Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #1

"But if he survives this, if he does the impossible again...if Batman makes it back to the 21st century on his own...everyone dies." - Superman

Over a year ago, at the conclusion of Final Crisis, DC Comics did the unthinkable: They killed Batman!

Okay, well, not that unthinkable, since Batman was the one major character that DC hadn't already killed off at one point or another. So really, it was just his turn.

But this presented a bit of a problem. Sure, guys like Superman, Green Lantern and the Flash can come back to life in a plausible way (well, you know, plausible for comic books), because they have super powers.

But how was Batman supposed to come back from this?

It turns out it was actually fairly simple: DC just revealed that the corpse seen above was, in actuality, a clone of Batman secretly created by Darkseid, whereas the real Batman was merely sent back in time to the prehistoric era by Darkseid's Omega beams.

(This sort of convoluted plot twist encapsulates pretty much everything that's wrong with superhero storytelling over the past few years. But at this point, it's all we've got, so comic book readers more or less have to roll with it.)

So anyway, Batman's stuck thousands of years in the past, with no way to get home. But he makes millions of dollars a year for DC and its corporate parent, and stars in five or six monthly titles, so he kind of has to. Hence this mini-series, in which an amnesiac Bruce Wayne will bounce between different time periods on his way back to the present.

I think Grant Morrison is probably the best writer working in comics. But I've noticed that whenever he writes a comic with a seemingly great, can't-miss plot (i.e., Final Crisis or Batman R.I.P.) he usually finds a way to screw it up. Whereas, when he tackles something with a truly off-the-wall plot (i.e., Seaguy, Animal Man, etc.) he excels. So given how dumb the plot of The Return of Bruce Wayne sounds, this should be awesome.

And to be honest, the story gets off to a great start here. In this issue alone, Batman: meets a bunch of cavemen, gets caught up in a war between two tribes, runs into Vandal Savage, almost gets sacrificed, finds a prehistoric Robin, and gets a snazzy new outfit.

Good stuff. Good, crazy, Grant Morrison stuff.

I'm still not entirely sold on the concept. Some of the upcoming issues (Batman as a pirate, Batman as a cowboy, etc.) seem a lot like unused Elseworlds plots. But this issue was good enough that I'm cautiously optimistic that DC's decision to let Morrison go down this path with Batman for all these months, might finally have a decent payoff.