The Return of Bruce Wayne #2
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Frazer Irving
And with this second issue…the mystery deepens. We’re with Bruce from where we left him, about to face off some megafauna in the Puritan era in defense of a young woman named Annie. Bruce barely bests the creature and awakens with Annie taking care of him in her home in the woods. She’s got a charm which is a fused Wonder Woman ‘W’ and Superman ‘S’ (as seen in Bruce’s cave drawing) and she appears to know something about the events of Final Crisis (or maybe just the existence of the New Gods/4th World) because she mentions Bruce being set upon by a “Great Dark God.”
Meanwhile, GL, Booster, Rip and Superman travel to the Vanishing Point (the Time Master’s base at the end of the universe) and the place seems like it’s seen better days. I’ve read comics where the Vanishing Point was visited before, but never had they gone so soon in conjunction with it’s disintegration at the end of time/space. Is there a reason this was the point they choose to visit the station? No clue. The heroes seek to use the station to trace the Omega Energy surrounding Batman through time.
Morrison gives some sort of explanation on 7 and 8 about the way time, space and hypertime intersect. When you read all the words together it makes sense but I’m not going to say it makes sense, you know? The only way you will understand that page as well as Grant Morrison does is you will need to ingest psychedelic drugs. Someone who may or may not be me might have once ingested an eighth of mushrooms and had all the information on these two pages related to them by a tree in the quad.
The majority of the issues action then follows with the quest of With Hunter Mordecai. Our lovable Batman hasn’t been able to shake off his detective skills (despite having no memory other than that his name begins with W) and instead of finding witchcraft, he deduces that one of the local ladies has murdered her husband. Of course no oner really cares or believes him, especially not Malleus the witch hunter, who we later learn is none other than Nathaniel Wayne, an ancestor of Bruce.
After a brief interaction with Bruce and Annie (awww, he’s found love in the past) we see Bruce having the portait (including the book, whose contents remain a mystery to us) which we previously saw in Batman & Robin as well as Red Robin.
Malleus being on the warpath, soon puts Annie in his sights as a witch, and, well, he’s not so wrong. We learn that she summoned the hyperfauna which has been haunting the waters of the forrest. She appears to use a form of magic (at least believes she does) based around a New God-related mythology. Bruce slays the hyperfauna but is sent careening through time once more while Annie is taking away by the witch-hunters.
And then, craziness just happens. We learn that the archivist with whom our new Time Masters have been interacting is Bruce Wayne. How he reached the end of time is, well, another mystery, but he has some sort of mission to complete and he’s not adverse to stealing the time sphere Superman and the others need to survive the end of time. We also learn a little more about why Bruce can’t return to the 21st century, according to Superman he’s been transformed into a Doomsday weapon aimed at the present (confirming my own theory that Bruce is basically another version of the bullet aimed backwards through time which killed Orion)
Annie is hung and the passing on of Bruce’s mysterious book through the Wayne bloodline. His portrait also seems to have fallen into possession of the Wayne family. Odd that Nathan would claim him as part of their lineage just because he slayed the beast, but maybe it’s an honor thing or maybe it has to do with the content of his book.
Naturally, we see Bruce awake in his next timeline, Pirate Era Gotham city. Not really sure how many pirates really roamed the coast of New Jersey, but I’ll let it slide.
Final Score: 9/10 – this was a strong issue and it really laid a lot out on our plates, not just about Bruce’s time-spanning mystery, but the setting itself was good and the detective aspect of Batman was used here in a way that I really appreciated. I’m actually disappointed that we only get one issue in this time-frame. I demand a Witch-hunter Bruce Wayne mini-series guest starring Klarion The Witch-boy.
