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!