Now that the more-or-less final chapter of Phase 2 of Grant Morrison’s grand Batman mega-run, The Return of Bruce Wayne #6, has been released, I took the opportunity to read all of his Return-related comics in a row, interspersed in a way that made at least some sense to me. This is how I did it:

Batman and Robin #10
Batman and Robin #11
Batman and Robin #12
Batman #700
Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #1
Batman and Robin #13
Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #2
Batman and Robin #14
Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #3
Batman #701
Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #4
Batman #702
Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #5
Batman and Robin #15
Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #6
Batman and Robin #16

I post this for two reasons. One, I’m wondering if anyone else there has a better or more official reading order for this material. (God, can you imagine how nuts this would all drive a civilian?) Two, I want to say that reading all this material back-to-back was almost unspeakably badass. A gigantic Batman epic sprawling from the dawn of man to the end of time, involving all his oldest friends and allies and three of his creepiest and scariest villains, with more secrets and clues and booby traps and symbols than Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, featuring impeccably choreographed fight scenes, dotted with career-best work from Frazer Irving and Cameron Stewart and some fine stuff by a whole lot of other people too. I’m not going to say “if you like superhero comics at all, you’ll love this” because I’ve been at this long enough to know that there isn’t a single comic out there of which this is true–certainly not a Grant Morrison comic at that. But it is absolutely, positively what I come to superhero comics for. And after a month and a half spent reading the work of Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez, all that jumping back and forth in space and time and story necessitated by interpolating the different series and storylines like I did only made it better. I imagine that if I were to have read his entire run back-to-back, including Batman R.I.P. and Final Crisis and everything, I’d be in something akin to a happy Bat-coma. Such a magnificent comics-reading experience!

Tags: Batman, comics, comics reviews, Grant Morrison

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