to Lyja, so it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out, as Franklin points out that their best bet to get home is via the super-powered prison from Civil War.

Finally I picked up the first issue of Front Line.

Carrying on the succes from the Civil War tie-in, this series aims to give us more of a street-level view of the action. Its a good start, with Ben Urich trapped in a hospital as the invasion hits, and various others trapped in Stark Tower, which goes into lockdown at the first sign of the Skrull virus. Although while I enjoyed the issue, picking up the full run will probably go against my desire to keep the tie-ins to a minimum, since I’m currently picking up 3 big events (although Batman RIP I’m just buying the main Batman book and my usual monthly fix of Tomasi’s Nightwing). Worth checking out though, its just that my budget won’t really stretch to it (I’m only really picking up the F4 tie-in because its only 3 issues long).