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!