Before I launch into my armchair detective work, some notes on this issue: excellent action and pacing. The way the events work towards one moment of drama at the very end is impressive and I'm a sucker for any sort of woven plot in that style: Damian and Oberon up top, Batman below, Talia using his body since she can't control his mind - it all adds up to classic Batman action and I love it. Magnificent art, too. Yes, I miss Frank Quitely. Yes, we all need to get over it.

Again, Damian is really the star of this issue as he embodies a lot of emotions with which we can all identify. My mother certainly tried plenty of mind games on us as kids and I have zero doubt she would have used a remote-control robotic spine if she'd had one handy. I am loving all the ways Morrison has found of presenting characters with difficult moral decisions that really do challenge the way their beliefs are formed from experience, instruction and reflex reactions. Damian Wayne has been put through the psychological, physical and philosophical wringers over the course of a very short life and no combination of genes - even those of Bruce and Talia - can make him immune to that experience. This is what I love about the Batman mythos, that it's always the story of someone overcoming what's outside their control to master their own lives and do what they can to make a difference to those around them. Even when they make mistakes I have to respect their effort.

Enough of that, though - so who the hell is Oberon Sexton?

My favorite theory has been that Oberon Sexton is Bruce Wayne operating on some backup personality, a la Grant Morrison's own re-purposing of the Batman of Zurr-En-Ahr as a sort of mental panic room for Bruce Wayne in case of massive psychological trauma (memo to GM: too late). My reasoning was based almost entirely on the name and the fact that this character out of nowhere seemed to know an awful lot about the Black Glove.

The Black Glove stuff is of course the easiest clue to spot - I mean, how many other masked detectives would be sufficiently motivated to protect Bruce Wayne from a Batman-specific villainous organization, anyway - but the name "Oberon Sexton" is a real stroke of genius in my book. Whereas a sexton is the person in a church who cares for its graveyard (such as the one where Bruce Wayne is in theory buried or at least memorialized), in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream the fairy king Oberon is involved in what boils down to a custody battle and much of the narrative of Morrison's Batman & Robin has been the story of Damian Wayne's struggle with the competing interests, morals and ethics of his very different parents.

That said, at one point we see Batman hale and hearty and telling Alfred that there's a power source and a visible glow up ahead while Alfred tells him that something is breaking up Batman's comms signal. The next time we see him, Batman's suit is ripped and torn and he seems to be struggling to make it out of the tomb to which Oberon and Robin have made their own way from the opposite direction. So, what did Batman encounter? Honestly, given that this is all leading into a tale of resurrection, and given that we've recently been reminded of the existence of Lazarus pits by Batwoman's crossover in this very title, I'm tempted to think that Batman just fell face-first into a Lazarus pit on top of which Wayne Manor was built all those many years ago. Crazy and ham-fisted, maybe, but surely a Lazarus pit is a powerful energy source that might mess with mere technological communications, yes? The only person who was able to get a communications link next to the Lazarus pit in the Batwoman/Batman/Knight/Squire crossover story was using a completely new technology that no one else had available to them. The characters assumed it was due to their depth underground at the time but that was just that: an assumption.

How perfect would it be to have Bruce Wayne reborn from the very earth of Wayne Manor? To have the original Batman brought physically back to life in a cave under his house might be too irresistably symbolic given that the concept was born - depending on the version of continuity - either above ground, in the house, or below ground in a different cave under the house. Grant Morrison does love him some mystical recursiveness, doesn't he? The problem with that theory is that it negates all my happy over-analysis of the name of Oberon Sexton. If Bruce Wayne is already up and about and operating under a new or concealed or temporary identity he doesn't exactly need to be reborn. Oops.

Another theory making the rounds is that Oberon Sexton is none other than the Joker, concealing his identity so that he can investigate the death of his greatest foe in his own way. I don't buy it - Oberon Sexton shows what looks to me like some pretty classic Batman martial arts skills and the Joker has always been happier to let thugs do his dusting - but it's a fascinating idea.

Yet another theory? That the question marks subtly patterned in the background of the cover variant in this post are a sign that Oberon Sexton is the Riddler trying to find out what happened to Batman and Bruce Wayne. Again, I don't buy it, but it's a creative interpretation.

Stuff like this - the contradictory, misleading and eminently and infinitely interpretable clues waiting to be rearranged like so many mental LEGOs - is what I loved about shows like Twin Peaks and what I continue to love in any medium where I can find them. Given that Damian Wayne has been pushed to give open consideration to the possibility that Oberon Sexton is none other than Bruce Wayne in disguise, and given that The Return of Bruce Wayne is about to start, I expect the next issue is going to reveal a great deal more than this.

If you really want to know how willing I am to go haring off after theories and ideas, though, a part of why I say that next issue will be important is because the twelfth issue of Batman & Robin will, of course, mark a year of that title. The thirteenth issue, due out on June 9th, can be viewed as either the thirteenth moon (the measure of one year in a number of mystical systems) of Batman & Robin or as the first issue published after the completion of a year and a day (marking the fulfillment of a ritual cycle or the duration of a ritual's effects) since the launch of this book - or both. Will issue 13, when it arrives in two months, mark the end of a sort of handfasting between Dick Grayson and the identity of Batman? Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne? Crazy, perhaps, but I am only too happy to be open to all ideas and I have to think Grant Morrison is going to have something big in store for significant markers like that. As I've said before, I have always perceived Morrison's work with the Batman storyline for the last several years as a ritual exercise as much as it is also a work of secular storytelling.