The Return of Bruce Wayne #4(of 6)

Overall: We are now in the 1800's, and Bruce Wayne has taken on the role of vengeance seeking cowboy, hunting down some men who murdered a family and kidnapped a girl in order to get their hands on that bat-adorned casket that's all the rage in Grant Morrison's Bat-books nowadays. It seems that Vandal Savage wants to unlock the secrets of the bat-casket, but is being hounded by Cowboy Bruce. To deal with Cowboy Bruce, Savage hires Jonah Hex and tells him to eliminate Cowboy Bruce. Cowboy Bruce(now somehow equipped with tons of batarangs)moseys into Savage's town(naturally Gotham City)and begins to take out all of Savage's men. Savage tasks Thomas Wayne with getting answers out of the girl(who is being driven mad by Thomas' drugs)as to how to open the bat-casket, while telling Hex to keep an eye out for Cowboy Bruce. Eventually, Cowboy Bruce has taken care of most of Savage's men(with his limitless supply of batarangs)so Savage and Thomas grab the girl, along with the bat-casket, and decide to leave town. Cowboy Bruce tracks them down and knocks them out of their wagon, freeing the girl(as well as somehow curing her bout of madness). Thomas decides to shoot Cowboy Bruce, but Savage inexplicably hits Thomas from behind because... well I have no idea why. I guess he just felt like it. By this point Hex arrives on the scene and even though he sees that Cowboy Bruce was the good guy here, shoots him, sending him into a nearby pool of water. With that, the girl with the bat-casket leaves with another member of the Wayne family, they get married and build Wayne Manor, hiding the Bat-casket inside. As for Bruce, he wakes up closer to modern times but passes out due to the gunshot wound.

Wow... This was one of the most confusing things I have EVER read. Crazy Grant has really out-done himself here. I just don't know where to begins. First off, why are half the men in the Wayne family named Thomas? Is that deliberately being done to leave me confused, or are they all the same guy? Is Grant trying to say that Thomas Wayne has been alive for centuries, and that he's the leader of the Black Glove? Or is Thomas the only name they can think of in the Wayne family? Besides that, the story was abysmal(Why did Savage knock out his own man? Who were all of the Wayne's running around town? And finally, why was Cowboy Bruce a mute here?!?), the dialogue was horrendous, and the story was abysmal. What, the story was so bad I felt it needed to be mentioned twice. On the plus side the artwork was nice. So I guess it wasn't all bad. Oh, and we find out that the only way to open the bat-casket is by whistling at it. That leads me to my final question, what is Grant Morrison's obsession with whistling?! That's two straight issues of this series where whistling played a major role. And let's not forget about Superman whistling at Darkseid to kill him... Weird.

Score: 2 1/2 out of 10.And Grant's obsession with whistling continues...