I'm just going to start off by saying, wow, the Batwoman-into-the-lazarus-pit thing was anticlimactic. It's not that I wanted it to be all crazy melodramatic, but did anyone really think there was some suspense as to Batwoman's "plan" from the end of issue #8? She's half-dead, there's a lazarus pit... it's simple math, is what I'm saying. I'm glad the comic at least acknowledged that, because I felt like that was a pretty remarkably weak cliffhanger when I read it in issue #8.

However, the rest of the issue is pretty spot-on. Morrison doesn't spare us a moment of pip-pip with Knight and Squire, two characters I sort of desperately wish would get their own book sometime, maybe a limited series, anything, and while I have been in love with the ridiculously thematic villains - like the evil chimney sweeps - I was glad Morrison held off on them until the end instead of trying to shoe-horn them into the middle of what is a genuinely tragic event: the resurrection of a great hero who then attacks all the people who loved him best. My own experience of mourning is that I have tended to have nightmares about just that kind of thing when someone close to me died, as do many people, and Morrison has again reached into the well of human mortality to pull out something really scary and saddening. It's fairly excruciating watching the faux Batman relive its life in a jumbled heap and it's another interesting take on the fractured mind of Bruce Wayne, a cracked-mirror reflection of the hero we know and assumedly in some ways at least a shout-out, if not a direct allusion, to the concept of Morrison's own repurposing of Zurr-En-Arrh.

The fight scene is pretty great, too, but I am, let me just say, pissed that Batwoman and Batman punching Zombie Batman at the same time, on the count of three, was just one frame on the page instead of a two-page spread. Sorry, folks, but that moment could be the selling point for a whole issue and it's practically a throw-away frame. The art overall is great, and I find myself warming to this artist more than I had expected, but that was shockingly short shrift to give such a notable instant in team-up history.

However, I don't think that's what this issue is about and neither does Morrison - and I think that's why that frame is so very minor. What this issue is about - in part - is the psychic strain Bruce Wayne suffered, the ways he could have turned out all wrong a hundred times over, all the things we know about the human who inhabited the suit.

The real focus of this issue, though, if you ask me, isn't even on that. After all, that ground has all been trampled flat by this point, in part by Morrison himself. No, I think the issue is really about reminding us that the three people who are the current heroes - Batwoman, Batman and Robin - are three different people with different agendas from one another and from any previous iterations there might have been of their identities. Batman is reminded that he used to be the wise-cracking adrenaline hound, whereas Bruce Wayne was the ultimate odds-making strategist. Robin is a calculating, competent and aloof child accustomed to having his way and for whom self-interest comes first, whereas Dick Grayson was gregarious and daring. Batwoman doesn't even know Bruce Wayne was Batman. Batwoman and Batman may have the thrill-seeker thing in common, sure, but the three of them couldn't be less like one another or less in tune in terms of their core motivations.

Getting to see them work together proved fun, yes, but more than that it also got to highlight the remaining chasms between their characters. Robin is clearly angry at what he sees as a situation that Batman both created and allowed to get out of control and I think his reaction is completely natural and, in fact, possibly the most human reaction we've seen him have. What a great twist on character development and another whorl in Morrison's signature on the series: many narratives would rely on a display of compassion or understanding to mark the appearance of humanity in a character, but in Robin it's pique shading into real anger.

That it's also got to it a whiff of the Batman's austere and unforgiving expectations of those around him is, for me, just the icing on the cake.