In the crappy tradition of the
Batman: RIP storyline comes the return of Bruce Wayne/Batman from the timestream in which he was caught. That's not to say that the individual stories of the
Bruce Wayne: The Road Home one-shots are crappy, but the manner in which they were released/are being released are. First, there has been the ever-delayed releases of current issues of the supposed-monthly
Batman and Robin and the mini-series
Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne, both by the questionably talented Grant Morrison.
This past week, I just picked up issue #5 (of 6) of the up-til-now-boring/lame Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne. Additionally, I picked up four one-shots (yes, FOUR issues) of the Bruce Wayne: The Road Home one-shots, featuring (in no particular order) Batgirl, Red Robin, Batman and Robin, and Outsiders. They were originally supposed to be released two issues per week, but apparently someone was slacking off. Since they weren't labeled, I had to look at the back of each comic to see the "To be continued in..." box to figure out some semblance of order. In each comic, Bruce Wayne appears to the other characters with no fanfare. I take it that the people in his life already know that he's back, but we, the readers, have not seen this come about yet. Maybe that's because DC Comics has only released issue #5 of the aforementioned Return comic. For me, the "return" really lost its impact because of the delayed and crazy release schedules. I'm going out on a limb here, but perhaps everything should have been pushed back to coincide? And releasing four comics of the same storyline at $2.99 in the same week? What about the Batman readers who are only kids who spend their allowance on comics? Can they afford to shell out $12-$15 in a single week on a single character? I know I wouldn't have been able to as a kid. DC is really doing a disservice to its younger readers. If kids aren't shown respect now, they're not going to show DC Comics respect later in life. Those kids can grow up to be adult comic collectors, too, you know. As an adult reader, I'm offended with being presented with all of this non-labeled material out of sequence. I don't watch my Mad Men episodes out of order. Why should I read my comic books that way?
With all that said, I will say that issue #5 of
Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne has been the best so far in that otherwise unnecessary series. Bruce's parents have been recently murdered, and he learns some not-so-great details about their lives that he probably wished he hadn't. I've only read two of the
Road Home one-shots so far (Batgirl, and Batman and Robin), but both were well-written and enjoyable. Perhaps, though, the stories would have fit better into their own series instead of one-shot issues so we the readers can, again, see some sequence to the events. I would have liked to have seen the characters' reactions/reunion with Bruce Wayne. I'm sure some were heartfelt.
Sadly, since the Batman: RIP storyline, I've really lost interest in the Dark Knight and his cast of supporting (and not-so-supporting) characters. Why? The delays, the out-of-sequence releases, the nonsense storylines, myriad of one-shots, revamping of series titles (and starting over at #1 issues), Batman rip-off characters like Knight and Squire taking over the Bat-titles, the thought (and fear) of the too-many-to-name upcoming Batman series, the concept (and title) of Batman, Inc., etc. Maybe I'll just stick to non-Bat titles until some of the titles fail and are cancelled and Batman becomes interesting again.
