Batman Incorporated, Volume 1: No More Teachers Review (Ed Brisson, John Timms)

It’s been a decade since Grant Morrison’s Batman Incorporated and it’s only now that DC has decided to give the series another chance. I’m glad they didn’t let it languish indefinitely - it’s not so terrible a concept as to be written off entirely - but I also think the series needs more of a surer foundation than simply setting it up as another generic superhero team book, which is what we get with Ed Brisson and John Timms’ version of Batman Incorporated in their first volume, No More Teachers.

The old team is back - El Gaucho, Knight, Jiro, Chief Man-of-Bats, Wingman, and Nightrunner - with some new additions, both of them from James Tynion IV’s awful Batman run: Ghost-Maker, who’s now leading the team, mostly because he has the money to do so and Batman is currently cash-poor, and Clownhunter, a kid with the worst outfit evarrrr and whose entire character feels like a joke.

There are still more characters than this too, so Ghost-Maker splits them up into local and international teams, with the focus mainly on the international team. Even doing this highlights one of the biggest problems with this book: there are too many dang characters! If this was whittled down to a core group, say Ghost-Maker, Knight, El Gaucho, Jiro, and Raven Red, it might be easier to read rather than constantly jumping around from one character in one location to another, and we’d get to know them better too. As it is, it comes off as overstuffed and difficult to follow.

Then there’s the problem of the stories: they’re boring! One story takes them to a remote region of the world where Lex Luthor’s been doing mad scientist experiments or something so Batman Inc. show up to make good. The titular story was too convoluted to summarise - it boils down to the characters either fighting amongst themselves or fighting crappy new villains. And then the final story sees them fighting Professor Pyg (another nod to Morrison).

It’s just your average superhero team book stuff which only makes it all the more unmemorable, uninteresting and bland. John Timms’ art is fantastic throughout and carries the title with its striking visuals, and Michele Bandini’s art on the Pyg story is good too, but, as high quality an art team as DC manages to put onto its various books, it never makes up for weak writing and unimaginative storytelling.

Batman Incorporated needs more of a hook to exist, rather than just being Batman-related - a purpose to be brought back and/or a vision for a different kind of Batman/superhero team series - and Ed Brisson’s version of the title doesn’t have that. As a result, Batman Incorporated, Volume 1: No More Please is a forgettable return for this concept - with comics this underwhelming, I can’t see it finding a big enough audience and won’t be long for publication, so it’ll probably end up being at least another ten years before DC try again with this title.