Monday, September 3, 2012

Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne/Grant Morrison

Batman:  The Return of Bruce Wayne by Grant Morrison; graphic novel; 232 pages

Following his capture by Darkseid in Final Crisis, Bruce Wayne becomes unstuck in time, stranded without memory, and flung throughout history without any knowledge or control of his situation.  Still, he struggles to find his way back to his own time, not knowing that Darkseid had another purpose:  Bruce's movement through time is slowly building up omega radiation which, when brought to the 21st century, will result in the destruction of the universe. 

This was a fun series of stories.  Each chapter shows Bruce Wayne at a different point in history:  with a prehistoric tribe, in Puritain New England, fighting pirates, gun slinging in the Old West, and donning a fedora in 1940s Gotham.  Despite the fact that he has no memory of previous events, Bruce Wayne is still very much Batman in each of these stories (detecting the real events behind the "witchcraft" in New England, figuring out booby traps in a pirate cave, and even donning the skin of a giant bat in caveman days).  I thought the ending here was especially neat, given how tangled the story had become by that point. 

I'm not sure exactly how this fits into the chronology of some of the other series:  there's mention here of Gotham being under quarantine, with suggests it's concurrent with the events of Batman & Robin Must Die, but The Road Home shows Bruce taking a leisurely tour of old acquaintances before meeting up with Dick and Damien, so who knows?   Still, this was one of my favorite of the recent Batman arcs. 

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