Realizations on Grant Morrison's Batman

(I'm publishing this clearly not-done draft so as to encourage myself to actually finish a post. If you read this blog or have it in your RSS feed, please let me know, so I can clean it up quickly.)

I have only just started realizing the depths of Grant Morrison's Batman run.

These are not new revelations for seasoned Batmanologists (Sims and Uzumeri) or even people who spend any amount of time discussing this on message boards/comments, but it is rather mind-blowing as I feel I have at least put some pieces together and have come to a deeper understanding of the meaning than just reading the entirety of someone else's conclusions. (Example: It's less mind-blowing to hear someone else predict that Oberon Sexton was the Joker, because I didn't put those clues together.)
( Also that is one run-on sentence up there.)

While I was incredibly impressed to discover the line "Batman and Robin Can Never Die!" back in his first few issues of JLA, that ended up being rather coincidental and not evident of his true long-form storytelling potential.

Darkseid Ur-bullet (This one only really works if Hurt is Darkseid, though I suppose if Hurt is the Devil and Darkseid the God of Evil, it's not impossible that they would meet and exchange notes.) It does explain how Hurt knows when he'll die
Drugging him
Creating faux Batmens
Hurt using the Thomas Wayne Bat outfit
Club of Villains
Asking/forcing him to join the black glove
Inverted crucifix
Having Joker serve as the hero in the fight against the black glove
David Uzumeri noted that if Batman Must Die (B&R13-15) is Batman RIP as Farce, then many of the other B&R arcs function that way as well: 1-3: Killing Joke, 4-6: Death in the Family/Under the Red Hood (probably the latter), 7-9: Ra's Al-Gul/Lazarus Pit stories/Blackest Night? (it does have a resurrected Batman and the Blackest Knight storyline is a clear pun), 9-12: Judas Contract? (Deathstroke using a puppet to attack Dick Grayson)


It also helps that I recently started thinking about how great Batman is as a character, at least in terms of the various stories he can be used in.
Dark Knight vs. B&R vs. Batman: Brave and the Bold vs. (acts serious, but with ridiculous elements) DCAU/Justice League Unlimited.
I started tearing up thinking about the "Divided We Fall" episode of Justice League Unlimited. (I should get the clip instead of poorly explaining in badly-written prose.) In it, Flash has defeated Luthor/Braniac by using the whole world to get a running start and hit the amalgamation with as much force as possible. He manages to remove Braniac from Luthor, but has been going too fast and is about to be lost to the Speed Force. After he disappears, a hole opens, from which eminates Wally's voice. He says that he doesn't think he can leave, but the team reaches in to help him. So Hawkgirl, Green Lantern, J'onn J'onz, Superman, and Wonder Woman (maybe in that order) are hand-in-hand with Shayera trying to pull Flash out and Wonder Woman acting as an anchor. Despite the fact that he clearly is going to make no difference, Batman holds onto Wonder Woman's arm and pulls as hard as he can.
That's what's so appealing about Batman. Even when his actions won't affect the outcome in the slightest, he gives it his all.
(Reword that to be more poetic and inspiring.)