It's clear that the very existence of the story in Batman #701-702 puzzles some readers, and for good reason. We've already seen most of this stuff before, and any reader able to read between the lines a BIT was able to have simply INFERRED most of the goings-on we see in these issues, set between the end of RIP and the beginning of Return of Bruce Wayne #1. In Batman #701, did we really need to see half an issue of Batman swimming out of the water and walking back to Wayne Manor? This issue, did we really need to see repetitions of scenes copied straight out of Final Crisis #1, 2 and 6? The short answer is No. However, for the big fan of Morrison's run, going over this territory again is not all that annoying, and we also get some great inner narrative, some...interesting art, and even a couple of new clues in the process.

In this issue the discerning reader will catch the clue that Dr. Hurt, for all else he may be (the Devil, Barbatos, Bruce's ancestor), may ALSO be Bruce's crazy brother from Pre-Crisis continuity. So, yeah, that's there. Another big can of worms. Did Darkside somehow cause the past to be rewritten that way as well? We don't know yet, and personally I'm not a big expert on Pre-Crisis continuity, so I'll have to leave that to those in the know. But I do know what Willowood Asylum is/was, and was quite jazzed to see the allusion to it in this issue. So, anyone who thinks that nothing was revealed in Batman #702 and it was a complete waste of paper, sorry to rain on your spiteful parade. Ya just gotta look harder! ;-)

Tony Daniel switched up his art for these issues. It's not just a case of him inking himself, no, he's purposely gone out of his way to give us a darker, sketchier, more overblown style. On the surface, this seems a regression, a callback to the '90s. Yet if you actually look at Daniel's own '90s work, it looks nothing like Batman #701-702. I'm not a big fan of Daniel's, but I think he's at the very least interesting. It's always interesting to see what he does--or TRIES to do--next with his art. He puts in a ton of effort. There's far too much detail in this art to equate it with Rob Liefeld. And there's far too much attention to layouts to charge him with just getting lazy and mailing in what might seem to be, on the surface, a far looser style than usual. On the one hand, the dark sketchiness of this art does seem to fit the story. On the other hand, however, let's be honest: Daniel continues to lack some fundamental storytelling and anatomy skills. I'm not an artist, but I've always gotten the impression that Daniel's various attempts at "edginess" would be much more effective if he just took a bit of time (a semester, a month, a week, a DAY even!) and went to somewhere like the Kubert School and learned a few fundamentals. Nevertheless, I count the art on Batman #702 to be a "win". Even the worst aspects of the art (the way he draws hands, Darkseid, and Batman's face) are at least INTERESTING. And frequently his chosen style does look pretty fitting (the title spread, the flashback panels, the pages set in pre-history).

Probably the deciding factor of this issue is how Morrison writes Bruce's narration. If you can't appreciate his writing here, since it's not really revealing anything new, then you'll probably find the issue worthless. If you CAN appreciate the actual prove, then you'll KNOW that it isn't saying much of anything new...but you'll at least be able to enjoy the flavor of language.

Like Daniel, Morrison also switches up his style for these issues. If you didn't tell me Morrison wrote these issues, I wouldn't know. That's not to say that the inner monologue isn't good. At the very worst, it's serviceable enough. And at its best, it's quite good. But, for Morrison, it just seems so...obvious, at times. We're not so used to his characters spelling out exactly what's going on and what they think of everything.

Still, do you see the double-standard here, from the critics' point of view? RIP and Final Crisis were criticized for being so obtuse and "difficult". Now Morrison gives a guided tour Bruce's journey during that time, and still he catches flack. But look at it this way, from now on future readers won't have to take a detour through Final Crisis in order to understand Morrison's Batman run. It's all right here now, contained in issues that say "Batman" on the cover.

Morrison also manages to inject new life into one of the most overused concepts of the last few decades: Superheroes as modern "myths". When Alan Moore quoted Nietzsche on "the superman/ubermensch" in 1982's Miracleman #1, it was a radical, brilliant notion. When Alex Ross painted realistic-looking gods in Kingdom Come, it was still cool as hell and impressive. But over the past 10-15 years the superheroes-as-gods trope has started to seem like a stale routine used to inject false gravitas into mainstream comics. It's become predictable and typical.

Still, Morrison's writing in Batman #702 causes us to think harder about the Bat-saga we've been presented with so far. When Bruce confronted Darkseid in Final Crisis #6, it was a cool scene. But with the added monologue found in Batman #702, it becomes a profound archetypal conflict: "He might have been a wolf once, a dragon or a tyrant. How many times in human history had this moment played out? The monster...and the man standing in his way?" Bruce is Beowolf and Darkseid is Grendel. Bruce is David and Darkseid is Goliath. The conflict becomes more profound due to Morrison's writing here, and it starts to make total sense why BATMAN would have to be the one to deal Darkseid the critical (if not exactly "fatal") blow in Final Crisis: Because Batman is a non-super-powered MAN. In other words, we've heard all about the myth of "superheroes as gods", but here Morrison is giving us a new twist on that, because Batman isn't a SUPERhero, yet his myth stands beside that of the supermen.

Other "mythic" jewels appear throughout the rest of the narration. Orion the New God and Orion the Hunter become one. Bruce being trapped in time is compared to Theseus in the labyrinth--and like Theseus, Bruce is also leaving a trail, the better to eventually escape. (And if Orion the New God, who also wounded Darkseid, is in some respect Bruce's mythic forbear, then what does it say that Orion the Greak myth eventually wedded Hypolyta? Is this Morrison making a sly allusion to the ever-possible Batman/Wonder Woman romance?)

In the end, I have to admit that the writing isn't what I would call "excellent". Still, there's a lot of skill in it, a lot more skill than you'd realize if you're just overwhelmed by how the story, on its surface, isn't totally "new". My advice to the naysayers is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It does appear that DC just offered Morrison and Daniel these two issues simply because they didn't have anything else planned. But that doesn't mean both creators couldn't've tried new things and expanded our understanding within this "rerun". In fact, that's just what they did: Daniel experimented a bit with his art and Morrison dropped a few jewels in his narration. Along the way, (in #701) we found out that Bruce's parents knew about the secret passageway in Wayne Manor and had warned Bruce about it, and (in #702) we found out that Dr. Hurt is ALSO Bruce's criminally insane brother, Thomas Wayne Jr., from Pre-Crisis.

The least essential issues of Morrison's Bat-saga? Probably. But not meaningless or worthless by any stretch, and still pretty damn spooky and thought-provoking IF you can get past the initial "rerun" sensation.