The Return of Bruce Wayne

This past week part 1 of the Return of Bruce Wayne hit the shelves. This 6 part series is being written by Grant Morrison and illustrated by Chris Sprouse, Inks by Karl Story.

This short run series is intended to return Bruce Wayne the original Batman to the DCU, after his time travel death thing… event From DC’s Final Crisis. Written of course by Grant Morrison. Now to be honest I am not a big fan of Morrison’s writing. I thought Final Crisis was an utter mess and all that I really got out of it was that Barry Allen (The Flash) returned from the dead and Batman (Bruce Wayne) died. Morrison’s writing at times can to me be,  convoluted and somewhat chaotic. But at other times  it can be good writing, if I read the full story once or twice more to get what the hell Morrison was trying to do. For example Batman R.I.P was good the third time through. The R.I.P storyline incidentally sort of led into the Final Crisis event of Bruce Wayne’s  “death”, which of course leads us to the present story Arch of Bruce Wayne Returns.

Now I find it hard to review a story arch with simply the 1st issue of the series as it’s just getting started. In particular with a Grant Morrison story line which usually won’t pick up or have those cool plot twists till the 5th or to the 6th issue of the series.

The 1st issue opens up with a tribe of primitive man investigating  a crashed rocket ship a-la-Krypton. As this tribe of caveman investigate the ship and a nearby cave we see Bruce Wayne emerge from the cave shirtless but with his utility belt. We later learn that the more peaceful tribe is Anthro’s tribe. As Wayne investigates his rocket ship he finds articles of his prior life -time such as a crumbling bat signal, and Superman cape. He makes peace and hangs out with Anthro’s tribe until  Vandal Savage’s  Blood Tribe of neanderthal men attack the peaceful tribe and a battle between the two tribes ensues. Wayne is captured by Vandal Savage and kept prisoner at his camp, for sacrifice.

Anthro for some reason and some how takes on a Robin domino mask and out of no where creates a shield with the Bat symbol on it to aid and rescue Bruce Wayne. Wayne somehow finds a giant human size bat skin to wear as a primitive Bat suit in order to defeat Vandal Savage which he does easily with tools and armaments from his saved utility belt. As Bruce and Anthro run from the last attacks of Savage’s tribe they jump off a cliff, and into the bottom of a waterfall. Anthrosurfaces, Bruce is somehow transported to another time period to be picked up in issue 2. In this issue itis  also revealed that Booster Gold, Superman, and Green Lantern (Hal Jordon) are popingthrough time looking for Bruce Wayne. Revealing that if "Bruce Wayne makes it back to the 21st century on his own…everyone dies."

Overall I liked the issue but only cause I got to see Bruce Wayne  again. The issue per Grant Morrison’s normal writing seemed a bit chaotic and took a 2nd reading through to get the overall direction of the story. But as I suspected this story arch has an Elseworld sfeel to it, what with Anthro taking on the Robin/Sidekick persona, a tribes man being called Joker making with the wise cracks. And the overall giant bat caveman costume also lends to this Elseworlds feel. But I am looking forward to issue 2 to see how Morrison plays this out. Could be veryvery bad or could be very good….

Tags: Batman, Batman, Bruce Wayne, DC, DCU, Val Victory

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