DCU Comic Book Reviews

BATMAN: RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE #2

Until The End Of Time

late July 2010

Written by Grant Morrison

Pencils by Frazer Irving

Inks by Frazer Irving

Cover by Frazer Irving

Synopsis

Shot through time, Bruce Wayne finds himself standing between a large demonic monster and a young woman named Annie.  Wayne fights the monster until he passes out.  When he awakens, Annie is taking care of him.  She says she will love him until the end of time.  At the Vanishing Point, the Biorganic Archivist tells Superman, Green Lantern, Rip Hunter, and Booster Gold that timeline will terminate in 10 minutes.  Superman needs to find Bruce Wayne, a needle in cosmic haystack.  In the past, Mordecai Wayne has arrived in Gotham City to hunt witches.  Bruce Wayne thinks he is Mordecai, but through investigation determines there are no witches.  Brother Malleus, however, thinks Annie is the witch and she has summoned a dragon in the woods.  Searching the woods, Mordecai finds evidence of something.  He confronts Annie, realizing she is a witch.  She had summoned the dragon to kill the real Mordecai and convinced Bruce to take his place.  She admits that she asked the Gods to send her a man to end her loneliness, an avenging angel.  Suddenly, the creature emerges from the darkness.  Bruce confronts it as he sends Annie away.  Annie runs, but is caught Brother Malleus.  At the vanishing point, Bruce Wayne sends a message, telling the others to trust him.  Superman tells Bruce that if he continues through time, he’ll destroy the 21st century.  Meanwhile, Brother Malleus hangs Annie for witchcraft.  Before she dies, she puts on curse on him and his family, using his real name:  Nathaniel Wayne.   Meanwhile, Bruce fights the creature and then is pulled through time, washing on a beach at the feet of Blackbeard. 

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

Let’s turn this review into a look at the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Yeah, yeah, I know, it is such a cliché to use that term, but I had such a conflicting feeling about this issue that I think it’ll work the best as a way to get my feelings into some coherent form to understand.  Overall, I will say that I liked this issue and I think it worked well into the larger story that Morrison is telling as well as working fairly well as a stand alone piece. 

First:  the ugly, which is the artwork by Frazer Irving.  I am not that much of a fan.  It looks sloppy and loose (see Booster’s face on page 6), almost like a rough sketch that needs to be tightened later.  That is very little definition to the characters or the backgrounds.  This may be due to the digital coloring that Irving uses.  It looks like watercoloring, but it is not as crisply defined as, say, Alex Ross’ work.  On top of that, the coloring is very dark and murky and while the browns and the shadows fit the story and the time period, there are some panels that are very difficult to discern what I should be looking at.  Now, I know that many people love Irving’s work, so naturally your proverbial mileage may vary, but for me, it just didn’t quite work for the issue. 

Second:  the good, which are the bits and pieces of the meta-story that Morrison is building here and in the Batman and Robin book at the same time.  From the painting and the book (which appears to be a diary of some kind) to Superman’s claim that Batman is a doomsday machine, the issue brings a number of plot points into focus.  Yet, Morrison doesn’t really reveal much, other than the fact that we are reading connects to Batman and Robin.  I also like the way Bruce investigates the murder, finding clues that lead to a mundane reason rather than Witchcraft.  It shows off his detective skills, demonstrating it is an innate part of who he is, even when he can’t remember his name or anything else about himself. 

Second:  the bad, which is the ill-defined relationship between Annie and Bruce.  The way the story is written, Bruce and Annie are madly in love with each other, confirmed by the way the archivist reacts when he reaches the point of her death in the timeline.  The problem is that we don’t really see their relationship.  We are more or less told they have one, but we don’t see it.  Bruce cares for her, but it didn’t really register for me.  I didn’t quite know what to make of it.

In addition, Annie’s curse doesn’t quite make sense to me.  I don’t know enough of the Wayne history to understand Nathaniel’s role or how the curse affected the Wayne’s through history.  Is the death of Bruce's parents part of that curse?  How did it affect the rest of the Wayne family, like Nathaniel’s kids or grandkids?  Her curse is supposed to be this big moment in the story and in a way it is since we didn’t know Malleus is a Wayne, but ultimately I don’t know how it impacted the Waynes. 

Come to think of it, if Nathaniel is a Wayne, why would the picture of Mordecai adorn the Wayne household?  Wouldn’t Nathaniel know that Mordecai is not a relative?  Or was Mordecai a relative that Nathaniel just never saw, given the distance to Boston and the lack of travel in that time period?  Was it in the issue that Mordecai and Malleus were supposed to be cousins or something like that?