MORRISON BATM-ANNOTATIONS: RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE PART III

[The Return Of Bruce Wayne Act III - "Batman & Robin MUST DIE!"]

Batman and Robin #14 - "The Triumph of Death"

• Alfred sets the clock that leads to the Bat-cave to 10:47, the time the Waynes died...
• Joker tells Damian that his real fight is with Doctor Hurt and the Black Glove.
• There's nothing anyone can do to stop the dominoes from falling...
• Poison nail-polish! He manipulated Damian into a locked room scenario! Brilliant!
• Upside down crucifix of Pyg (just like how he dies in #666)
• Goat in Gotham, black sheep Thomas Wayne, the Devil...
• The rats, the bats!
• Did Hurt create Pyg? He seemed to already be crazy before Hurt found him...
• Hurt practicing his shot that we saw last issue on pumpkins! Brief bloom...
• The better Batmobile blows up!
• DAY 2!
• Pyg is perfect, more than human...
• Media, Mayor, Gotham underworld to witness Hurt and Pyg's performance...
• More watermelon target practice!
• Dick tells Alfred he misread the clues because he thought it had to do with himself, the domino mask of Robins...
• Joker wants Dick and Damian to work with him!
• Performance on Park Row, Crime Alley! The Monarch Theater!
• Alfred prepped the Mansion and Cave per Dick's instructions...
• Bat-copter!
• Hurt turning Gotham into Babylon, everyone's a junkie!
• Rats ate the young of the Goat because the Batmobile self-detonated?
• Joker venom in the popcorn!
• Gordon betrays Dick, junkie irrationality!
• The real battle between Joker and Hurt! The knights have fallen, the board is Hurt's!
• Joker always has a hand with the wild card! And a nuclear bomb!

Return of Bruce Wayne #5 - "Masquerade"

• Tim was the longest Robin!
• Darkseid used Batman's willingness to survive as a weapon: the psycho merge failed, the Omega Sanction pushes him to accumulate enough energy to blow a hole in time once he reaches the present.
• I'm assuming based on narration from Batman #702 that Bruce banked on Superman's super-hearing across time to hear his voice/heartbeat in the past. Superman had just come back from the 31st Century to arrive in the thick of the Final Crisis, locking onto the no more heartbeat of Bats to destroy Command D and emerge with the clone-corpse. Maybe with the compression of time due to the Forever Pit Darkseid singularity, Superman knew somehow that Bruce was in the past. He then went with Rip Hunter, Hal Jordan, and Booster Gold to the paleolithic era to find the voice recording.
• Marsha LaMarr! Killed by husband John Mayhew when she cheated on him with Mangrove Pierce, who Simon Hurt skinned and wore to Mayhew's party... 
• Best friends with Martha Wayne...
• The book is from Mordecai Wayne, the papers from Jack Valor. That must have been what he took out of the Casket when Catherine opened it for him.
• One of the Doctors called LaMarr, could it have been Hurt?
• New persona: The Chump!
• The men outside with Marsha...
• Mayor James Jessop...
• Bristol Ferry...
• Mayhew hasn't directed the Black Glove yet...
• Roderick & Betsy Kane, parents of Martha.
• The wasps...
• So mind donked Bruce is the freaking PI who went missing and compiled the dossier which was used in RIP!
• Roddy had a stroke after Martha's death...
• Besty believes that Thomas paid to have Martha killed and faked his death (or someone else was in his place who died) because Thomas visited her after the killing and told her he turned Martha into a drug addict. Obviously, it's Simon who did this.
• Pearls are the same as the White Fawn necklace! Thomas gave to Martha as an anniversary gift...
• Used to identify for the assassin...
• Bad Tommy: stolen drugs, rape charges. All faked by Hurt (or committed...)
• Secret room! The one the Waynes didn't want Bruce to go into! Betsy says they used the room to treat Thomas...
• New face, new name...
• The keys! The keys that Hurt has in the present!
• Martha's relationship with the Kanes deteriorated...
• Wayne Manor built over the strange caves of the Miagani!
• The crypt of Alan and Cat, recently opened: "Deep Into That Darkness, Peering..."
• Total solar eclipse...
• Willowood Hospital! Doctor Hurt!
• Carter Nichols! Time hypnosis designed to help PTSD. Hurt tries to push him to sin and pride, wants him to join a current Black Glove!
• Timebox requires power...
• So Hurt caused Roderick's stroke when he refused to take part in the Black Glove!
• The visitor, Marsha!
• Crippled man: Batman beware, the hole in things...
• Bruce recognizes Nichols!
• Nichols and Thomas Wayne were peers.
• Black Glove: Commissioner Loeb, Mayor James Jessop, John Mayhew, Carter Nichols...
• Costume based on Thomas Wayne's! The plan is to scare "Thomas Wayne" or whoever planned the death of the Waynes by dressing up as the ghosts of them.
• Dark Knight, trigger phrase...
• Black Mass under the Black Sun...
• Midnight Masquerade! It's all a trap, the weaving of the Ancestor Box!
• Remembers playing the Bat!
• The Black Glove, led by Hurt, using Alan Wayne's crypt to access the secret tunnels and find the bat casket! Summon Barbatos again to lead them!
• Ceremony of the Bat like in Dark Night, Dark City!
• The kiss was poison!
• In DN/DC Hurt says they didn't understand Barbatos but now they can use the ceremony to wield him.
• Human bat, same terminology used in DN/DC.
• Marsha wields similar dagger to Riddler.
• Could this be footage in The Black Glove? Could Bruce/Chump be Mangrove Pierce?
• Soul as in reputation, destroy one destroy the other. Sacrifices to Barbatos! The dossier to destroy the Waynes, ruin Thomas with rumors!
• Mentions of Crime Bible and Religion of Evil, Darkseid worship! Red rock and rage, Vandal Savage/Cain, Dark Side fire pits of Apokolips! Hurt was an acolyte already!
• Marsha did it all for immortality.
• The bells are ringing...
• Timebox calls Barbatos, but Bruce grabs it!
• Hole in time opened and the Bat follows Bruce! Both of their eyes glow red!
• Roderick dies...
• Carter Nichols rejects Hurt, who condemns him to obscurity...
• Cyborg senses static...
• Tim wants to neutralize the omega charge on Bruce with the cowl...
• Why haven't the heroes returned if they have a time machine...
• Sound like bells...
• Bruce/Archivist arrives with the time sphere from #2! AND HE LOOKS JUST LIKE ORION with the little ears!

Batman and Robin #15 - "The Knight, Death, and The Devil"

• Joker dances with a skeleton! It's probably Catherine Wayne, but I like to think it's Dominque the human bat from DN/DC.
• We're at Day Three! The eclipse! Alfred lets fake Thomas/Hurt in without struggle, all according to plan...
• So the lawyer was Professor Pyg!
• The promise of more backstory between Bruce as a boy and Doctor Hurt echoes Hurt's line to Bruce in Batman #678 ("How you've grown"). It also advances a bit the notion that perhaps Hurt planned the deaths of all three Waynes, as suggested by Joe Chill back in Batman #673, so that he could take on the role of Thomas, with this plan being irretrievably ruined by Bruce surviving, and telling the world that Thomas was dead.
• The clock is set, the cave prepared, they knew he would come back, they knew he would make it!
• Gotham infected with the drug virus, fake Thomas proposes cure at high cost.
• Joker is using the nuke as a threat to coerce Dick and Damian to working with him? Or something else? All's we know is he left it in the bat bunker.
• Joker leaves a banana peel behind...
• And the chess/dominoes metaphors continue. Joker's story about "Big Mike" is almost definitely the Archangel Michael, and talking about Lucifer's fall as the "primal gag" ties in nicely with the red/black motif and also the Fall of Darkseid.
• Gordon beats the drug with adrenaline? Anger?
• Pyg blesses the snail = deuce = double/dark twin = Devil! He loves his animal symbols.
• Crawling from the box! Harry Harlow! The despair pit!
• The Hurt helicopter arrives...
• We're back to #13! We'll improvise, that's the thing about performances!
• Hurt destroys the Knight piece statue.
• He gives Dick a hematoma with the bullet caliber specifically chosen. But Damian can save his life if he gives up his soul to Hurt/Devil! The 666 future arriving!
• They know he's Black Thomas!
• Damian doesn't believe in souls, but Hurt says giving it up can save Dick's life; he'll understand after his service what he's lost...
• Hurt says that Thomas and Martha took him in! Could he have been the one in the secret room, the one with the rape allegations and drug involvement? Don't go in there Bruce, bad Tommy is being treated!
• He wants to do what he set out to in ROBW #5, destroy the legacy of the Waynes and that of Batman!
• Another Ceremony of the Bat, black sun summons Barbatos and unlocks the box of secrets, the box of immortality!
• Remember who left the box in the cave, who they are stalling for...
• The Miagani bat whistle!
• AND INSIDE! A BATARANG AND A GOTCHA NOTE! FUCK YES!
• DOUBLE PUNCH!
• 99 Fiends rush in...
• The clock door to cave is set...
• Devil... meet Bat-God!
• HE'S BACK! AND THE EYES THAT GAZE UPON ULTIMATE EVIL!
• GOTCHA! IT'S ALL OVER!

Return of Bruce Wayne #6 - "The All-Over"

• LET'S GOOOOOO!
• Bruce arrives before the heroes do at the Vanishing Point!
• Batman, the last story. Pearls, the gun, and the bell!
• Lazarus transfusion from the Archivist, heals Bruce.
• Bruce describes the situation as familiar, because the urgency of the moment, and being hunted, is how Batman has spent his entire existence. At that comment, the original menace to Bruce, a bullet, is recorded as the absolute last detail to go into the archive of the universe.
• Omega Sanction, Hyper-Adapter, Hunter-Killer, living curse machine, quarantine temporarily by Archivists.
• Each time jump brings Bruce closer to death, the only escape.
• Mystery of where the Nichols engine went, maiden voyage of the first time-probe = Bruce.
• Bruce joins with the Archivist to hasten off the Hyper-Adapter since it locks onto Bruce persona.
• Mind wiped for a reason...
• New beginning of Batman...
• Escape back to the present, core birth of Batman activated, Bruce + bat + bell + blood, hyper-adapter locks on...
• Nichols engine used to build time-sphere around heroes, that's what the forcefield was in #2! The ultimate time machine!
• Last archive, saved in the black hole, reboot the universe, connect both ends...
• The heat death of the universe, the All-Over!
• Not to know Tim, not yet...
• Cowl emitting omega energy, the scent Hyper Adapter tracks...
• Plan with the Archivists, but he had to forget so the Hyper-Adapter wouldn't find out by the time it broke quarantine. A trick to strand it here in the 21st century!
• Omega attacks Bruce with Mother and Father trauma box curses!
• Adapter arrives, assimilates Archivist, time to unleash Omega and blow a hole through time!
• Apophenia bomb! Hanged man, Annie necklace, ka pow gunshot, eclipse, pearls, constellation, Orion, hunter, haha, aces, knight, black glove, upside down bat...
• Bat Bruce is himself a "hanged man," the Tarot card representing an apotheosis after a trial.
• Bruce even has one eye here, following the Odin myth (with whom the Hanged Man is often associated), since he's died and come back and in the process gained wisdom - wisdom we'll soon see as the First Truth of Batman. This is Morrison's Bat-God Incarnate.
• Hunter's time sphere disabled by Hyper-Adapter.
• But it was a trap for the Hyper-Adapter, strand it in the 21st century and let the super-heroes finish it off!
• Any attempt to separate the two means death...
• Trap it in the ultimate Nichols engine, rigged to explode backwards through time!
• Adapter becomes giant bat! The one that attacked Dick! The one that Vandal Savage killed! The one that flew through the window!
• Dick knew the whistle from the Bat attacking him?
• Gotcha! Bruce told Jack Valor to write it back in #3!
• Omega energy destroying time, only leaving upon Batman's death!
• Darkseid trying to incarnate in Doctor Hurt!
• In the carcass of the Fourth World, Darkseid's afterthought is the Omega Energy. Give up Batman!
• The beginning, the Ten-Eyed Tribes cutting out fear and demons, cutting out the trauma of the dark age...
• Time is about to blow, condensed into a single point, like the Archivists said! The Supercontext of the Invisibles! Metron was the old man! Last of the New Gods (who were actually brought back in FC #7), he must speak to Batman in fragments, cannot interact with Earth/Fifth World in unbroken aspect. It was his absolute experiment!
• Batman must turn Darkseid's design upside down! The Hanged Man! The upside-down bat! Summon the all-over and make it yours! You are the Shining Ones, the superheroes are the final gods!
• Ring the bells! The bells of rebirth! The all-over is for evil!
• Supes and Diana render Bruce clinically dead so the omega energy can disperse.
• Bring him back, tell him Gotham is in trouble!
• Jack and the Miagani code the batarang from the utility belt with the whistle! Put the Gotcha note!
• The Hyper-Adapter infected a human host with Darkseid evil 250 years ago...
• The first truth of Batman: he was never alone!
• Brought back right before Hurt arrives...
• The crypt is open...
• The bells still ring... the night's not over...
• BATMAN IS BACK. BRUCE WAYNE IS BACK.

Batman and Robin #16 - "Black Mass"

• THE GRAND FINALE!
• DN/DC! The bat = Hyper Adapter! But is it travelling forwards or backwards in time...
• Black Thomas and the bat! Mystery box = casket, eternity signs = cave symbols...
• Gets his name from Simon Magus, his first deal with the devil as the devil!
• Hurt seems to cargo cult it up; he hears "Omega Adeptus", the most adept magician, and thinks Barbatos is calling him a kickass wizard.
• Is it the voice of Darkseid = Omega = Hyper-Adapter?
• Grail of Darkseid's evil, starry venom of black cosmic immortality...
• He bites into the bat trapped in there!
• Bruce came through the fireplace!
• Like the Odyssey! A big fight!
• Hurt prolonged life with New God science and blood magic (hence the bathe in your blood and Jack the Ripper stuff, also the Mangrove Pierce skinning).
• Railroad fund went to El Penitente!
• The Manor was set by Alfred to leave only one escape for Hurt so he could be trapped in the cave!
• Batman RIP = Rot in Purgatory!
• Love the use of the burning Wire Mommy to mess Pyg up with the speaker!
• Gordon's okay!
• Hurt's mind poisoned by contact with the Evil Gods, Thomas Wayne tried to treat him in the hidden room, but he repays them by planning their deaths!
• Hurt slips on the banana peel! Brilliant! The fall of Lucifer, the primal fall of Hurt! That's what it feels like to be the devil in hell!
• I get the point of the Raven quote now - it was peering deep into the darkness that got Bruce to do the isolation experiment which got Hurt into his life which led to this entire disaster.
• Beat him at cards (RIP), beat him at chess (B&R), Joker trumps deuce!
• Bones are in the yard! Hurt is buried in the Wayne Cemetery where he belongs!
• Joker opened the tunnels to deal with Hurt himself haha!
• Damian defuses the bomb!
• Joker wants to keep the gag since he doesn't know Bruce is back, but the only thing funnier than good guy Joker is Batman coming back and beating him to the punch!
• Three days later! Corruption in city hall exposed!
• Bruce lets them stay as Batman and Robin!
• Bruce reveals to the public that he and Wayne Enterprises have been funding Batman!
• The war against crime goes global!
• BATMAN INCORPORATED!

MORRISON BATM-ANNOTATIONS: RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE PART II

RIP: THE MISSING CHAPTER - "GOTCHA!"

Return of Bruce Wayne #3 - "The Bones of Bristol Bay"

• Flashback to Omega! Remember... Gotcha!
• Journal of Jack Valor, 1734.
• Blackbeard! Black Pirate!
• Not sure if Thatch is supposed to be Vandal Savage or not.
• Black Rose! Three roses for Orion's belt... ship on fire...
• Black Pirate and the fabled Indian treasure horde of the Miagani, hidden beneath the Gotham county catacombs.
• Only a ghost knows the way...
• Israel Hands!
• Jack Loggins/Jack Valor!
• Divided deer tribe joined the Bat tribe in the caves when pilgrims came.
• Anthro cave paintings!
• Dick and Damian return to Bludhaven/Command D, finding the psycho-merge machine, punctures on the cowl they found match crown...
• JLA black alert, no news from group since they left for Vanishing Point...
• World threatening Batman, rogue, collision course with the 21st century!
• Bat symbols carried back to Europe and found in 19th century architecture...
• The cowl in the secret Bat-Cave!
• Current year of this episode is 1718, the last one was 1640...
• Jack Valor, grandfather the first Black Pirate, passed down, like Man to Boy...
• Show death who's master, could Thatch be Savage?
• Miagani, descendants from the first Boy, allow Black Pirate Valor to hide in the cave system.
• Stalactite that Dick finds, not fully carved into Barbatos, referred to as Lord of the Night & the Dark Sun (Orion!)
• Great mystery, duty passed on from Boy...
• As long as the cowl never leaves the cave, the terrible day will never come, the All-Over!
• Not fully eclipsed sun instead of the one we saw in B&R #12...
• Utility belt, boots! The belt must have been retrieved after Annie's death, the cowl kept since the cave times.
• The eclipse is starting... the Hunter's belt... Wayne... the Sun eclipsed...
• Never give up the fight!
• Gotham's a bad place, born under a black sun...
• Jack acted as Black Pirate, but later wrote down the words and names and places Bruce told him.
• Van Derms, wealthy siblings in Gotham, knowledge of the Miagani.
• Put the journal and papers in the casket! He sees the old book of Mordecai and... something else...
• The final thing... the awful midnight rite...
• The bells! The bells of the all-over!
• Time jump! Haunted Wayne Manor, unfinished, since Joshua Wayne died in the caves protecting slaves.
• Jonah Hex! Lays out dead man's hand! HAHA, two 8's two aces! Joker finishes the final finger!
• Two men sent by some boss... kill the stranger...
• The Bat gunslinger!

Batman #701 - "The Missing Chapter Part I: The Hole in Things"

• Surviving is what Batman does, since the death of his parents.
• Helicopter crashes, Hurt makes it out...
• Weather charts, stock charts, constellation of Sagittarius...
• 30 Days to Omega...
• The hole, the gun, the pearls...
• The next time you wear it will be the last...
• Ellie! Now a receptionist at Wayne Tower!
• Something gnawing inside, a doubt that stirred...
• Hurt is not in the wreckage, a ghost, an empty space, hiding in the gaps, the absences...
• Clock stop at 1:15, same time the helicopter crashed in the water...
• RIP was the death of Batman, Final Crisis was the burial, and now we have his rebirth...
• Sleep for three days...
• Bruce knew of the hidden room in the manor! The hidden Bat-Cave accessed by Hurt when he took control of the Manor. How did Hurt know of its existence?
• Why did Thomas and Martha tell Bruce never to enter the room?
• Sickness at the root of the family tree...
• Why did Hurt want to destroy the Waynes?
• 27 days to Omega...
• In Superman's world, everything is mythology...
• They can deal with the false accusations, the masquerade bat costume is gone, Bruce leaves for the Final Crisis.
• Bruce is struck with the heart of emptiness, the oblivion fallout from RIP, he needs the resurrection, the re-evaluation of the mission, he needs to become Batman again!

Batman #702 - "The Missing Chapter Part II: Batman's Last Case"

• Bruce relies on Clark to hear the final recording, the message in the bottle.
• Radion Bullet, the God Bullet, eternally fired over and over again.
• Batman presents the theory to Wally, which he mentions to Jay Garrick in FC #2.
• The bullet is the blueprint for every bullet ever: just like how the New Gods project themselves down from the 4th World.
• Bats tried to kill the nerve cluster in Kraken's arm, render the ring inert, but she didn't have one.
• He felt the trap that existed since the day he was born, the inevitability of death! The final box!
• Simyan and Mokkari tell Darkseid of the psycho-merge failure, but nab one last corpse to use.
• Bruce lurks around Command D, waiting for a perfect time to strike. The Evil Gods could not prepare for the unpredictable, the hole in things is the impossibility of Batman!
• Call back to Batman #665, convo with Gordon: could they be talking about Evil, Crime, the Devil, all three?
• Simyan and Mokkari succumb to the putrid evil aura of Darkseid.
• Batman vs Darkseid: Justice vs Oblivion. Survival vs Annihilation. Mythology in a thousand layers. The hero and the monster, the dragon, the wolf.
• Batman already outraced the Omega Sanction when he was eight years old and didn't succumb to grief.
• New mythology! Humanity gazes upon ultimate evil and says...
• GOTCHA!
• Bells and thunder, the death that is life, the birth and death of the Batman, the dawn of the Fifth World!
• The final box to trap Batman, the one set since he was born, the Ancestor Box, the poison at the root of the family tree...
• The bells of the Ancestor Box, the bells of the bat-casket...
• The Hyper-Adapter: learns, knows, bonds, sentient Omega Sanction, living to become unescapable fate, forever death!
• The leviathan, the hyper fauna, the life trap, using history, tailor made synthetic lives, the one thing you can't beat... TIME!
• But what's the other thing...
• THE BATMAN!
• Cage of spinning events, coincidences, blood lines, connections, the apophenia of the Joker, of the Bat-computer, of the escape from the box, the trap...
• The well from Batman #673, when Bruce realized that we all die, the forever pit at the center of creation.
• Could Bruce have felt the Ancestor Box weaving time way back in his childhood?
• The hole in things, the grave of his parents, the well that led to the catacombs beneath, the cave in Nanda Parbat of Thogal, the missing portrait of Black Thomas, the hidden rooms, vacant tombs...
• The funeral of Batman from Gaiman's Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?
• The Willowood Asylum...
• The Forever Pit at the center of the world, the Hole In Things that is Hurt, the black hole piece that can never fit, the piece that is void, created by Darkseid's fall after being wounded by Orion.
• But Batman is the Hunter, Batman becomes Orion and wounds Darkseid beyond repair with the god-bullet. He also gets shot, but this time by the Omega Sanction.
• It's only a hole... Darkseid is gone...
• Clark, Tim, and Rip Hunter listen to a recording of all this from Bruce. Message in a bottle to Superman.
• Beyond life and death, Bruce from #673/Thogal Cave watches his funeral before it happens.
• Time is the Omega Sanction...
• Three graves for the Waynes.
• Bruce arrives in the Stone Age, removing the cowl, infused with Omega Energy.
• Memory failing, doesn't even remember who he's talking to...
• Sounds like bells, time is moving...
• Anthro draws the Metron symbol on the cave wall, then dies.
• Records the message before he forgets: leave a trail like Theseus, mark it with a Bat...
• The last case, the ultimate trial, survive!
• IT NEVER ENDS!

Batman and Robin #13 - "The Garden of Death"

• Simon Hurt! Thomas Wayne!
• Dominoes, white on black...
• He hired Joe Chill to kill his wife and son.
• Now you'll never tell...
• Thomas Wayne returns, lost memory cover, fake burial...
• You can see people sneezing and blowing their noses throughout the whole book!
• When the black sun shines...
• Hurt wants to fulfill the 666 future, corrupt Damian, but will Damian accept the deal with the devil in order to save Gotham...
• Dick thinks Hurt is finished, but Hurt shoots him in the back of the head!
• THREE DAYS EARLIER...
• Joker has new para-persona post Batman-Omega.
• Joker lays a trail of dominoes, a Mexican train, but Doctor Hurt has ridden it back to Gotham.
• Oberon Sexton was a real guy, but Joker found out he killed his wife and buried him in with her.
• Chain reaction of luring the Devil back to Gotham? The first kill of Toad was a way to prime it. Hurt did mention the inevitable confrontation with the Joker...
• All drug business leaves Gotham, they know that the big bad wolf is coming down.
• The mayor is compromised, we already saw that back in RIP.
• Bruce referred to Gordon as 'Jim', Dick refers as 'Commissioner'.
• Bat subway, more train imagery...
• Three days, total solar eclipse...
• Cops prefer Dick-Bats haha!
• So the antidote was left behind by Pyg as a trojan horse! New virus activated by common cold!
• Joker is the wild card, his new joke is that he wants everybody to take him seriously...
• Damian refutes Joker's thesis from back in Batman #680: it's all an act, he is a genius and he always has a plan and everything is designed!
• New Batmobile shot down! Dollotron ambush!
• Blackgate invaded, Pyg freed! Perfect...

Return of Bruce Wayne #4 - "Dark Knight, Dark Rider"

• Van Derms are massacred by the twin enforcers of Vandal Savage and Black Thomas.
• They take the casket and Catherine Van Derm.
• The mother prays for a dark angel, Bruce Wayne answers!
• Alan Wayne narration!
• Savage wants to unlock the casket to activate the end of the world. His cancer hurts so bad since he can't die that the end would be a release?
• Savage has a French gimmick now, but was betrayed by Napoleon Bonaparte! He always gets betrayed, like in #1 with the Neanderthals!
• Midnight Horse, Injun mystic who can speak Miagani language.
• Bat-people have secrets to turn the sky upside down...
• They also think that within the casket is the key to immortality...
• Black Thomas!
• Tampering with the casket will destroy the contents inside.
• Bells, the bells of Barbatos!
• Statues beneath Wayne Manor, paintings of Darius and everyone...
• Black Thomas was there in Dark Night, Dark City during the ritual to summon the Bat-God.
• Drank the starry venom...
• Dark god opens the box... bells summon another from the shadows who will bring the wicked to account...
• Jerome Van Derm...
• Black Thomas, Old Gambler...
• All days seem like yesterday...
• Vandal remembers Bruce from #1!
• Summon the everlasting day...
• Alan wanted to kill himself because of his father's projects with Pinkney, the architecture and building representing a garden of broken headstones that mocked the future. The dark architecture was something that brought wickedness to Gotham and Alan believed a house unfinished to be better than a house haunted.
• Alan meets his future wife, Catherine.
•  Bruce gives the white fawn necklace back to Catherine.
• All the days of the world is one day and he must be strong for us all! Bruce experiences his jumps through time as one collective experience, one big tapestry woven by the Hyper-Adapter.
• The Miagani whistle opens the casket!
• Are you one too? Does Black Thomas see Bruce as a New God???
• Alan Wayne feels that everything from that night was part of some grand design, the same way Jack Valor felt: they can feel the Ancestor Box, the Omega Sanction, time itself weaving myth around the return of Batman.
• Kenneth Wayne born and Catherine dead in childbirth.
• Black Thomas leaves on the SS Orion to go be Jack the Ripper I guess.
• Catherine and Alan finish the Wayne Manor and he builds the Garden of Death as a beacon in time, a mark of the bat.
• What is within the casket? Vacant grave, and something beyond...
• Bruce time jump to 80's Gotham, but what is the book in his hand? Mordecai's journal? Alan Wayne's journal?
• Hit by a car!
• Broken Gotham, crime corruption & chaos!

MORRISON BATM-ANNOTATIONS: RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE PART I

BATMAN VS ROBIN

Batman and Robin #10 - "The Haunting of Wayne Manor"

• Damian leads a board meeting to confront the financial irregularities in Wayne Enterprises.
• Charity fund for railroad victims set up in Thomas Wayne's memory, donations have been on steady increase.
• Finance bro Treadwell combative...
• All of the prior Black Glove members have been killed except for Texan businessman.
• Russian general who's neck got snapped found inside alligator.
• Oberon Sexton thinks Domino Killer is targeting Bruce Wayne, trying to kill Black Glove members, believes that Wayne was member along with Jezebel Jet...
• Dick, Damian, and Alfred do mystery hunting in abandoned Wayne Manor.
• No power post Sombrero booby-traps.
• JLA thinks Bats displaced by Darkseid Omega Effect, Tim thinks clues left in past.
• Wayne Manor exists for over 200 years, cave system beneath in use since Stone Age.
• WAYNE PATRIARCHS
• Mordecai
• Black Sheep Thomas
• Darius
• Joshua
• Solomon
• Alan
• Kenneth
• Patrick
• Silas
• Thomas
• Black Thomas led devil worshippers in 1760's, bat demon of Miagani tribe, bloody bargains...
• History of Gotham with Bat Gods, Bat Tribes, Bat Devils...
• Mordecai = Bruce?
• What is the book in Mordecai's hand...
• Casket in Joshua's hands...
• Constellation of Orion over burning ships, Orion over fire...
• Could Bruce be in the present... changed...
• El Penitente wanted Sexton to kill Dick Grayson...
• Mexican Train, 99 Fiends, 3rd hierarchy...
• Sweet Belial, Duke Zepar...
• Mordecai portrait rediscovered in 1800's, doesn't fit with genealogy...
• Joshua & Solomon were conductors on Underground railroad network...
• Three roses, three stars on Orion's belt, symbols of the Hunter hang over the fireplace...
• Talia machinations, she didn't even meet Damian until he was eight!?!?
• Secret passage not on Wayne Manor layout, knight armor with rose + bat...
• Damian new spine = motor control!?!
• Talia's executioner...
• Another secret Bat-Cave, candelabras, Batman symbol, writing of Barbatos and Thomas on walls...
• Alfred discovers hidden Corpse Road in Wayne cemetery along with lost Garden of Death...
• Damian and Oberon Sexton!

Return of Bruce Wayne #1 - "Shadow on Stone"

• Bruce in the Stone Age!
• Man, Boy, Surly, Giant, Joker.
• Lois Lane Rocketship from Final Crisis.
• Old Man Anthro dead from FC #7, cave drawings in wall of Metron's symbol and the Trinity logos
• Primordial Gotham, things happen here that can't happen anywhere else...
• Shining Ones = New Gods.
• Old Man's story of meeting Metron, gaining fire and knowledge.
• Deer people, Blood Mob.
• When Shining Ones comes it's the All-Over...
• Head scrambled from Omega Sanction, Bat-Signal and Superman cape in trunk of Lois-shuttle
• Necklace, White Fawn, passed from man to boy to man...
• Morrison's starting to set up the pearl-necklace iconography for Boy -- his dad's clutching it, and he's watching his father (and family) die.
• Vandal Savage, chief who scares death, so he got his immortality already?
• Giant Bat-Beast, skinned and killed by Savage...
• Fever dreams of Bat: night, terror, superstitious, omen, creature, black, terrible, bat, disguise, man, bat...
• Deer Tribe becomes Bat-People, Boy becomes primordial Robin.
• Solar eclipse looks exactly like symbol of Orion's helmet!
• Boy escapes but Bruce is gone...
• Supes, Hal, Booster, and Rip Hunter arrive in Stone Age, they are looking for Bruce; tracking Omega radiation.
• Batman has no memory, but if he makes it back to the 21st century everyone dies...
• Bruce awakens in Puritan times, speech improves.
• Girl, calls him Master Demon.
• Dead man in water...
• Leviathan in the water, she refers to as the horse he rode in on?
• Time travel across the history of Gotham!

Batman and Robin #11 - "Boneyard"

• Doctor Hurt is back!
• So he took the guise of El Penitente to absolve himself from sin, a clean slate to commit more atrocity. Does Hurt believe in God? If he's the Devil... does he care?
• Dark Twin, Double You, claim what is rightfully his...
• Paint in secret Bat-Cave is new, within a year...
• Secret rail-way, the Corpse Road! Same location in Joshua Wayne portrait...
• 99 Fiends have come to the Wayne Cemetery.
• Damian's new spine is remote controlled, Talia hires Deathstroke to pilot and kill Dick!
• Stalactite in shape of Barbatos, devil bat of Miagani summoned by Black Thomas in 1765.
• Energy source blocks out transmission to Alfred, some kind of light ahead...
• Naeberius can sense Barbatos waking beneath the ground...
• Alan Wayne's crypt, center piece of Garden of Death...
• Domino found in Naeberius's lapel, Sexton thinks they were sent by the Killer.
• Damian knows Sexton's accent is fake, thinks that he's the time displaced Bruce Wayne?!?!
• Why did the Fiends come to Alan Wayne's crypt? Looking for something long buried...
• Dick emerges, ravaged, we don't know why, but he has the same casket in the Joshua portrait!

Return of Bruce Wayne #2 - "Until the End of Time"

• Leviathan dragon, sea monster...
• Annie, necklace with symbols of Superman and Wonder Woman!
• Vanishing Point! Archivists!
• Omega Energy trail leads there, needle in a cosmic haystack, somewhere in Space B...
• Infestation of Hyper-Fauna in the Vanishing Point, the Leviathan is the same...
• Bruce takes the guise of Mordecai, the dead man in the water when he arrived...
• Widow of Matthew Tyler, Tyler family/Hourman...
• Flemish painter Van Derm...
• Brother Malleus...
• Annie lost parents over sea from Bristol Bay. Is she from England, a pilgrim? Then how did she get the necklace presumably made from the images in Anthro's cave paintings...
• Martin Van Derm sketches Mordecai portrait. The book in hand is journal so he can record and remember.
• Memory loss from Omega Sanction...
• Eclipse of the Sun, Devil's false night-in-day. Old Dragon walks by night...
• Mordecai was sent to kill Annie, she prayed for a savior, Bruce came along with the Dragon...
• Hidden people, the Miagani, Bat people, Bat Tribe...
• She worships Bright Gods, old lords of the land and sky, gods of the wheel of time and the never-ending world, and all the space beyond... New Gods!
• Bruce wounds the Dragon, but something is happening...
• The Archivist is Bruce! Traps the heroes in a force field, steals the Time-Sphere back to the 21st century!
• Darkseid took his memories, relied on his will to survive, booby trapping him into a doomsday weapon to destroy the present!
• Annie puts curse on Malleus/Nathaniel Wayne and the whole family!
• Martin Van Derm keeps finished portrait and passes down book of Mordecai.
• The Devil was not yet done with Gotham...
• Bruce wakes up in Bristol Bay, burning ships...
• Referred to as the Black Pirate by...
• Blackbeard! (possibly Vandal Savage?)

Batman and Robin #12 - "Mexican Train"

• So adrenaline kicked in the neural link from #10.
• The Fiends get the casket.
• So Dick was attacked by a giant Bat creature in the bowels of the Wayne caves. Hallucination, or maybe a connection to the Stone Age Bat...
• Wayne Manor built by Nathan Van Derm for Darius Wayne designed like "W", add the lych-way and the paths of the Garden of Death and it becomes giant Bat Signal!
• Dick gets payback from Slade for Bludhaven back in Infinite Crisis.
• Talia reveals she has a clone brewing! Damian wants to stay as Robin, rejecting his Al Ghul legacy. Talia banishes him.
• Crime bosses in Gotham hear of arrival of Doctor Hurt, Gotham on its knees in two days time!
• Final member of the Black Glove with Doctor Hurt, who is the Domino Killer...
• So whatever attack Dick caused the energy and the radio interference...
• Bruce's Bat cowl! And an Eclipse symbol of Orion above it! Alert the JLA!
• Oberon Sexton, the Domino Killer...
• IS THE JOKER!!!
• In the game Mexican Train, unused dominoes are kept in the “boneyard”; the boneyard, of course, is a synonym for a graveyard, which relates both to Sexton’s last name and the name “Gravedigger.” 
• "the fact that all the Black Glove victims, as well (seemingly) as all of Hurt’s goons, wear domino masks."