The Return of Bruce Wayne #4
As my Twitter account will tell you, I have been going through my unread comic book collection lately to try and get caught up with my current subscriptions. I have just now finished the fourth issue in the Batman: The return of Bruce Wayne mini series, in which Bruce is travelling through time to try and get bcak to his rightful place in the universe.
I really enjoyed issues 1-3. They had a lot of story in them. They focused on Bruce’s experiences as he tried to remember who and what he was. They illustrated how the Wayne family and the bat symbol were connected since before recorded history. In issue 4, however, Bruce is a nameless cowboy with no apparent motive other than keeping his mysterious box safe.
I was really looking forward to Wild West Batman, especially when I saw that Jonah Hex was going to guest star. What I ended up with was a confusing story that, in the end, I’m not really sure what happened. There was no character development for Bruce. In fact, I’m not sure he said anything through the whole issue. If he did, it was basically “I’m going to get you” in some form or another.
The story they did tell didn’t really make a lot of sense to me. Jonah Hex didn’t serve any real purpose that I could tell. I think they just shoe horned him in where they could since it’s not possible to do other cross overs to include him. There was no explanation of who this Dr. Wayne was and why he was a bad guy, then another Mr. Wayne just shows up out of nowhere. Come to think of it, I’m not really sure who this family guarding the box is. Maybe I missed something in the Batman lore, maybe this issue was terrible, I don’t know. I have been wary of reading Grant Morrison since the Final Crisis hardcover that almost made me quit reading DC comics.
In the end, I think issue four was a place filler. It wasn’t as interesting as the first three. I hope that I get number five soon and that it does a better job than its predecessor.
