Batman #700

The seventh hundred issue of Batman turns out to be a fun one shot story featuring different time periods during the caped crusaders (plural) lives all with a linked central story theme. The art is handled by a different artist with each time period and generally these things are a train wreck on an epic scale. But not with this one; each artist flows perfectly into the next. Most likely it's because all the artists are top notch professionals.

Regular Batman artist Tony Daniel does the beginning bit during Batman's early more light hearted times. We then jump to current day Batman duo of Dick Grayson and Damien Wayne drawn by Frank Quietly and Scott Kolins. The Quietly pages are reason alone to snatch this comic but I have a feeling Scott Kolins was called in to finish Quietly's pages as it appears he can get any volume of pages done anymore. Poor Kolins doesn't even have his name on the cover. Then we jump into the future featuring Damien as Batman harking back to one of my favorite of Grant Morrison's Batman run, issue 666. This one is drawn by Andy Kubert and brings the story to its conclusion. The Damien Batman part is easily my favorite because of Damien's use of Brother I (the satellite Bruce Wayne made back in Omac Project which is also a redo of Jack Kirby's Brother Eye from his seventies series OMAC). For those Batman Beyond fans, Morrison provides the first in-continuity appearance of Terry McGinnis as the baby Damien is rescuing from 2-Face-2. I love Morrison's ability to connect everything.

Following the end of the main story, we are given one pages snippets of farther in the future Batmen, including Batman Beyond and the Batman from Morrison's DC One Million. There is also a large section of pin up imagines but after the stellar work of the artists involved in the actual story, these are easily overlooked.