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That was how long it took before I had to stop reading and let my brain rest for a bit. Here are a few questions I have after reading this book: Is Bruce Wayne his own great great great grandfather? His own grandfather maybe? Did Bruce just pop into his ancestors' bodies and hijack them for a while, or was that ancestor actually Bruce Wayne for his entire life? Did Bruce's own actions in the past, influenced by his Batman persona, cause the circumstances that resulted in him becoming Batman in the present? (I don't mean his actions caused his parents' deaths, rather, his actions may have caused Wayne Manor to be located on a batcave and whatnot - in other words, not why he became a vigilante, but why he became "Batman" instead of, say, "Sidewinder: the Serpent of Justice.") So, yeah, my head hurts a little. But I love it.

The more of Morrison's Batman that I read, the more I'm convinced he's creating an epic story along the lines of his New X-Men run. Have you ever actually sat down and read that whole run from start to finish? That thing is basically just one forty-something issue story broken down into different acts. And you really have to read it about 3 or 4 times to even began to catch everything.

As far as I can tell, he's doing the same thing with Batman. So far, the acts seem to be broken down like this: Act I - Batman & Son, Act II - The Black Glove (or everything in between B&S and RIP, whatever you want to call it), Act III - Batman, R.I.P., Act IV - Final Crisis, Act V - The first 9 issues of Batman & Robin (although the last couple might be more accurately tacked onto the next one), Act VI - The Return of Bruce Wayne. And I have no idea how many more acts there are to this thing, or how many more issues Morrison is writing, but I would bet my life that he's had this thing planned out step by step since the first issue of Batman & Son. And I can't wait to see where he's going with this.

And, just in case anyone is thinking about whether or not to jump on at this point, you may as well. Case in point: Oberon Sexton. I know I've seen him or heard the name in a previous issue of Batman, but I can't remember when or how or why. And it really didn't take a whole lot away from this issue. This is a massive run that I think almost everyone will have to read in one sitting (or as close as possible) a second time, anyway.

Side note that I just now thought of: If all of these clues have been in Wayne Manor for all these years, wouldn't Bruce, who is about a bajillion times better as a detective than Dick, have figured them out by now?