Review: Batman and Robin, Volumes 1 and 2

I know, I know. I promised to write this review a long time ago, but things keep happening in my life. No, not anything nearly as dramatic as what Richard (I can't bring myself to call him "Dick") and Damian live through, but enough to keep me from writing a review on this blog. At least up until now.

I borrowed these two graphic novels from my local public library (I love libraries...you should, too) and read through them in a few evenings. Not exactly peaceful and calming material to go through right before bedtime, but they inspired some truly entertaining dreams. But what are they about, anyway?

The story of this Batman and Robin, starring Richard Grayson as the heir apparent to the "Mantle of the Bat" and Damian Wayne, the unlikely son of Bruce and Talia al Ghul, is set in the period of time when Bruce Wayne is struggling to return to the present after Darkseid's Omega beams sent him slamming back across the time line to the days of "Alley Oop" (almost). How will this dynamic duo fair as Gotham's protectors in the absence of the original Dark Knight?

Actually, just about as you'd imagine. Not all that great.

You'd think that with all of the experience Grayson had, first as the original Robin and then as Nightwing, he'd be a better Batman, but it seems as if he's intimidated by the cape and the cowl. If anyone could fill Bruce's "bat boots", it should be Richard, but he just doesn't act like they're a very good fit. Contrast this with Damian Wayne, all of ten years old, and yet he acts like he could be Batman right now. This is the part that was tough for me to swallow. I don't care if the little punk was raised by an assassin's league and his grandfather is Ras al Ghul, he still should have gotten his ass kicked on a more or less regular basis, right from jump street.

Actually, there were plenty of times Robin did eat the pavement and at one point, even got his back broken (sound familiar?). However, the little jerk always managed to bounce back and get into trouble again. If there was ever a Robin I wanted to see get a bullet in the brain, it was Damian. Even "Dick" wasn't this much of a "whiny bitch" when he first put on the "pixie boots". Frankly, it would have been better for Batman to team up with the Red Hood (Jason Todd).

Nobody loves this new Batman and Robin. Even casual observers on the GPD can tell it's not the "real" Batman, and Gordon tolerates them only because of his faith in the first Robin turned Batman (or maybe his faith in the return of the first Batman). Everyone was waiting for them to go "ker-splat" including me, while I was reading Volume 1. I know that Damian really is supposed to be a bad-ass, but I kept remembering myself at age ten and even if I had the attitude of a rattlesnake and the best ten-year-old body in the business, One good punch to the gut or a knife across my throat would have ended my crime fighting story before it started. It's hard to imagine Damian being ready at so young an age. He acted more like an "emo" 14 year old than a junior grade assassin. He even had the balls to call Alfred "Pennyworth" and to treat him like a "servant", which is something his father never would have done.

As it turns out, Richard never does (at least in the first 2 volumes of this series) get comfortable with being Batman. So much so, that he tries to resurrect what he thinks is Bruce's body by putting it in a Lazarus pit. Too bad it was a half brain-dead clone of Bruce that he gets a hold of instead (remember, Bruce is very much alive and leaping across the pages of history like a dark caped version of Sam Beckett in an extended episode of Quantum Leap) of the real Bruce. The "bat thing" that comes out of the pit is just about too much for our "dynamic duo", especially since Damian is trying to recover from the experimental surgery that put his spine back together and (covertly) turned him into a remote controlled pawn of his mother.

Amazingly, the two of them, with the much needed assistance of Alfred, manage to put away "Bat-zombie" before he makes them permanent residents of the land on the other side of the Styx. Little by little the two start to meld into a team as Damian begins to see what it is to truly take on his father's values, and Richard realizes that Bruce isn't coming back to save him. Richard takes his biggest step to becoming the next Dark Knight when he realizes he must become Batman, because there's just no one else.

Damian finally turns a corner when his mother uses him to try and assassinate Richard, and Grayson turns his own corner when, by the final page of Volume 2, he demonstrates his own detective skills in discovering the true identity of the heretofore mysterious Oberon Sexton.

Oh, it was kind of "cute" when Richard tried to hit on Batwoman not knowing that she'd have more interest in Barbara Gordon or Dinah Lance. Oh well, welcome to 21st century relationships, Dick.

DVD Review of Captain America: The First Avenger

It wasn't bad. It wasn't bad at all. I think Chris Evans turned in a pretty good performance as "Cap", allaying my fears that he'd play Steve Rogers in the same crappy manner as he did Johnny Storm in both lousy Fantastic Four movies (2005 and 2007 respectively).

By the way, if you haven't seen the film yet and want to be surprised, stop reading now. I'm jumping right into some major spoilers. Here we go.

I was initially dubious about changing Bucky from a teenage sidekick to a "big brother" character, but there'd be no way to realistically introduce a 14 year old onto a World War II European battlefield. The main point of Bucky anyway is to provide Cap with plenty of guilt and post-war angst over how he should have prevented Bucky's death, but didn't. In that sense though, the separation between the time of Bucky's death and Cap's going into deep freeze diminishes the impact (at least as far as I could tell). If Bucky had died just seconds before Cap crashed the plane, it would have been the last, horrible thought on Steve's mind when he was flash frozen and the very first when he woke up almost 70 years later. Oh well.

I thought the pre-Cap Steve Rogers was handled pretty well. The film was a little light on why Steve wanted to enlist so much or for that matter, why he was always so courageous, even when getting the living snot beaten out of him, though. After getting a brief look at his medical records early in the film and noticing he had heart problems, I'm a little surprised the repeated beatings he alluded to didn't put him in the hospital or even kill him. It's one thing to be a 98-pound weakling with asthma and another to be extremely medically fragile.

I know Director Joe Johnston wanted the character of Captain America to be less about being a patriotic symbol and more about how nice guys make better heroes, but Cap is all about being the American hero at a time when we are all about symbolic inspiration to help us endure the sacrifices of war. I found Steve, both before and after his transformation, to be a little too humble. Captain America is a decisive leader of men. His character started developing in that direction but Evans never took it quite far enough. To be fair though, it's a difficult balance to strike between being heroic and always being portrayed as a "nice guy" (as opposed to an arrogant ass like the guy Colonel Phillips [Tommy Lee Jones] wanted to put through the experiment).

I still can't believe that douche politician turned Cap into some sort of cheesy performer. How many millions of dollars were poured into the experiment to turn Steve into a Super Soldier and yet, his only options were being a lab rat or a USO actor? What a waste of resources. I'm stunned the military went along with it. I suppose this was the only way Johnston could figure out how to put Steve in a red, white, and blue outfit in the ETO (European Theater of Operations) and then get him into action. I still wish he'd have found another way to do this.

I loved how Dum Dum Dugan, Gabe Jones, and the rest of the Howling Commandos (minus Sgt. Fury for continuity reasons) became Cap's "team". In the 1960s Marvel comic books, Cap would sometimes team up with Fury and the "Howlers" for one mission or the other. I didn't expect this and it was a welcome addition to the film.

I did expect Howard Stark to be in the film and he was depicted in a way that it's easy to see why Tony ended up being such a womanizing, arrogant playboy. Like father, like son. I was a little surprised at a few of the "miniaturized" devices Stark was able to create in an age when vacuum tubes had yet to be replaced by transistors (which were still bulky but allowed Marvel to justify the comic book Tony Stark creating the Iron Man armor in 1963). I thought the levitating car (even if it didn't work) was a little over the top. It's much more "real" to imagine Howard being part of the Manhattan Project and creating "the bomb".

The whole Steve Rogers/Peggy Carter relationship was interesting if expected. They never really "hooked up" (and for that matter, never got to that dance Steve had promised her), but they were really hung up with each other (sometimes to Peggy's surprise), adding the required "romantic relationship" to movies like this. I found myself wondering that if Steve didn't know how to talk to a woman and had never danced with one (because he was so puny at first and then too busy as Cap later on), what else had he "never done" with a woman? Does this mean Steve Rogers wakes up in the 21st century still a virgin? Maybe the Black Widow would be able to help him out later on. Either that, or Peggy's granddaughter or great-granddaughter (Sharon Carter AKA Agent 13 is bound to make an appearance sometime or another) will finish what Peggy started.

There is one, really big plot hole (not the only one, but I can live with the others). Why did Steve have to "die" at the end of the film in order to save New York from the Red Skull's "doomsday" plane? He'd already exited and re-entered the plane in flight by using one of the on-board "mini-planes". Couldn't he have just set the big plane into a dive and then escaped using one of the smaller modules? This was pointed out with great panache by the gang at How It Should Have Ended.



When the Cosmic Cube "short circuited" or whatever it did when it "ate" the Red Skull (great job by Hugo Weaving, by the way), Cap should have "discovered" that the energy discharge destroyed the mini-planes or fused the controls that opened the bomb bay doors or something, but it was just overlooked by Johnston. Steve didn't have to die/get frozen at the end of the film.

In spite of my bitching, I really enjoyed the movie overall. It wasn't exactly what I would have expected out of Captain America, but it was still good. Musical score had a hard time trying to figure out if it wanted to be 1940s nostalgia or modern hero theme music. Credits at the end (none at the beginning of the film at all) were straight up lame. The end and then the real end (after all the final credits) were good, which brings me to my last point.

Captain America and the Avengers. In the 1960s Avengers comic books, there was no one, permanent leader. Each Avenger took a monthly rotation as far as leading the team. Having said that, whenever Cap was around (and always when he was leading Quicksilver, the Scarlet Witch, and Hawkeye), he ended up being the de facto leader and the unofficial "heart" of the Avengers. Nice guy aside, even when he was the weakest member of the team, having no "real" superpowers, he always had the soul and the vision of a leader. He was used to being obeyed instantly, not because he was some kind of dictator, but because he was just that good at taking command, sizing up every combat situation, and taking decisive action in deploying his "forces". In the Silver Age comics, this was pointed out again and again by the other team members. I hope that he gets to fulfill that destiny in the upcoming Avengers (2012) film as well.

Unfortunately, based on the trailers I've seen so far, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is more likely to dominate any screen time he shares with Rogers (Evans) and Cap will just be another guy in a costume, probably more spectacular than Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) but trailing behind the other Avengers (the Black Widow will attract more attention only because she's played by the very beautiful Scarlett Johansson - yowza!).

Back to the current review, I would definitely watch this film again...and again and again. It's not perfect, but it's still Captain America. In an age where we have no one to look up to anymore, we need an American hero like Cap.

What Went Wrong with Star Trek Enterprise?

In the wake of Jonathan Frakes' recent declaration that for him, Star Trek: Enterprise's series finale was "an unpleasant memory," actress Marina Sirtis has also come out on the controversial final episode. But instead of blasting it, she defends it as a fitting finale for ... The Next Generation.

In another of Star Trek.com's lengthy interviews, the 56-year-old actress—who had to slip back into one of Counsellor Deanna Troi's skintight uniforms after 18 years in the role (and three years after Star Trek: Nemesis) in May of 2005 for the controversial Enterprise final episode ''These Are the Voyages''—said about the finale.

-Nathalie Caron
"Marina Sirtis defends Enterprise finale as a fitting end for TNG"
blastr.com

I've tried repeatedly to create a comment in reply to this blastr blog post but I keep getting an error message. Guess I'll have to write a wee blog of my own about it. First off, here's part of what I was going to say in my comment:

Wow! She's 56?

Anyway, I guess this means I'll have to get around to watching the final episode of Star Trek: Enterprise one of these days. Actually, I stopped watching the show at the end of the third season. It just failed to hold my interest the way that the rest of the Star Trek franchise shows did.

I don't think this was the fault of the cast or crew. The producers set it too early in history and created too many plot holes in terms of the already established "Trek" history. They introduced things like view screens and transporters when, according to the "official" time line, they shouldn't have existed yet. Then there were the desperate attempts to revive interest by introducing Romulans, Ferengi, and Borg when humanity hadn't met them yet, either. "Enterprise" could never create its own niche because it lacked most of the elements the Trek audience had come to know and love. The producers should have set it in the Romulan-Earth or Klingon-Earth wars or even when Capt. Pike 1st took command of the Enterprise. Now that would have been a riveting series, if handled correctly.

To continue, I think Berman and Braga just became arrogant and complacent. They assumed all you'd have to do is stick the title "Star Trek" on a show and everyone would spontaneously "nerdgasm" all over it.

Wrong.

They should have put a lot more thought and research into the concept of a "pre-STTOS" show. Instead, they goofed and shot Bakula, Blalock, Billingsley, and the rest of the cast in the collective foot. They also assumed (probably thanks to Seven of Nine in Star Trek: Voyager, that a pair of really large breasts would make up for good stories, consistent plots, and character development. Wrong again. Big boobs aside, my favorite character was "Trip", played by Connor Trinneer. I found him very human in his struggle to apply his personality and preconceptions on a rapidly unfolding interstellar exploration.

I could go on and on about what went wrong with the show and what could have been right, but I don't feel like writing a novel today. Like I said before, the one big thing I'd change, if I could, would be to set the show later in history but still before Kirk's time.

Point's moot because with the full Star Trek reboot, history is up for grabs again.

Set course for the Talos star group. Time warp, factor five. Engage.

Halloween Fantasies: The Women 2011

Last year at about this time, I published my most popular (by number of visits) post, Halloween Fantasies: The Women. It was a "response" to my own Halloween fantasies and costumes I'd like to wear (assuming I had the body for it) on Halloween. Naturally, they all have a superhero theme. I thought that since hot women in costume seem to be a really sought after topic, I'd repeat my "success" of last year.

The first entry isn't exactly "hot" but it is interesting. I found this image at Wikipedia under Mxyzptlk's Superwoman (scroll down). The storyline doesn't look that compelling and I'm not interested at all in "Superlad", but Superwoman and Batwoman definitely look like my kind of fantasy.

Of course, I've always been a sucker for a superhero with a busted secret identity. I have no idea what the deal is behind this "revealing" pose for Supergirl, but it definitely got my attention. I wonder how she'll get out of this mess or at least, get out of something.

Wonder Woman is probably the most obvious superhero fantasy for most guys but I've always thought she was kind of overkill. First of all, women with boobs that big probably just can't fight. Those triple-Ds would always be getting in the way. WW's real power over men would be the fact that, the minute she showed up, all the straight guys would just be paralyzed with lust and completely distracted by her cleavage.

I found an interesting pic of her at scifiwright.com (there a lots of compelling images here) with WW at the subject on the cover of Rolling Stones magazine. It's another secret identity switch that makes me think Diana's best power is when she changes clothes. The parallel image is one that really goes with the previous paragraph. Oh my but how in the world could she fight or do just about anything that requires movement without a serious wardrobe malfunction?

The last in my series of super women for Halloween 2011 is of Mystique from the original X-men films (as opposed to the reboot). What really "makes" Mystique for me isn't the costume but actress Rebecca Romijn. Not only is she classically beautiful, in costume or out, but standing at almost six feet tall, she is every tall (or short) man's dream woman. She's got legs.

Happy Halloween.

Oh, click on the images to see their original sizes.

Star Trek 2: The Klingons

No, no, no, no, no! I have no idea about what the next Star Trek film will be like. I have no idea who or what will be in the next Star Trek film. This is just my imagination. Never, ever say that I told you that Klingons will be in the next J.J. Abrams Star Trek film. It would be a lie. I haven't the faintest idea what's up his sleeve.

I did just read the latest blastr.com blog on the next Star Trek film including a quote by Zoe (Uhura) Saldana:

"I know it's gonna be amazing. We still haven't gotten a script yet," she said of progress on the film, which Access has confirmed with a source will begin shooting in mid-January, and won't be called Star Trek 2. "We're very excited to read it and get back into space."

"I know it's gonna be amazing. We still haven't gotten a script yet." Cute.

So, who or what should be featured in the sequel to Abrams' 2009 runaway hit? I once read an article about Star Trek that said its success rose and fell by the use of its villains. That's probably true. When a Trek film or TV episode doesn't have a definitive "bad guy", it isn't nearly as interesting. I think that's what made Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) so much fun. It's not the best film in the world, but Ricardo Montalban must have had an absolute blast playing Kahn.

So who are the 23rd century's best Star Trek baddies? The Romulans and Klingons, of course. Don't even suggest the Borg or any of Picard's other playmates. For lack of anything better to do, the rather disappointing Star Trek: Enterprise series threw in a bunch of races that weren't supposed to even be a whisper in the 22nd century, and it screwed up the Trek continuity even more than it already was. The idea of a Star Trek reboot is to wipe away all of that stuff and start from scratch.

But not completely. One of the things that "Enterprise" did right was to bring back cool races like the Andorians and the Tellurites (see the STTOS episode Journey to Babel for details). I think that's at least a portion of what the Abrams films should do, preserve the best of the original and clean up the leftovers.

OK, I'm tossing the Romulans out of the second film just because a bunch of futuristic Romulans were prominently featured in the first film. That leaves the Klingons (and remember, I know nothing...nothing). This would be a good time to try and get Klingons straight. For instance, when first seen in the original Star Trek series, they were a bunch of swarthy thugs with no redeemable social qualities. No honor. No glory, No Bat'leths. They were just interstellar jerks (although Michael Ansara as Kang was pretty good). Romulans were a lot more compelling (especially since Mark Lenard played a Romulan before he ever became Spock's daddy).

By the time the first (awful) Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) came along, somebody decided to change their appearance to make them seem more alien, probably because the film had a $40 million budget and they had money to burn on a little extra latex (and Mark Lenard cameoed as a Klingon in the beginning of the film...cool trivia bit). But no one ever explained the change in appearance.

It came to a head in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Episode Trials and Tribble-ations where Worf and the DS9 gang travel back in time and invade the original series episode The Trouble with Tribbles. Worf is a 24th century Klingon. The original "Tribbles" episode is full of old, 23rd century TV Klingons. The two look nothing alike. The only comment Worf makes is: "We don't like to talk about it."

Thanks to reboot city, all of the inconsistencies that have built up in the Star Trek timeline just go bye-bye. Any mistakes that happen now belong to Abrams and company (and they already screwed up by "disappearing" Jim Kirk's older brother George Samuel Kirk).

The Klingons and Romulans were introduced in the original series as a parallel to the cold war era and the U.S. "relationship" with the Soviet Union and Communist China. If Abrams keeps the same basic history (and Klingons were briefly mentioned in the first film), then there was a Federation/Klingon war at some point. It didn't go well for either side and a rough truce was formed. There's a neutral zone between the two "empires". It's the cold war all over again with border skirmishes, spies, political intrigue, and all that cool space 007 stuff.

Or the war hasn't happened yet. Abrams could decide to go big and have the Earth/Klingon relationship start off hesitant and untrusting but not outright hostile...until the second film. Then all Sto'Vo'Kor...uh, hell breaks loose. Either way, rewriting history and reinventing the Klingon race into a more complicated, not entirely evil but always dangerous enemy would be fabulous.

Of course, that's only one possible option. If Kirk meets and has a relationship with Carol Marcus this time around, maybe there'll be a future David to be killed by the Klingons all over again in 30 years or so. In the meantime, Kirk could still get to kick some alien ass, make plenty of enemies, and seduce his way across half the quadrant like in the good old days.

We'll just have to wait and see. None of the principal actors have even seen the script yet.

Graphic Novel Review: Batman, the Return of Bruce Wayne

An odyssey for one of the most iconic figures in comics stretches from prehistory to the end of time, revisiting and reimagining Batman's mythology through a complex narrative. Writer Morrison and a team of artists pick up from the end of Morrison's Final Crisis and Batman: RIP. Bruce Wayne is lost in time after killing Darkseid, a godlike being of pure evil. Piecing together the memories of his past that he's lost and slowly realizing he's been turned into a human booby trap meant to destroy the universe by Darkseid, Bruce is pulled through eras of Gotham City's history that include confrontations with cavemen, witch hunters, pirates, cowboys, and 20th-century cultists. These adventures culminate in a return to the present where he must rely on his fellow superheroes to save him from Darkseid's curse. Morrison's story is designed to add to Batman's aura as a timeless, mythical hero, but the time jumps and Bruce's amnesia sometimes create an uneven narrative. The story also asks readers to possess a wealth of familiarity with the character's decades-long history, making the book not as accessible to newer fans. Different artists—all strong, colorful storytellers—give each time period its own mood.

From the product description of
Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne
at Amazon.com

I had originally intended to review the graphic novel Final Crisis and "Return" back-to-back, but "Crisis" had such a vast scope and such a twisted plot to follow, that I felt that reviewing it would be an injustice. I didn't like it very well. It assumed that the reader knew just about everything there is to know about the DC Universe going back decades (although I actually knew about the Miracle Machine from the old, silver age Adventure comics (featuring the Legion of Super-Heroes). For the first half of "Crisis", I had no idea what was going on, if I was seeing events on different "Earths" or just different places on one Earth or whatever.

However, reading "Crisis" was necessary to get the background for understanding how Bruce Wayne ended up in the stone age in The Return of Bruce Wayne. I love time travel stories and I love time travel mysteries. I figured this was going to be good.

It was. But it had its flaws.

I hadn't intended to read it all in one sitting, but a bout of insomnia changed my plans. My review is based on going through all of the pages of Morrison's product well after midnight and, writing this the following evening on three hours sleep, I'm still a bit punchy. But I digress.

The storyline is much more straightforward than "Crisis" but it's not completely straight. There is the little "side-trip" to Vanishing Point taken by Superman, Rip Hunter, and a few other JLA members to try and figure out where and when Batman is/was. I must have missed something, but Vanishing Point was on the verge of being destroyed at the heat death of the universe, so there wasn't a lot of...time (yeah, I know...that's going to come up a lot) to investigate.

There was mention made of the clues in history Batman left behind but no mention of how the JLA knew even to look. As far as they knew, Batman was dead. Why suspect that he was really back in time and how convenient it would be to suddenly start finding suspicious cave paintings just after his disappearance into the past? It would have been cleaner if we were told how and why anyone thought to look for a time traveling Bruce Wayne and what told them that A.) he was capable to traveling forward in time and B.) that he was accumulating Omega Energy as part of Darkseid's plot to posthumously destroy Earth.

Of course, maybe that was in the book and I was just too tired to pick up on it.

I liked the stone age. I'm still wondering how the rocket ship (which did not contain Bruce's body but just his stuff) ended up in the exact time and place that Bruce's body did when zapped by Darkseid's Omega beams. I may have missed the connection in "Crisis", though. There was so much going on in that book, it was hard to keep all the details straight.

It was a little campy to have "Boy" of the Deer People become "Boy" (Robin) of the Bat People, but endearing nonetheless. I did find it really incredible to believe that someone who probably lived about 10,000 B.C. could have started a legend that would be remembered by a small tribe native Americans in 1640 A.D., but it was also kind of cool.

I kept wondering why Bruce took such a big leap in time at the first event, tens of thousands of years, and afterwards, jumped forward only a few centuries or a few decades? Of course, there was all that time in between when he wouldn't have had any sort of adventure and we do want to keep the action moving.

I enjoyed all of his time leaps, but my favorite was when Bruce "played" private detective investigating the allegation that his father murdered his mother (the man with her that fateful night wasn't supposed to be Thomas Wayne). Batman was originally created in the late 1930s, so pulp fiction dieselpunk is his natural element. I did have a tough time figuring out the year though, since there were video stores in existence, which would have placed him in the late 1970s or early 80s, but his grandfather was in an iron lung, which would have put it more in the 1950s.

Oh well.

When Bruce showed up at Vanishing Point and stole Rip Hunter's time machine, stranding Superman, GL, and the others just minutes before the end of the universe, I was definitely thrown a curve ball. It's all eventually explained, but I'm still trying to figure out who that guy Carter was, how he invented a time machine and why, if this was supposed to be in the 1940s or 50s, he was wearing a "Have a nice day" t-shirt, complete with smiley face.

A few things really bothered me. One was how many times Bruce came really close to death. If he was that easy to kill, he would have died a hundred times over just by being Batman. Of course, he didn't have his memory and he was way out of his element, but as the book says, Batman is a survivor. That's what he does.

The one thing I hated more than anything happens when Bruce steals Hunter's time machine and strands the JLA members in a force field (which turns out to be a time machine in the making). Superman panics. He has a real look of fear in one panel followed by him pounding impotently on the force field while practically wailing. No one else loses their cool, not even Booster Gold. Superman would not have panicked, no matter what. He'd be the one everyone else looked to for courage. I felt sorry for him.

I kind of liked it that a 17th century witch put an everlasting curse on one of Bruce's ancestors (and in this book, his ancestors were less than noble). It kind of explains why his life and his family is always in such a mess. He's got a lot to make up for.

Like the "Crisis" story, there's a bad guy and a worse bad guy. In this case, Wayne arriving in the 21st century and blowing it up isn't the only problem. There was also that evil thing in the Bat Cave in 1640 that passed on an "infection" of evil (hey, I don't make this stuff up). It definitely plays a part in why Bruce is so messed up when he finally reaches the present, mentally and physically, although I'm not sure how it ended up becoming the "bat-thing" Vandal Savage killed in the stone age right before Bruce arrives (and which becomes the basis for Bruce's first "costume").

"Return" is a book that assumes you know what's going on. Although it's still exciting and compelling all by itself, there are too many questions it raises if you don't buy 50 DC comic books every month for ten or twenty years in a row and memorize all of the details. In spite of what I just said, it's still more or less a "clean" story that contains most of the answers to the questions it raises. It held my attention and was even a page-turner when all I wanted in life was to get a few hours sleep.

There's a lot I left out of the review, but if you haven't read "Return" yet, you'll need to get a copy and find out about the other connections that have now become part of the Legend of the Dark Knight. Despite all of my "complaints", I really liked it. I'm glad it was at my public library and it's a shame I have to return it. On the other hand, I have to give the next person a chance to experience the dilemma, the mystery, and the anguish of "the Return of Bruce Wayne."