Review: Batman: Time and the Batman

Batman: Time and the Batman by Grant Morrison

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



There are times where a company puts together an amazing collection that perfectly captures a story. This is not one of those times. This is another baffling collection from DC that chops up and smashes together multiple story lines that would have been more logically included in other volumes.

The book opens with an okay arc involving multiple time periods (silver age-ish Batman, Dick Grayson Batman, future Damian Batman, and Terry McGinnis Batman Beyond) and the Joker's joke book. This isn't Morrison's best Batman story, but it's fine enough.

Next, we jump back to the end of the Black Glove arc (which actually falls in the middle of the Batman: R.I.P. collection) to see what happens after Hurt's chopper crashes. This section is helpfully titled "R.I.P.: the Missing Chapter." This connects the Black Glove arc to Final Crisis, and provides more context for the last section of Batman: R.I.P. If you're only looking for the portions of FC that involve the Caped Crusader, this is the place to find them, and this provides a perfect jumping off point for the time hopping Return of Bruce Wayne arc.

Lastly, DC gives us a short arc focusing on Dick and Damian pursuing a C list villain while Vicki Vale tries to get evidence that Bruce Wayne is Batman. Honestly, it's a pretty bland arc that doesn't really have much to do with anything and has pretty low payoff. It feels like filler to pas out a too thin volume.

All of which leads me to wonder, again, why these early Morrison issues were collected in such a bizarre way. The first and last stories aren't strong enough to stand alone, but they don't really matter, anyway. The Vicki Vale story must continue somewhere, so why not include this in that volume? The first section of "R.I.P.: the Missing Chapter" would, obviously, be better served in R.I.P. (or, even better, with the first half of R.I.P. in a better Black Glove collection). The second half could be merged with the second half of R.I.P. to give a better sense of Final Crisis. Instead, all three volumes end up being sort of chopped up messes.

This volume certainly added the least to the overall story, and I think you could very well skip this entirely and move straight to Batman and Robin instead.



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