This small “missing chapter” story in the pages of Batman is the key to unlock a lot of the head-scratching bizarreness that Grant Morrison has been putting Bruce Wayne through, from Infinite Crisis to R.I.P. to the Return of Bruce Wayne. It’s still got Morrison’s trademark formula of what-the-frak divided by mystical infinity, but it’s becoming coherent enough to finally accept and follow. The payoff isn’t really this story itself – but rather, the ah-ha! moments of realization that are taking the murky and blurry logic of this giant story arc and bringing it all into focus.