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I'm going to say a few words that you won't hear very often in reviews of comics. Especially comics written by comic book royalty like Neil Gaiman.

I don't get it.

Maybe it's because admitting that makes a person feel like an idiot. It's hard to hold a comic book about a man who uses a tool called a Batarang and admit that I have no earthly idea what the hell is going on, but so be it, here we are.

And you know what? I think more people should be prepared to say it. We would have a lot less of Grant Morrison's self-flagellating stuff, I'll tell you that right now.

The story, as I understand it, with parenthetical question marks placed next to elements that I'm not totally sure about:

Batman is dead(?). And watching his own funeral. As a ghost(?). His various villains approach the casket to say their pieces, and each seems to feel that he/she is responsible for Batman's death(?) and all claim different scenarios(?). Not in a way where they're scrambling to take credit for his death, more in a way where there are about 40(?) different timelines converging(?) including one where Alfred is the Joker.

Then Bruce sees his mom as a ghost. They have a brief argument that poses the theory that Batman is dead, but not dead dead. Almost dead. And this whole thing is his brain firing randomly. So basically we're watching a dream. Then his ghost mom tells him he'll get to rest for a few years, and the final pages feature the Bat Signal morphing into a pair of hands holding a baby, and then a nurse who is holding a baby and says "Mrs. Wayne? It's a boy." I don't know who this Mrs. Wayne is, nor what the time period is, but it appears that we're suggesting that Batman lives in some sort of life loop.

Just in case you got lost in the text there, I'd like to include one line again:

Then his ghost mom tells him he'll get to rest for a few years, and the final pages feature the Bat Signal morphing into a pair of hands holding a baby, and then a nurse who is holding a baby and says "Mrs. Wayne? It's a boy."

Yep, that happens.

I really have very little else to say about this other than the fact that I feel if we're just making up an alternate-universe story, there's no need to bring it all back around for next month's issue. We can just go nuts. So let's go nuts. There was potential to tell a great story here, which Neil Gaiman usually does, but somewhere along the lines we got lost in dreamland where all stories are confusing, and puzzling them out is irrelevant because you can defend any theory by saying, "Well, it's not real."

The other thing I wanted to talk about is this whole idea of putting two issues like this in trade paperback, and then including some vaguely related issues to fill it out. In this case, the two actual issues plus some other Batman comics written by Gaiman. So not issues leading up to or following this. Not something about Robin in this situation. Just some random shit from the 80's.

Listen, Comic Book Publishers, other formats don't do this. Sometimes a writer of thrillers will include a few pages from an upcoming novel, but they rarely dig back into the past. Why would you throw a couple badly dated Sue Grafton stories in with X is for Xotic Dancer Corpse (or whatever X is for)?

It's filler on every level, and nobody wants it. Today it's so easy to read a version of nearly any comic out there, so let people actually read what they are seeking and leave out the extras.