Reviews

Batman: Povratak Brucea Waynea by Grant Morrison

rashthedoctor's review against another edition

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2.0

This is a follow up to the whole Batman R.I.P , Batman and Robin rub , which finally sees Bruce Wayne return from the DEAD. of course he doesnt take up the Batman mantle fulltime until later .

I'd be honest , i was not a huge fan of the whole Batman R.I.P storyline , much less of the aftermath. Although i did like Dick as Batman , but i absolutely dislike Damian as a character . But that's irrelevant to this story , my whole point is , despite people loving Batman RIP and being OK with the aftermath , i disliked the whole run . Of course I hadn't yet read this book .

Guess what ... I dislike it as well .

There's a story being told here but the wording is a whole lot of jagron and understanding it in one go is an achievement . The book tries and fails to be too clever, meanwhile the story was supposedly to be very cool with Bruch travelling through time and impacting history , but man time travel is such a boring and awful trope , i dont think its ever worked properly aside from some novels and back to the future .The shared time tales become too similar and formulaic , lacking in proper imagination .

The good bit is the book showcases Bruce's various talents , martial , deductive and intelligence. Rest is just meh at best

macthebrazen's review against another edition

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3.0

I want to like Grant Morrison, but everything I've read of his has been a mess. Fun for the cool concepts, but I had to look up recaps to try to keep up with the overarching story.

mruddock27's review against another edition

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3.0

Will have to reread for a better review/rerating.

howattp's review against another edition

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5.0

This is an excellent--an appropriately epic--tale of Bruce Wayne's return from the beginning of time to the present day. It's long, dark, and twisty, and Bruce Wayne's obsession with maintaining order and justice remains with him despite temporal displacement, memory loss, and the end of the world.

srreid's review against another edition

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3.0

A bit too marvel superheroey scifi than DC Gotham crimey grime.

colophonphile's review against another edition

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I have read and enjoyed many comics written by Grant Morrison, and then I have read others that struck me as a kind of low-grade metaphysical action writing: a spew of cultural information thrown at the rough grid that is the basic foundation of comics, with the expectation that readers would make sense of it, and credit him with the ability to construct disparate connections between far-flung subjects.

This book fits fully into the latter group. For all the strengths of such Morrison books as We3, his Animal Man writing, his run on the X-Men, his excellent Superman -- well, this collection of stories about Bruce Wayne's return from the depths of time is perhaps the strongest evidence of what could be called the "deceitful claptrap" thread running through other of his work.

On the surface, the idea is strong: Batman is the least super-powered, the least supernatural, of superheroes in the DC pantheon. To have him barrel through time, from prehistoric mythology through sea-faring pirates and Salem-era witchcraft, is to have a study in contrasts. Morrison knows what he's doing. He knows that Batman is a myth of a man, and that no myth as strong as his could grow to the fore without slowly tossing seeds back in the timeline -- all myths build on pre-existing myths, and the stronger the new myth the more likely the older ones are to come to appear less as precedent and more as prefiguring.

But the thesis is where the book stops being enjoyable. Beyond that, it is a series of pastiche renderings of various period cliches, each garbled just enough to appear mysterious, but in truth the mystery is really just sloppiness benefiting from a very strong brain and some accomplished illustrating partners.

I always thought Morrison's best work was his work-for-hire, when he had to limit his fathomless penchant for mythmaking to the contours of a pre-existing character. It was true of his X-Men, and of his Superman, and quite recently of his Batman, but this time around his worst inclinations got the better of him.

earlapvaldez's review against another edition

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4.0

I would like to see this more of an introduction to post-Crisis DC rather than a Crisis epilogue. Being a Grant Morrison work, I see that the narrating is superb, and it just ties everything left by Final Crisis in the open.

Some notes:
-Gotta love the Jonah Hex appearance here.

blackestclovers's review against another edition

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3.0

Never liked multiple artists on one series, even if I can understand why it was done. So far, least favourite Morrison Batman stuff, but I still liked and enjoyed it.

galamadrid917's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark

4.0

pages_and_reels's review against another edition

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4.0

Reading a Morrison book is like solving a puzzle. It involves a lot of turning pages back and forth. I had to keep checking [b:Batman & Robin: Batman vs. Robin|7395327|Batman & Robin Batman vs. Robin|Grant Morrison|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327948245s/7395327.jpg|9276736], [b:Batman: R.I.P.|3430164|Batman R.I.P.|Grant Morrison|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1526770785s/3430164.jpg|3471065] and [b:Batman: The Black Glove, Deluxe Edition|12105291|Batman The Black Glove, Deluxe Edition|Grant Morrison|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1344370308s/12105291.jpg|44693063], the previous books on his acclaimed Batman run, and it was a treat. This is what I love about Morrison. He expects the readers to make some effort on their part instead of spoonfeeding them.