Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne (Review)

Writer: Grant Morrison

Artists: Chris Sprouse, Frazer Irving, Yanick Paquette, Georges Jeanty, Ryan Sook, Pere Perez, Lee Garbett

Publisher: DC Comics

Collects: Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #1-6

When Bruce Wayne appeared to shuffle off this mortal coil at the end of Final Crisis two years(!) ago, most of us who had been reading superhero comics for a while knew it was only a matter of time before he returned. What we didn't know was how much we would come to enjoy Dick Grayson's career as Batman in the meantime.

As we found ourselves growing to like the former Boy Wonder more and more with each new adventure, Bruce's return became less and less anticipated. Yet it still loomed on the comic book horizon, and we felt a strange sense of dread and shame as it approached.

But we cannot put off the inevitable any more. This is comics, after all, where nothing lasts forever and nothing ever ends. And so, The Return of Bruce Wayne, as its title suggests, has our eponymous and amnesiac hero trapped in the past, jumping ever closer to the present and to his former position, all the while trying to solve a millennia-old mystery and recover his memories in the process.