There's something iconic about the title "Batman and Robin" (as well as the idea of Batman as this well-adjusted, not-entirely-fucked-up character) - With getting a new #1 and new series to continue the story you've been telling since 2006, is this your attempt to open up the character to another audience who either have never been interested in the character, or who may have strayed away as Bruce Wayne became more and more grim?

I hadn't thought of it in those terms. The 'grim 'n' gritty', noir approach to Batman has been fairly successful over the last 25 years, so I don't know if I ever imagined it keeping readers away. It's an interesting thought. If the style of Batman and Robin opens the door for new or returning readers, I'd be very happy.

You've talked before about this title being a mix of the '60s Adam West TV show and David Lynch, with Chris Cunningham's peculiar brand of wrongness thrown in as well... This seems to continue to an extent both the pop-art imagery of early in your Batman run with Andy Kubert, and the weird psychological darkness of Batman RIP - Audiences are used to seeing a screwed-up Batman thanks to things like The Dark Knight, but the comedy/brightness that you bring to the character has kind of been shied away from since, perhaps, Bob Haney and Adam West. Is it important to you that the character has that balance?

Certainly. The Bruce Wayne voice I hear in my head when I'm writing is sardonic, upper-class, absolutely self-assured and hyper-intelligent. He's seen it all, he's been desensitized to a lot of stuff the rest of us might find shocking and I've always imagined him as a man with a very refined, jet-black sense of humour.

There have been other attempts to do a 'brighter' Batman, of course. Immediately after Frank Miller reinvented the wheel with The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One, Mike W. Barr and Alan Davis launched a brilliant run of stories which owed more to Adam West than to Frank Miller. Bruce Timm and Paul Dini's Batman from the Animated Series was portrayed as a tough but psychologically-healthy individual and Miller and Lee's All Star Batman and Robin has plenty of room for comedy, so these aspects of the character have never truly gone away and form an intrinsic part of the appeal of Batman for many people. The Batman TV series was immensely popular after all and retains a certain undeniable charm even today.

I think any good, long-running thoroughly-developed fictional character will naturally come to have many faces and aspects. Batman's had 70 years to build up quite a complex and layered 'personality'.

Of course, one of my all-time favourite Batman panels was written by Haney and drawn by Jim Aparo and shows Batman strolling down the sunlit streets of Gotham, checking out the mini-skirted girls and accompanied by the line to end all lines: 'Yes, Batman digs this day!'

I'm not saying that's the Batman we want to see on every page, but I love that he might have this aspect to his character. I love the notion of a Batman who enjoys a peaceful stroll down the summer sidewalks of the city he keeps safe. There's something very human about that and it makes him much more relatable and rounded. I can certainly see the Dick Grayson Batman digging this day on a more regular basis!

To my mind, you've firmly put the sci-fi back into Batman, after years of his comics becoming more and more... mundane isn't the right word, but more of a hardcore crime book. Then you come along and suddenly there are crazy psychosomatic drug hallucinations of aliens and then Bruce Wayne gets zapped back in time by an evil god. Is this just trying to bring back all the pre-Silver Age ideas from the character's history that've been lost, or do you feel as if Batman works better as a concept when the weirdness of his rogues gallery gets amped up?

Putting Batman up against ordinary street criminals or organized gang bosses is fine but it's a bit one-sided in Batman's favour, given his training. I tend to assume that Batman goes out every single night as Gotham's Guardian and stops dozens of robberies, muggings, suicides or whatever all the time. Those 'ordinary', 'mundane' crimes are his bread and butter but they don't really challenge him and they don't necessarily make for compelling stories, so I prefer to focus on the wilder, weirder nights of his career and I like to see him facing devilishly brilliant, flamboyant psychos who can actually put him under pressure and take him to his limits. Watching a billionaire Batman disarm poorly-trained, poverty-stricken muggers effortlessly or beating up skinny junkies might be fun for a scene or two but does tend to raise thorny issues of class and privilege that the basic adventure hero concept is not necessarily equipped to deal with adequately.

As for the sci-fi elements, there's actually very little genuine sci-fi in the Batman title or in Batman and Robin. Batman RIP was certainly an attempt to recuperate those elements of Batman's long and contradictory history which no longer fit the profile of the Grim Avenger (although it's nice to see a lot of that material resurfacing in the Brave and The Bold cartoon, which features one of the most enjoyable takes on the character I've seen for a long time).

I don't have many comics in my tattered, bath-damaged 'collection' that date before 1972 when I became a 'fan' and a collector. My era of comics is the 'dark age' of the 70s and 80s, not the so-called 'silver age', so contrary to popular belief, I don't have any particular emotional attachment to 60s comics, other than John Broome's Flash stories which enchanted me as a small child.

I grew up with Neal Adams and Denny O'Neil, Len Wein, Engelhart, Starlin, Gerber, McGregor so my comic-writing style can be traced back to some combination of O'Neil' 'relevance' and Starlin 'cosmic'. Silver age, not so much.

Something that struck me about Batman RIP was the meta-deconstruction of the Batman mythos - When Jezebel Jet told Bruce Wayne that it wasn't healthy to be Batman, she may have been evil and trying to undermine his mission, but was she really completely wrong? With a new (and probably temporary) Batman who's going to not have those demons, are you trying to show how a healthier Bruce Wayne would do things?

I never really subscribed to the idea that Bruce was insane or unhealthy. As I've said before, Bruce Wayne's physical and psychological training regimes (including advanced meditation techniques) would tend to encourage a fairly balanced and healthy personality. Bruce Wayne would have gone mad if he HADN'T dressed as a bat and found a startling way to channel the grief, guilt and helplessness he felt after the death of his parents. Without Batman, Bruce would be truly screwed-up but with Batman he becomes mythic, more than human and genuinely useful to his community. I believe he began to slay his demons the moment he became a demon.

I also wanted to show a healthier Gotham City too. That whole Son-of-Sam, Rorschach-narration - 'This city is an open sewer where the rats feed on the broken dreams and filth of umm...other rats...where sneering, gnawing urban predators...blah blah...' - has become clichéd, tired and unconvincing. If Gotham was so bloody awful, no-one normal would live there and there'd be no-one to protect from criminals. If Gotham really was an open sewer of crime and corruption, every story set there would serve to demonstrate the complete and utter failure of Batman's mission, which isn't really the message we want to send, is it? You've got Batman and all his allies as well as Commissioner Gordon and the city still exudes a vile miasma of darkness and death? I can't buy that. It's simply not realistic and flies in the face of in-story logic (and you know I like my comics realistic!) so my artists and I have taken a different tack and we want to show the cool, vibrant side of Gotham, the energy and excitement that would draw people to live and visit there.

Gotham needs as many faces as Batman - it should be the loudest, sexiest, jazziest city on Earth. It has the best restaurants, the best theaters, the best art, the best criminals, the best crimefighters etc etc. People put up with the weird crime for the sheer buzz.

Why does Damian want to be Robin, if he can't show off to his dad?

Ultimately, Damian wants to be Batman. Being Robin is a step along the way.

Are you going to reference Dick Grayson's previous attempt to be Batman in the early '90s at any point in Batman and Robin?

Probably. I've tried to keep Dick Grayson's entire character history in mind, much as I did with Bruce Wayne in the earlier volumes of the story. Issue 2 has a reference to Grayson's time as a beat cop in the Bludhaven PD and the Bat-Bunker has a few trophies of his Nightwing adventures.

You've talked before about how the first year of the series works out, with artist Frank Quitely drawing the first and last three issues. What happens after the first year of the book? Are you planning on sticking around with Batman as a character, or will you be finished with Gotham for awhile once #13 rolls around?

That was the original plan but I can't seem to stop coming up with ideas for Batman, so we'll see how it goes.

Okay, last one. How would you sell Batman and Robin to people who haven't picked up a Batman comic in years?

Batman is dead. Robin is now Batman and Batman's evil son is now Robin. Everything is new again. If you ever liked Batman and don't want to see how that dynamic plays out, then may the Lord have mercy on your dry and shriveled worthless husk of a 'soul'! G'wan, g'wan, g'wan and buy Batman and Robin before the whole world starts laughing at you for missing out! Missing this is like missing your own birthday!

Batman and Robin #2 is in comic stores now.

Taken as individual issues during their initial release, Final Crisis felt weirdly insubstantial, as if they needed to be experienced as a whole to gain the weight that you were somehow convinced that they secretly had, hidden away somewhere - and, to an extent, that's true... It's just that the whole they need isn't the whole that DC's new collected edition gives to you. Yes, the handsome $29.99 edition collects all of the Grant Morrison-written issues of the storyline, and puts them all in chronological order, but in doing so it entirely disrupts the experience of reading either the core Final Crisis storyline or the Superman Beyond tie-in series that's also included here (There's a third story, the one issue Submit, but the less said about that, the better; when placed beside the other stories, it feels even more unnecessary and inconsequential than it did originally).

The plot of Final Crisis, for those who missed the original serialization, is essentially that Earth is invaded by Darkseid and his minions, the few remaining "New Gods" from the 1970s Fourth World comics by comic great Jack Kirby, and that Darkseid takes over the world, eradicates free will, and in doing so, brings about the end of everything. Included within this are sequences about divine intervention bringing fire to humanity, Superman transcending reality to save the love of his life and the universe - in that order - the return of the Flash and the death of Batman, amongst many others, and if that description makes it seem very scattered and overly busy, then that's not entirely an unfair complaint (Add in that deadlines on the original publication meant that multiple artists draw the core Final Crisis series, and that their styles aren't always a good match for each other, and you have another complication, although I admit that this particular one didn't bother me at all).

Sadly, one of the things that saved the series in its original format - the consistency of tone, despite the (intentionally) choppy storytelling - is sacrificed here, as Final Crisis itself takes a break after three issues for the Submit and Superman Beyond issues; while Submit is in keeping with the increasingly bleak, disturbing feel of Crisis, Superman Beyond is a much more inspirational story, and ends with a moment of triumph entirely at odds with the continuation of Crisis that immediately follows (In its original release, Superman Beyond's conclusion was released concurrently with the final episode of Crisis, which makes more sense, tonally); reading the collection straight through, there's a wrench going into, and coming out of, Beyond that damages the coherency of the overall story in a way that it struggles to recover from for a long time afterwards.

Like the majority of Morrison's superhero work, this isn't a story that will satisfy fans of the literal; it's very much an allegorical, lyrical story (Literally, on that last point, by the time you reach Darkseid's final confrontation with Superman), with narrative clarity sacrificed on occasion for artistic effect - It's very much a story you feel as much as anything, and because of that, re-reading it becomes a strange celebration of the successful moments with an increasing awareness of its faults; you notice the plots that disappear, or moments that defy sense more clearly, but throughout the entire thing, there's something so ambitious and self-aware about its own superhero comic nature that you can't help but be won over at times nonetheless (The amount of times may rely on how much you enjoy the melodramatic dialogue patterned after Jack Kirby's, or the importance of the spectacle over the minutiae, however). Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream, as one of his heroes once advised, and you'll be fine.

(A word or two about the art: Morrison has spoken, since the series ended, about the shift from original artist JG Jones to Doug Mahnke, who went from the Superman Beyond two-parter to the final chapter of Final Crisis, saying that he felt that the change was organic, and that Mahnke's art suits the more dynamic conclusion as much as Jones' more realistic style suited the downbeat, mundane beginning. He's right, and there are scenes at the end that I can't imagine working under Jones' more photo-realism-tinged brushwork. Although the discontinuity between the artists - and additional artists Carlos Pacheco and Marcos Rudy, lending hands in between - is the kind of thing that'll annoy some purists who'd rather imagine what could have been, everyone involved in the art in this collection offers amazing work, bringing their own strengths to the page without overshadowing anyone else, and Alex Sinclair's coloring throughout manages to hold everything together without becoming too obvious on the page.)

It's difficult to wholeheartedly recommend Final Crisis, especially in this particular form; I wish that they'd placed Superman Beyond later in the collection (Between the fifth and sixth issues of Crisis, perhaps), and can't help but feel that pushing the "Director's Cut" extra material of the original script to Final Crisis #1 to the paperback Final Crisis Companion is a cynical marketing move that lessens this collection, as is the weird inclusion of only a few pages of the Final Crisis Sketchbook preview, which reads as if they just needed some filler material to close out the book and grabbed some pages at random. It's certainly not anyone involved's best work, nor even Morrison's best superhero work (His Seven Soldiers cycle is much, much more successful, although the Mister Miracle arc pretty much belongs at the opening of this story). But, at the same time, there's enough of interest, and enough raw ambition and unfulfilled potential, here that I can't help but feel as if it's something approaching a (at times severly) flawed masterpiece. It's a story, and a collection, that will entertain, inspire, frustrate and potentially even move you, and for that alone, I find myself loving it, even if it's not what it could have - and should have - been.

Final Crisis is released today, and available in all good - and some evil - comic book stores.

For one thing, you can support Heroes' Milo Ventimiglia, whose new comic Milo Ventimiglia Presents Berserker gets its very own preview #0 this week. The new series - created by screenwriter Rick Loverd and "produced" by Ventimiglia, which presumably means he wants to play the lead if they make it into a movie - centers around people discovering that they're sleeper Norse Gods with all the powers that brings with it. My fingers are crossed for a Hayden Panatierre-a-like cameo by issue three.

If the television episodes of Battlestar Galactica aren't enough dystopian sci-fi for you, then you can bone up on the history of everyone's favorite messiah figure in Battlestar Galactica: Baltar, which explores the backstory that led one man to be self-centered, comedic and somewhat tragic, in his own way. Yes, it tries to add some pathos, but don't hold that against it.

But really, this is the week of the Bat. DC's pushing out the hardcover collection of uneven-but-much-better-on-second-read Batman RIP (which, to be honest, may be worth it if only for the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh and his colorful costume). But more excitingly, they're also releasing Batman #686, the first half of Neil Gaiman's Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader? send-off to Bruce Wayne. Illustrated by Andy Kubert, it looks beautiful from the previews that we've seen - and a more than worthwhile memorial to a character who isn't even pretending to be dead right now.

Even if you're not in the mood for Gaiman Gotham, you can check out the complete list of this week's new comic releases to find all the other men in tights (and other stories) available tomorrow, and then the Comic Shop Locator Service will help you find just where you should go to indulge yourself... If you're up to it after NYCC, of course.

Talking to Newsarama.com, Morrison confirmed that we'd been right on the money about Bruce Wayne's death scene earlier in January - He had, actually, been sent back in time after all (to pre-historic caveman days, to be specific). But why such a quick reveal of Bruce Wayne's current whenabouts?

[DC editorial asked me to include a particular closing scene] with Batman. I'd made it a little more ambiguous but DC editorial didn't want readers to think Batman might actually be dead for more than a fortnight, so I revised the last page to be somewhat ‘on the nose', as they say in Hollywood.

And if you're wondering if and when Bruce Wayne's future will be addressed, Morrison has a tease ready:

Newsarama: Oh, and and finally, we'd be remiss - Batmanthro? What does the Omega Sanction mean for him? Can he fall back into our world? Is he on our world? Does someone have to go find him? Does he have to live a succession of lives like Shilo? So...many...questions....

GM: I'm returning to Batman in June...

Please please please, let "Batman gets zapped back in time and maybe to a parallel Earth where he has to live with cavemen" be the plot of the Dark Knight sequel.

Grant Morrison: Final Crisis Exit Interview, Part 2 [Newsarama.com]

As those who read this week's comics have apparently already seen, Bruce Wayne is dead. He died at the end of Final Crisis #6, meeting his end while trying to save the planet from evil god Darkseid in DC Comics' much-delayed blockbuster, and if you need proof of his demise, you not only see him being hit by Darkseid's Omega Beams, Superman appears on the last page holding his corpse. Case closed.
Or is it?

Aficionados of Jack Kirby's Fourth World comics - where Crisis' villain Darkseid comes from are somewhat familiar with the Omega Beams, and the effects they have on people. Particularly the effects they had on the title characters from Kirby's Forever People, in the sixth issue of that series, where they too were hit by the Omega Beams, and apparently died... only to be sent back in time, as was revealed in the next issue. While we're not sure what the explanation is for the skeleton in the Batman costume, we're sure of one thing: Somewhere, somewhen, Bruce Wayne is alive... and waiting for whenever DC Comics are ready to bring him back.

Final Crisis [DC Comics]

In terms of SF comics, 2008 feels a bit... lacking, to be honest; there was nothing with the energy of King City or Wonton Soup, and a lot of the best books were final issues, instead of the start of something new (Collections and reprints-wise, it was a great year, however - I'd point you in the direction of Skyscrapers of the Midwest, The Babysitter and Jack Kirby's OMAC, to begin with - but they weren't really created this year...). It might just be a necessary lull; next year has new work from Paul Pope, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Brandon Graham, James Stokoe, et al, after all. But it did make this year seem curiously anemic in retrospect. So here is the pick, perhaps, of a poor bunch:

BEST
All-Star Superman
Quite simply, the best superhero comic of the last few years. Tapping into the awe-filled tone of the 1950s and '60s Superman stories while still seeming contemporary, Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's twelve-part reinvigoration of the Man of Steel finished this year with the perfect send-off: Something positive, optimistic and just a little melancholy.

Casanova
Matt Fraction's sci-fi superspy series filled its second run with time-travel, sex and gigantic reality-altering weapons before, in its final issue, folding in on itself with a reveal that, at first, felt like a cheat but ultimately recast everything that had gone before and made you need to re-read it like you need to breath. If only everything was this fearless.

(Fraction almost ended up on this list twice; his Invincible Iron Man series for Marvel was, to my mind, the ideal follow-up to the movie, finally figuring out a way to make the character interesting without making him an asshole.)

Fight Or Run: Shadow Of The Chopper
You can argue amongst yourself whether this silent series of strips is really science fiction or not, but Kevin Huizenga's videogame-inspired shorts that bring two surreal characters face-to-face to see their response works both as an exercise in comic formalism and experimentation, and as a funny, surprising reading experience. Me, I'd probably run.

Final Crisis
Yes, there have been a lot of problems with DC's big 2008 "event" - the seeming inability to hit deadlines and switching of artists midway through the story, to start with - but despite it all, Grant Morrison and company's slow-motion apocalypse has been creepy and hypnotic, all the moreso for the way in which it refuses to play by the rules.

Love & Rockets: New Stories
Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis analogs slaughter aliens. Surely I don't need to say anything else.

Patsy Walker: Hellcat
I don't know if it's the lightness of Kathryn Immonen's writing, the pop of David LaFuente's artwork, or just the sass of the book's star, but there's something wonderful and unexpected in this lowkey miniseries from Marvel about a fashion model-turned-superhero fighting magical demons in Alaska. In the middle of the publisher's highly successful year, this hidden gem is easily the best thing they put out.

Project Superpowers
Again with the "unexpected" thing, I didn't expect much from Alex Ross and Jim Kruger's 1940s superhero revival... and certainly not the most strange and unusual superhero series of the year. The US government creating zombie soldiers in the Middle East? Lying ghosts with hidden agendas? An evil corporation of robots manipulating everyone that just so happens to have the same name as the parent company of the publisher? It's all here, my friends. Just don't ask me what it all means.

Teen Titans: Year One
It took animation writer Amy Wolfram and artist Karl Kerschl to finally fulfill the potential of DC's team of sidekicks, by offering a story that stayed on the right side of cartoony, but kept an undercurrent of angst and insecurity to provide characters who actually acted like teenagers, for a change. Add some of the best art to appear in any comic book this year and you have a very underrated winner.

WORST
Astonishing X-Men: Ghost Boxes
A strange one, this. It's not really the quality of the comic strip itself that lands it in "Worst" position - although the comic strip itself was nothing to write home about, pretty much generic "alternate world"isms from Warren Ellis and friends - but the format. Charging $4.99 for 16 pages of comic book would be a bit much for a small indie company with a lot of overhead and little say in the matter... but for Marvel to do it, especially without letting fans or retailers know that that's what they were doing...? Kind of an unnecessarily low blow.

Batman RIP
It started so well, but... well, finished so badly. There's very little way to look back at RIP without getting frustrated at the lack of resolution and all the unfulfilled potential left untouched. It's called Batman RIP people - Couldn't you have done something with that that didn't have a villain who may or may not have been the Devil and the most unconvincing, inconclusive death scene ever? Or, for that matter, had a story that actually ended in its final chapter?

Countdown To Final Crisis
DC's Final Crisis may be flawed but great, but the 52-part prelude series kind of missed out the "but great" part of that idea. As well as missing out the "coherent plots, interesting dialogue and story you feel involved in" bits. And, to make matters worse, it outright contradicted multiple points of the series it was created to lead into. Worst of all, perhaps, was the fact that it took the goodwill that DC had gained from their first weekly series 52 and pissed it away in record fashion. An own goal of almost cosmic proportions.

DC Universe: Last Will & Testament
What do superheroes do when they expect to die the next day? Exactly what you'd expect them to, sadly, according to this uninspired, ponderous comic. While not as much of a disaster as Countdown, Last Will & Testament may have actually been a worse comic by dint of just being... well, not unlike well-illustrated fan-fiction.

Jenna Jameson: Shadow Hunter
From its very conception, you knew that a comic that recreated pornstar Jameson as a comic book demon hunter was a bad idea, but only the comic itself could convince you just how much of a bad idea it actually was. Confusingly written, with overwrought narration and a plot that didn't really go anywhere, this was a celebrity tie-in that made Ed Burns' Dock Walloper look like a good idea.

One More Day
This is, of course, a bit of a cheat; One More Day started in 2007, and the final issue came out in the dying days of that year (December 27th, I believe)... But nonetheless, the full effect of it was what started off this year in comics, and pretty much sabotaged the start of Marvel's (remarkably not-as-bad-as-you-think) Spider-Man relaunch - all because Peter Parker made a deal with the devil just to get a divorce (Note: This may be a somewhat biased take on what actually happened in the story itself). Who would have thought that a boneheaded, out of character move that turned your everyman character into a Satan-handshakin' single man would have been one of the big comic news stories of the year? Oh, that's right - everyone.

Secret Invasion
Yes, it was hugely successful, and yes, it was on-time (unlike Final Crisis). But if there was a point to Secret Invasion beyond "Let's try and sell lots of comics," I must have missed it. With a story that lacked plot - or, for about half the series, anything actually happening - based around a premise that was abandoned almost immediately (What if aliens had invaded without us knowi- Oh, wait, they've started blowing things up and coming to Earth as giant green monsters), this was slick, showy... and entirely hollow.

Ultimates 3
I was no fan of Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch's Ultimates, but Jeph Loeb's follow-up was a mind-blowing miscalculation that offered fans of the series almost no continuity with its previous incarnation, garish art outshone only by insanely overblown dialogue and, in a reveal that still boggles the mind, a Black Panther who turns out to be the most white of all superheroes. Pretty much an entire series of WTF that led into Loeb's Ultimatum

Talking to Newsarama.com about the muted response to watching Bruce Wayne confront a man who claimed to be his father or an actor or the devil himself before disappearing in an exploding helicopter, DiDio explained why the final part of a story doesn't have to have an ending:

The R.I.P. story was always meant to play through to the end of [current DC Comics mini-series] Final Crisis - always. The thing is, we had to come up with a very complete story in “Batman R.I.P.” as it existed in its title. The reality is that the “Batman R.I.P.” story does not conclude until Final Crisis #6. There are also issues #682 and #683 of Batman that feed directly into Final Crisis #6, and we’ll have a big finale to the Batman storyline. That’s how it plays out.

But as I said, because we live in the world of collected editions, we needed a conclusion in the Batman series, so that we could collect it properly within Batman, without having to bring in segments of Final Crisis to complete the story... [O]ne of the things we did, going in to Final Crisis is that we wanted to feel that if people just wanted to read Final Crisis, they were fine just reading that one storyline, and wouldn’t feel that they were being “forced” to purchase other storylines and material. That should be the same case with “Batman R.I.P.” We wanted to give what felt like two distinct conclusions, even though they are very much intertwined.

So, you're not being "forced" to read Final Crisis - it's just that it's necessary to get the real conclusion to a story that was advertised as finishing months earlier in a different series altogether. If you do feel compelled to pick up Final Crisis #6 to, you know, find out how that other story you've been following all along in Batman's comic ends, it's not DC Comics that's forcing you... it's your own natural curiosity.

(This would be the point where I ask whether it's semantics to say that it's RIP continuing into Final Crisis as opposed to vice versa when referencing this interview from earlier this year, where DiDio told Newsarama.com:

As fans will notice, there are no Final Crisis crossovers taking place in any of the ongoing series.

You have to wonder whether those covering the 'final' chapter of Batman RIP were told that the story was actually continuing for a few more months, and that Bruce Wayne wasn't stepping off-stage just yet, don't you?)

Dan DiDio: 20 Answers, 1 Question - Batman and More [Newsarama.com]

One thing that you have to hand to writer Grant Morrison is that he doesn't write a boring story. The close of the long-running RIP is filled with last-minute escapes, revelations, fights and even flashbacks to Batman escaping death in earlier, more simple times. The problem is that it not only doesn't really hang together in and of itself, it's also completely unsatisfying as a conclusion to all of the issues raised during the story's run so far.

For example, while we've essentially been shown, over and over again, that Bruce Wayne is clearly insane - this is a man who doesn't just dress up to fight crime at night, but someone who also created a back-up personality who happened to believe that he was from another planet, just in case someone tried to drive his primary personality insane, remember - the final chapter of the story does an about-face and starts lauding Batman as someone who's so sane that they knew everything that was about to happen and had planned for all eventualities ("But that's the thing about Batman. Batman thinks of everything" are the first words in the issue); a last page flashback where Bruce Wayne's father tells Bruce as a child that the authorities would lock up a vigilante like Zorro just adds to the frustration that Morrison, or DC Comics editorial, or someone clearly didn't want to just come out and say that Wayne is insane.
And about Bruce Wayne's father - Is he the mysterious head of the Black Glove? The revelation of the bad guy's identity is frustratingly vague:

Simon Hurt: I'm your father, Bruce. Doctor Thomas Wayne. You were supposed to die that night, too, along with your mother... But Chill lost his nerve. A pathologist friend faked my death certificate. Wayne became Hurt.

Batman: You're not Thomas Wayne.

Hurt: And still, the cloak fits. And if not Dad, have you dared to consider the only alternative?

Batman: Mangrove Pierce, star of [movie mentioned earlier in the series] "The Black Glove". My father's double, and mine. You had an affair with [earlier villain] John Mayhew's wife and he had you framed for her murder...

Hurt: No, I skinned Mangrove Pierce alive and wore him to Mayhew's party. I am the hole in things, Bruce, the enemy, the piece that can never fit, there since the beginning.

So... Is it Thomas Wayne, who skinned Mangrove Pierce? Is it Pierce, and the skinning is metaphorical? Is it someone else who never gets named, wearing Pierce's skin? We get no further attempt at an answer; Hurt and Batman are both in a crashing helicopter three pages later, and disappear.

They'll both be back, of course; if nothing else, Morrison has a two-part epilogue to write, and a Batman shows up in his Final Crisis series, which apparently takes place after this story - but more than the lack of Batman "dying" in any sense of the word (Because, really, like anyone really expected that seriously), it's the lack of resolution to anything and everything that Batman RIP was about that leaves the story as such a disappointment, and the reader with such a bitter taste in their mouth.

With the final chapter of the storyline pushed out again (It's now due next Wednesday, although that again may be subject to change), USA Today is reporting that the story doesn't end with the death of Batman at all - Just a retirement:

Batman #681, due Nov. 26, wraps up writer Grant Morrison's Batman R.I.P. story line, in which the crimefighter is so shaken by a secret from his past that a new Batman must be found.

What's interesting is that DC's solicitation for the last issue of Batsidekick Nightwing's series is much less vague about Batman's fate:

As Robin, Dick Grayson fought alongside Batman as part of the dynamic duo, the greatest crime-fighting team in history. As Nightwing, he teamed up with his peers to combat injustice in the Titans and the Outsiders. Now, Dick Grayson faces the most important battle of his life. Batman is dead. The Mantle of the Bat must be passed, but it will require all of Dick's training and skills to carry out the last wishes of Bruce Wayne and protect Gotham City.

Yes, there's some wiggle room in saying that "Batman is dead" - after all, if Bruce retired, then Batman is "dead" in a sense - but adding in "the last wishes of Bruce Wayne" certainly adds to the suggestion that Batman's disappearance is a lot more permanent than just being "shaken." So is this an example of overenthusiastic ad copy, or is there more going on than USA Today knows about? And, either way, what is the secret that will leave the caped crusader so upset?

It may be a long week filled with disinformation before we get to find out. Batman #681, the final chapter of Batman RIP, hits stores a week tomorrow.

Neil Gaiman to design a demise for Batman [USA Today], Nightwing #153 [DC Comics]

Marvel Comics, in its questionable yet infinite wisdom, is obviously pushing an Obama line with the release of the first issue of Adam: Legend Of The Blue Marvel - a series about the one black man that can save the world. They've even got a series about a potential McCain victory: Ultimatum (written by now-former Heroes producer Jeph Loeb) about disasters raining down on the Ultimate version of the Marvel Universe. No such political editorializing in their other big books of the week, which include the first in a series of paperbacks collecting Frank Miller and Klaus Janson's run on Daredevil , the oneshot Iron Man: The End, and the first issue of a series teaming up X-Men/Spider-Man.

Not to be outdone, DC are pulling out their big guns for this week as well - and I'm not talking about Superman/Supergirl: Maelstrom (which is, I promise, about an alien who tries to kill Superman to impress a prospective boyfriend. Admit it; that's kind of awesome), Adventure Comics Special Featuring The Guardian or even the completely enjoyable Superman Vs. Brainiac collection of stories from the last seventy-odd years. No, it's the new/old Sandman: The Dream Hunters (which sees P. Craig Russell adapting Neil Gaiman's prose story from ten years ago into comic strip form) and the paperback collection of the much-much-better-than-it-has-any-right-to-be Teen Titans Year One that both need a place on your shelf. The latter, in particular, is astonishingly beautiful and should be owned for the art alone:



But that's not all! Dark Horse unleashes Gigantic's first issue as well as a sumptuous hardcover collection for Dean Motter's Art Deco-inspired Mister X (Again, worth it just for the art; illustrators include Motter, Jaime Hernandez and Dave McKean, amongst many others), and Image are putting out the first volume of Liquid City, an anthology of stories from South-East Asian comic creators (You can find out more about the latter here; preview pages look promising).

(Of course, it's not all good news; the last chapter of Batman RIP? Delayed from tomorrow until November 19th at the earliest, apparently.)

So, when you get too bored waiting for a new leader of the free world to be announced, why not check out the complete list of this week's new comic releases (and then the Comic Shop Locator Service, to find your closest safe haven)? Go in, buy whatever takes your fancy, safe in the knowledge that the Florida recounts will still be going on by the time you leave.

For those who haven't been following the storyline, this is what you've missed: Bruce Wayne's girlfriend, the wonderfully-named Angelina Jolie stand-in Jezebel Jet, works out that he is, in fact Batman. At the same time as telling him that such behavior isn't healthy, she also reveals that she has been contacted by a group calling itself "The Black Glove" - a group that has also been making various moves against Batman over the past few months. We learn that the Black Glove is headed by a man called Simon Hurt, and that their goal is the complete and utter destruction of Batman... which they apparently succeed in, by kidnapping Bruce Wayne and, in a plot development that skirts the "awesome/insane" border multiple times, drive him insane by getting him addicted to "weapons-grade heroin."

Only problem is that Batman was already insane, and had planned for something like this to happen. Batman's sanity is not in doubt in this storyline; we are told, multiple times, that Batman is clearly insane and unhealthy, and that's brought home when the broken Batman is replaced by an all-new personality that Batman himself had created as a hypnotic failsafe in case of emergency: The Batman of Zur-En-Arrh. This personality, which is the personification of the unstoppable Batman of myth, returns to confront not only the Black Glove, but also the Joker (released from Arkham Asylum by the Glove).

As the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh realizes that he can't win, and becomes plain old Bruce Wayne again - before blacking out - we're left with a revelation and a possible clue as to who's behind it all: Jezebel Jet, it's revealed, is apparently part of the Black Glove.

Except... that's a little too easy, according to a rumor that's going around the internets. That rumor says that, although Jet is part of the bad guys, she's not the bad guy - because that's Robin, the Boy Wonder.

No, really.

As ridiculous as it sounds, there are a couple of clues that point to this being more than just wild speculation. The first is from the end of the previous chapter, where the reader's attention is drawn (by both the Joker and Batman himself) to the colors red and black; this may be pointed towards Jezebel Jet (a black woman with dyed red hair), but it could also be directed towards Robin, whose costume is red and black, and whom, we were told earlier in the chapter, has not been captured like all of Batman's other sidekicks ("Well, little red Robin's proving to be a more... slippery customer than we expected"). We know from upcoming solicitations for Robin's own comic that 2009 will see "an all-new Robin," and the cover of last month's issue of the Robin comic did say that the end was near... But what kind of end is that, exactly...?

(To add entirely specious fuel to the fire; it's never been revealed what made writer Chuck Dixon leave DC Comics so suddenly this past June, just prior to the launch of Batman RIP, but as the writer most credited with the development of this current Robin, the possibility of his leaving in protest over discovering that the character was going to be revealed as the character trying to take down Batman once and for all is an interesting one.)

While Robin's sudden turn to the dark side would be a surprising one in more ways that one, it's definitely a revelation that fits writer Grant Morrison's promise that the villain's identity will be "possibly the most shocking Batman revelation in 70 years." But where does this leave Batman himself? Not dead dead, apparently; Morrison has also said that the storyline will end "Bruce Wayne as Batman" but that "it’s 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."
Uberfan Omar Karindu has a compelling argument as to what that fate may be:

Batman Will Die At the End of "Batman R.I.P."

This doesn't have to mean that Bruce Wayne dies in the flesh, or even that he no longer wears the costume and fights the fight. It means that Batman as a persona, as the 'real" person where Bruce et al. are merely masks and tools, has to die.

The Black Glove has won by exploiting the split that let Batman take on all the unreason and hurt of Bruce Wayne, child victim of crime and traumatized orphan, making the split expand and multiply. So how does Batman win? By fixing the split, by unifying the personality again, the whole personality. By letting Bruce Wayne live, and hurt, and be a little irrational when it's human to be so, and ultimately, by killing the need for Batman.

Batman will die; Bruce Wayne will live. Bruce Wayne will no longer be "a daytime mask for the Batman," but rather "Batman" will either cease to be or will become simply a mask Bruce Wayne finds useful in extreme circumstances.

Let's face it, you don't have to wear the symbol of your father-as-heroic-ideal and your childhood fears wrapped up into one Bat-emblem to fight crime, help crime victims, answer to and avenge your parents' memory. In fact, what Batman has done is to mix the impossibly perfect memory of Thomas Wayne with the impossibly infinite well of fear and suffering of that scary cave of bats and that terrible night in Crime Alley, tp the point that the heroic ideal Thomas Wayne can also be the murderous psychopath Simon Hurt. Thinking in absolutes about regular people gives you God and the Devil all in one... What if Bruce Wayne puts himself back together to the point that he doesn't need Batman anymore? Would that be the death of Batman?

(The entirity of Karindu's post is well worth reading - It dives into Batman's insanity as hyperrationality and the ways in which all of Batman's companions from Wayne himself to Alfred on down are enablers, and therefore accomplices of the Black Glove.)

Is healing Bruce Wayne's insanity a fate worse than death? Potentially, for Batman (and for fans who like their Batman to be driven, haunted and a little on the nuts side himself); it would definitely fit in with what we've seen in RIP up until this point, which has often commented on the broken psyche of Bruce Wayne... as well as fulfilling (famous fan of the more sane, groovy 1960s Batman than the Dark Knight version of the character) Morrison's aim of providing something more shocking than death - What if Bruce Wayne just... gets better?

We'll find out whether either of these speculations are correct on Wednesday, when Batman #681 - part six of Batman RIP hits stores.

The image, which is apparently the cover to Batman #685, is drawn by Andy Kubert and colored by Chris Sotomayor, who revealed the image while talking about recent work. The differences in Batman's appearance are exceptionally minor - The bat on his chest is different (and more closely resembles the movie bat emblem), his outfit is gray instead of blue, and he's slimmer than in Kubert's earlier takes on the character - and the difference in Robin even moreso (Essentially, his face is rounder and his hair seems longer), but that's seemingly enough for the assembled internet fanbase, who have decided that these two characters aren't actually Bruce Wayne and Tim Drake. Instead, post Batman RIP, the buzz is that we're looking at a Dick Grayson (Original Robin turned Nightwing) and Damien Wayne (Bruce's illegitimate son from Batman And Son, Grant Morrison's first story in his current Batman run). Is this really the first time we've seen these versions of the characters, though? After all, the very first page of Batman RIP was a flash-forward six months from the rest of the story...

Batman RIP concludes in November with, the solicitation text promises, "an ending you'll never see coming." Unless, that is, a colorist has accidentally let you see it earlier than intended.

Marvel's third issue of Halo: Uprising (delayed, if rumors are to believed, because Bungie changed the direction of the next Halo game mid-production) isn't the only treat that the House of Ideas has in store for you this week - They're also expanding their Secret Invasion with three new mini-series about the Skrull attacks starring the Inhumans (written by Heroes writer Joe Pokaski), Thor (written by Casanova and The Invincible Iron Man's Matt Fraction) and the X-Men. And if even that just leaves you hungry for more Mighty Marvel Action, then there's also X-Men Origins: Jean Gray, a one-shot starring everyone's favorite telekinetic redhead with some stunning art by Mike Mayhew.

DC Comics, in comparison, take it relatively lightly; in addition to the fourth part of Batman RIP, there's the launch of Final Crisis: Revelations (which sees the new Question take on her former partner-turned-official-personification-of-the-wrath-of-God, Cris Allen) as well as the long-awaited (by me) collection of 1988's most awesome crossover, Millennium. Alternatively, you could take that $100 you have laying around and spend it on the oversized hardcover Absolute League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier.

To get back to the tie-in books of the week, though: Moonstone has the first issue (of two) for Buckaroo Banzai: The Prequel, while IDW pushes both boundaries and your wallet with the following: Transformers Best Of The UK: Time Wars, Transformers Animated: Arrival, Igor: The Movie Adaptation (in both comic form and collected edition), as well as the first issue of Scott Lobdell's Galaxy Quest: Global Warning. Most importantly of all, however, is Viper Comics' sole release of the week, The Middleman: The Collected Series Indispensability, which collects all of the original comic series into one handy-dandy, easy-to-carry-and-just-as-easy-to-read 336 page book for your entertainment enjoyment. If you like the TV show, you owe it to yourself (and your local comic store) to pick this up.

That local comic store can be found here, in case you're wondering. And if you're also wondering what else is coming out this week? You can find your answer here. You can thank me later.

Robinson, often cited as the uncredited creator of the Joker, was the guest of honor at a panel that seemed as much about the Joker than the Batman. Part of this comes from the fact that all the current creators admitted that the Joker was their favorite Batman villain, although under duress (Morrison complaining that he didn't want to say it, because it was so obvious; Dini said that he'd "write a Joker comic even if it had nothing to do with the Batman").

A lot of the conversation centered around just why the Joker is so great. Basically, it's because he isn't funny, apparently:

Azzarello: When you try to tell a Joker story, it's not going to have a happy ending. I don't think he's funny, I think he's one of those guys who thinks he's funny. He's bigger than you, and if you don't laugh at his jokes, he'll put a bottle in your neck.
Dini: I think of the Joker as the ultimate bully. Nothing he says is funny, apart from to him.
Morrison: The Joker's great to write, because he changes all the time. He's not even funny at all, he's just bad news. He's the guy who comes in when you're sitting in the subway and sits next to you and he starts reading your book. You're just like, please please please go away, please, and he just keeps coming.
Azzarello: He was easy to write, for me. He doesn't think. He's literally in the now, like a dog.
Robinson: I enjoy seeing the different interpretations of the character. Part of my initial intent was to create a character with all these contradictions against his nature.
Morrison: He has to be the opposite of Batman: Where Batman is healthy, he has to be diseased. When he's the opposite of Batman, you can't go wrong.
Robinson: We didn't explain the whole being, why he's white. I thought it would be cool not to explain it, make it part of the whole mystery of the character. We discussed it and decided not to explain it.
Azzarello: As soon as you give him a definitive origin, you take away a lot of the power of the character.
Morrison: And it shouldn't make sense, he shouldn't make sense. He's chaos.

Unsurprisingly, The Dark Knight came in for a lot of praise, with Morrison calling it "the best Batman movie ever thought of." Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker was also singled out for praise, with Robinson saying that it captured the spirit of this generation's Joker.

When it comes to current Batman storyline "Batman RIP," everyone involved is keeping their mouths firmly shut aside from saying that it will change the character considerably. Asked about the origins of the current deconstructive storyline, Morrison explained that he wanted to make his run on the title about the history of the character, including all of the oft-ignored 1950s science fiction stories:

For me, all the Batman stories really happened. Like, when he was 24, he and Robin were running around, tripping on Joker gas.

With fans asking what comes next, Detective Comics artist Dustin Nguyen suggested "Batman SOS," while Morrison teased the room by saying, "New Batman, new Robin? Think about it."

Whatever comes next will be handled by the same creative teams; both Morrison and Paul Dini said that they were on their titles indefinitely, with Morrison saying that he'd write Batman until he died, given the choice. Not that they're sharing who that Batman will be; asked about who their ideal replacement for Bruce Wayne would be, Morrison shouted, "I'm writing it! I can't tell you that!"

After explaining what "RIP" doesn't stand for - It's not "Really Is Pennyworth," as some stealth reveal that the villain will turn out to be helpful butler Alfred Pennyworth; Morrison eventually admitted that RIP stands for whatever you want it to stand for (He suggested "Rubber Is Perfect" as his preferred meaning) - the panel ended with each writer explaining how much politics plays into their interpretation of the character. Brian Azzarello (writer of the upcoming The Joker graphic novel) said that politics played in "a lot," while Dini said that he didn't really think of his writing in political terms. Morrison, of course, closed the panel by summing up his take of why the world needs a Batman:

It's more to do with the way things feel, rather than (specific) events. That's why Batman is a good hero for this culture, which is quite dark and war-based. It's not specific events, it's more a feeling of the way things are... That's why Batman is so cool. He doesn't use guns and he still kicks your ass. That's the whole point. That's his psychology. If Batman kills everyone, he's just another soldier. We don't need another soldier, we have millions of soldiers. We need Batman.

After an introduction to the twelve guest-strong panel made the announcement confirming the longtime rumor of a Flash: Rebirth series (by the Green Lantern: Rebirth creative team of Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver), Johns said that his favorite Flash was "all of them," and added that "If you guys like what we did with Green Lantern, hopefully you'll check out what we do with Flash... Just trust us. We're gonna try and take Flash and turn it into another epic like Green Lantern. It's all about who all of these Flashes are."

Starting an all-new rumor, Ambush Bug creator Keith Giffen asked the audience, " If you were to hear that Paul Levitz and I were returning to the Legion, what would you think? Just asking." Apparently, assembled fandom would like that idea, if the cheers and applause in the room was anything to go by. Does this mean that the favorite 1980s creative team is going to return to the title post-reality-warping Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds, or are fanstrings being plucked just to toy with the faithful?

Talking of strings being plucked, DC Executive Editor Dan Didio responded to a question about whether October's DCU: Decisions series, where the DC superheroes will endorse political parties, is expected to cause controversy and upset, by saying that "it's not the book you think it is. It's a book to inspire thought, change and ideas." Good to know that DC has mastered the art of political non-speak in advance of its release, at least.

Otherwise, everyone wanted to know what's happening with Batman: Suggesting that the "RIP" in Batman RIP may stand for "Replacement Is Possible," Didio caused very vocal upset from the room when he said "Okay, hypothetically speaking, what if Bruce Wayne was gone?" Another disappearance causing worry is Catwoman's, following the recent cancellation of her own series, but Didio told fans not to worry, as she'll become a regular cast member in Paul Dini's Detective Comics and wasn't really going anywhere:"She's very important to RIP and what happens post RIP," he added. Also due to make an appearance soon is Batwoman, as Greg Rucka - accompanied by a real-life Batwoman on stage - came the closest anyone has to officially confirming the existence of the Batwoman series he and JH Williams are working on, telling a fan "Magic iPod says, ask again in three or four weeks."

If you're waiting on news of Batman's health at home, however, you have far less time to wait; tomorrow's 2:15 Batman panel about the comics future for Gotham's protector is subtitled "No Rest For The Dark Knight." Sorry, Bruce.

It really is an embarrassment of riches in this week's new releases. Take, for example, the vampire lover. Usually, they're stuck with some randomly generic goth-lite indie book to feed their fetishes, but this week, they can choose from the Brian K. Vaughan-written Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 8: No Future For You (It's the Faith-centric arc, and very good it is, too, first issue of a brand new sequel to The Lost Boys (no, really), The Lost Boys: Reign of Frogs, or Jessica Abel (and friends)'s slice-of-life take on the genre in the graphic novel Life Sucks. How often does that happen?

It's also time to catch up on a lot of books we've featured here in the past:

• Matt Fraction's Casanova finishes its current run with #14,
• Chris Claremont's "Children of the X-Men" series GeNext launches,
• you can fulfill your Tony Stark-isms with The All-New Iron Manual,
• Bruce Wayne meets his end (possibly) in Batman #676 (the first chapter of Grant Morrison's Batman R.I.P., and you can also pick up a hardcover slab of Bat-foreshadowing with Batman: The Resurrection of Ras Al Ghul, collecting an earlier Morrison storyline),
• Geoff Johns' Booster Gold has its first issues collected in the new 52 Pick-Up hardcover,
• and you can see whether Marvel Comics are afraid of nipples or not in the first issue of Euro-import Sky Doll.

For example, you could get your Ed Norton on in advance of next month's movie with the special edition Giant Size Incredible Hulk, which brings you up to speed on the recent history of the jade giant before everyone starts talking, once again, about how they just can't make a good movie out of his comic. If that doesn't satisfy your appetite for greens, then there are also collections of two recent mini-series, World War Hulk: Gamma Corps and World War Hulk: X-Men to show you big green men being scary. Or maybe the first issue of space-bound superheroes Guardians of The Galaxy would be your thing? Remember, they have a talking raccoon. With guns.

Best value for money this week, though, is probably Vertigo: First Cut, a $4.99 collection of the first issues of a number of series published by DC Comics' "mature" imprint, including Western Loveless, New York-dystopic love letter DMZ and M*A*S*H for the 21st Century, Army@Love. If that's not enough for you, then there's also a sneak preview of Air, an upcoming new series from the imprint, included. What more could you want for (slightly, just) less than $5, as long as you don't think about tax?

Just like every other week, you can find the full shipping list to stores here, and then find out where to find the damn stores to shop in here. Just remember that $5 can't barely buy you a Happy Meal these days, is all I'm saying.

The board - a callback to a subplot from DC's successful 52 series - is made up of multiple phrases or, weirdly enough, math problems that tie into already-announced, rumored or completely unknown stories for Superman, Batman and their (super) friends. Some of them are obvious:

Submit and Resist are both titles tied in with the upcoming Final Crisis storyline, as already announced by DC. Same with Evil Won (Final Crisis taking place after evil has apparently beaten good in that traditional never-ending battle), First Boy/Last Boy (Crisis will, according to writer Grant Morrison, start with Anthro, the first boy on Earth, and end with Kamandi, the last boy on Earth), Girlfight (Morrison has promised a fight between Supergirl, the teen girl personification of all things good, and Mary Marvel, newly-appointed pin-up girl for evil) and Loneliness + Alienation + Fear + Despair + Self Worth (etc.), which is one possible version of "the Anti-Life Equation," DC's mythical way to remove free will in people (This version appeared in Morrison's 2006 Mister Miracle series, which has been named multiple times as the key book to read before Final Crisis).

Equally clear are Best Woman For Job - A Man, which ties into this summer's Wonder Woman storyline where it's decided that Wonder Woman has failed in her mission to bring peace to the world and needs to be replaced with a man called The Olympian; 1,000/3 = 1, a reference to Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds, which brings three different worlds of 1000 years in the future together; You Can Go Home Again, tying into this summer's Justice Society of America Annual, which takes Power Girl back to a version of her home planet, Earth 2; I Am Batman?/I Am Bruce Wayne?, about Wayne's identity crisis in Batman: R.I.P.; The Dead Shall Rise, the already-announced tagline of next year's The Blackest Night storyline; and Sightings All Around Us, which is a shout-out to DC's new "Sightings" branding for declared-important comics.

Everything else, though, is a little more shaky - 52 - 1 = 0 could be about DC's 52 alternate Earths, or simply pointing to last week's DC Universe Zero. Kings Reborn may be a reference to the potential return of the original Aquaman, who was, after all, King of Atlantis, and Rockin' Robins just might be about which Robin gets to become the new Batman. But the other ones...? Here are our entirely baseless guesses:

100% Alien - Something to do with the rumored death of 1950s alien-amongst-us, the Martian Manhunter.
Who is Wonder Dog? - Well, it used to be Rex, Nazi-fightin' pup, but for some reason, I'm seeing a Wonder Woman tie-in here...
There is No-One... Yet - Probably a Final Crisis mention of some sort, as is He Is The Force (The "astro-force" being a Jack Kirby invention as is Crisis badguy Darkseid) and He Wakes The World Ends.
The Son Rises - I'll be very surprised if this isn't a reference to Damien, Batman's bastard son, in the wake of Batman R.I.P.. Same with Murder/Suicide, Father/Son, although that one could also apply to Final Crisis villain Darkseid and his good guy son Orion.
The Traitor Among Us - Who better to have traitors (and, for that matter, an "us") than a gang of villains? It's either something to do with Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge or Gail Simone's new Secret Six series.
No 2 For You is more than likely another Power Girl/Earth-2/Justice Society of America Annual reference, as PG has to end up back on regular Earth in time to launch her own series this summer, but 1 (JSA) 2 probably has more to do with the team's rumored break-up this summer.
Mercy Ruling and Who Questions the Question are both very likely to have something to do with Greg Rucka's Final Crisis: Revelations series, where God's spirit of retribution, the Spectre, meets lesbian private eye the Question.
TT Have No Reception reminds us all that there isn't a Teen Titans cartoon any more. Or, perhaps, that the Titans comic will be spinning off something called Terror Titans this Summer, about some unpopular teenage badguys... whereas Titans, the other TT-spinoff book is dealing with the eeeevil reborn Trigon, who just may be 4 Times As Red in his new incarnation.
No Glory No Gold seems to be a shout-out to the Booster Gold series in some way, while Paper Not Plastic feels suspiciously like a reference to a revived Plastic Man for some reason... Better than Rocket Vs. Satellite, which suggests that the JLA's spacebound headquarters is soon not going to be alone up there.

The last two, however, are just weird: Superman: Red or Blue? is, I hope, hints that we'll finally investigate Superman's political preference (Let's face it; he's an Obama man. You know it, I know it, it's pretty obvious) instead of rehash the old Superman-gets-split-in-two storyline we've seen at least twice before, and I am convinced that Post No Bills is there purely to fuck with us.

But now that we've put ourselves out there, why don't you tell us what you think the board is all about? We shouldn't be the only ones embarrassed about how off-base our suggestions are this time next year, after all.

Dan DiDio on DC Universe #0 [Newsarama]

Despite spinning out of his Seven Soldiers series of books, Morrison wants readers to know that you don't need to know anything about what's come before when you pick up the first issue:

I like to write things so you don't have to read anything extra... Obviously, it sells more books for me, so yes, everyone should go out and buy 'Seven Soldiers.' Particularly 'Mister Miracle,' which was the most hated of the 'Seven Soldiers' books and sold least. Stuff like that has little clues in it, but honestly, you don't have to read anything else. 'Final Crisis' is like picking up a book. It's like you're picking up any science fiction book or a fantasy book and starting from page 1. Everything you need to know about the characters will be in the book.

What would it really be like if bad gods turned up on Earth? Because as this story opens, the war between Good and Evil has been won by the wrong side and Evil is now in control of the DC Universe. And then we see what happens next as a result of that...The Gods are here to destroy everything that we hold dear, everything that has meaning to us, everything that has value for us. They want to utterly crush the human species and reduce us all to slavery and that's as big a threat as it gets. We wanted to do a primal superhero myth that would pit absolute evil against pure good in a way you don't see much of in comics these days so it's the story of the DC universe facing its apocalypse and only Darkseid could cut it as the main villain.

If you've got a favorite character, I am sure he's in it. Supergirl and Mary Marvel are in it. They have a big climatic battle to decide how femininity should be portrayed in superhero comics!

All-Star Grant Morrison 1: Final Crisis [Comic Book Resources]

Talking about the death/rebirth rumor, Morrison explained where that got started:

When we first spoke about Final Crisis, coming out of the Seven Soldiers series, I had the New Gods cast down onto Earth, and because they'd lost their former shapes, they were cast as spirits or avatars possessing human bodies, like Voodoo gods [as shown in Seven Soldiers: Mr. Miracle].

For a brief moment back in 2006, I discussed the idea that the gods could then take over the bodies of familiar DC characters - so that an appropriate hero or villain could become the new Orion or Darkseid, say, and someone equally appropriate would become the new Lightray, kind of thing.

That didn't happen because no one wanted to mess with either Jack Kirby's or Gerry Conway's intellectual property by saying Lightray was now inhabiting Firestorm or something like that. Quite rightly, no-one was willing to change existing DC characters into Kirby characters, because that would immediately confuse the ownership of the character and somebody would get cheated out of equity if that character was used in a movie or TV show or whatever. It's very much a copyright issue.

Obviously, someone heard some faint years-old echo of this discarded idea and pawned it into the notion that Bruce Wayne was going to become a New God. That was never going to happen. That's just insane. (laughs)

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... longer. And the very first story title I noted down was "Batman RIP". 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.

My run on Batman is a 25-chapter novel that reaches its climax in "RIP" and maneuvers Batman into the greatest danger he's ever known, at the mercy of the world's deadliest criminal lunatics.

And yeah, I've seen all kinds of speculation about "RIP," but it's not necessarily what people think it's going to be, although there are very big changes coming to Batman. When we say that this is the story that changes the legend of the Dark Knight forever, we're quite serious about that.