Comic News And Reviews

By: Grant Morrison (writer), Lee Garbett, Pere Perez (artists), Alejandro Sicat and Walden Wong (inks)

The Story: Bruce Wayne arrives at the end of time, where those weird-eyed, fuzzy archivists help him along on the last leg of his journey through time and into the final steps of Darkseid’s plan to use him as a weapon. Superman, Rip Hunter and Green Lantern are stranded there, only moments away from catching up with Bruce. In the present….the JLA is waiting.

What’s Good: I know there are a few readers who argue that Batman needs the setting of Gotham to be an honest depiction (I’m usually one of those readers). Some have pilloried Morrison for sending essentially a regular guy in leather and spandex through time. However, Morrison did drop some thematic markers throughout the mini-series that he picked up here to good effect (in Tim Wayne’s mouth): It isn’t really fair that a regular guy has to fight gods. This is a deep statement that can be read in any number of ways. I really like that Morrison said it. The issue of scale in superhero comics is usually ignored (“Go get ‘em Thor and…um…Hawkeye…” or “Superman, you check left! Wildcat, you cover right!”) which can really diminish a story in some ways. Morrison doesn’t solve the problem, but that nod to a basic flaw in comics made the end-of-time sequence really, really cool, as well as the psychedelic brushes with the New Gods mythos near the end. I also *loved* the nod to origin of Batman, with the hand on the bell, not knowing if he should ring or not for Alfred to come fix him up. This was very cool. It crystallized what Morrison had been doing with the bats throughout the series. There’s a lot more cool writing and story stuff, but we’re on word limits here, so I’ll stop for now.

The art was functional and occasionally evocative. I found the draftsmanship (proportions, texture, poses, clarity) a bit wanting in more than a few spots, and sometimes crude (check out the fight with the JLA). This was a bit surprising for me, considering how pleased I am with Garbett and Perez on Batgirl. Maybe it’s the difference in inkers? I’m not sure. I haven’t seen the work of Sicat and Wong before. Don’t get me wrong. The art got the job done, and made the end-of-time archivists interesting.

What’s Not So Good: Tim Wayne, the man with the plan, and the eternal optimist in terms of Bruce Wayne’s survival, was a bit strident in chalking up Bruce’s survival through time and stopping Darkseid’s plan to Bruce’s heroism. I read all six issues. Here and there, Bruce’s essentially stubborn and sleuthing personality helped him, but many of the decision points were a bit out of his hands. At many moments, Bruce was a passenger (and often a confused one), so Tim’s claims of Bruce’s awesomeness were a bit much for me. Let’s just say it’s pretty amazing that Bruce survived his trip at all.

On the writing, I’m not going to lie. A few moments confused me, especially near the end of the book. Morrison, so adept at evoking psychological mood in the Batman and Robin series, makes a good attempt here, but has to rely to a great extent on his ever-changing artists. He succeeds in some spots. He reaches for psychedelic, and while puzzling, I’m not sure it gets there, even after two reads. Partly, I think he wasn’t given artists capable of delivering the subtlety his scripts require. I would put money on the idea that Quitely or Frazer could have pictured what Morrison was imagining and it would have been good.

Conclusion: The Return of Bruce Wayne #6 satisfied me emotionally (reunion of the family, victory of the heroes), almost satisfied me intellectually (the plot makes sense, everything was tied together) and left me unsatisfied on the art. Now that King is back, I want to see what happens to the Princes who ruled while he was gone.

Grade: B

-DS Arsenault

Filed under: DC Comics Tagged: | Batman, DC Comics, Wonder Woman, Grant Morrison, Superman, Green Lantern, Comics, DC, Comic Book Reviews, Darkseid, Pere Perez, comic reviews, Lee Garbett, Cyborg, DS Arsenault, Walden Wong, Justice League of America, Tim Wayne, Red Robin, The Return of Bruce Wayne, Rip Hunter, Batman: the Return of Bruce Wayne #6, Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #6 review, Alejandro Sicat

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