Absolutely amazing conclusion.

Disclaimer: I know that many of the people at this site will probably not comprehend much of went on in this issue. That’s understandable. I honestly can’t think of a more complicated superhero comic saga than the one that Morrison’s wrapping up here (or is next week’s Batman: The Return the real “conclusion” to the run up to this point?). It’s more complicated than Watchmen. Watchmen’s more perfect. But Morrison’s Batman is more complicated and maybe more literary (for what that’s worth). There are people who can read Watchmen, but they can only understand about half of what Morrison’s been doing here.

So, I don’t blame the many readers who won’t like this issue. It’s extremely complex. You have to remember and notice, for example, the references to 52 #30 in this issue. You have to recall how this whole run really started in 52 #30 when the Ten-Eyed Men supposedly cut “Batman” out of Bruce Wayne.

And you’ll get more out of the issue if, when Darkseid speaks of himself as if he were the “God-shaped hole” that’s missing in our culture, you remember how Doctor Hurt in Batman & Robin #15 told Dick Grayson that Dick would finally feel the shape of the hole missing in his soul if he would finally submit to evil.

Overlapping thematics based on tiny repeated alterations of dialogue. That’s the kind of stuff that you have to remember and instantly bring to mind if you want to get your all out of Return of Bruce Wayne #6. And when you start getting it, it’s fun and awesome.

You can either read extremely closely, let every panel sink in, asking yourself all the time “Does this dialogue remind me of anything previous in the run?”, and commit a ton of details to memory . . . or else you have to do a lot of rereading for it all to sink in. Or you can do both.

Otherwise you’re really not going to get much out of this issue. I understand that.

But I’d say it’s well-worth getting a little obsessed with Morrison’s Batman and trying to fit all of the interconnections into your head at once. When you do that, the multi-layered story becomes really interesting and impressive. Everything makes sense in it. It’s amazing that Morrison can pull all these little details together to create such an intricate picture.

I barely noticed the fill-in pages on art. It was pretty good overall, as far as the art goes. When you think of all the different levels of reality that Morrison’s asking the artists to portray here, one little slip-up or vague illustration would have ruined everything. But the artists came through. Good art.

But the story? It’s not perfect, but this is the most impressive, and impressively complicated, superhero story I’ve ever read. The complicated nature proves warranted and enjoyable IF you accept the “social contract” type deal that Morrison’s offering you: Read it all with your active attention (you can’t just consume it passively, like watching tv shows play out before your eyes); have fun thinking and wondering about it, read it again maybe, and then you’ll start to really get it and will (hopefully) be blown away.