Bleeding Cool told you that Grant Morrison would be co-writing the upcoming Metal: The Wild Hunt oneshot. But the moment is being prepared for in today's Batman: Lost. Right from the first page with the grandfather Bruce Wayne talking to his granddaughter Janet. But not just her….

He's talking to us. But not just us. He's talking to Grant Morrison. Who, with Chas Truog, gave us this scene in Animal Man in the eighties…

Itself inspired by a scene by Bryan Talbot in Brainstorm in the seventies.

And Janet isn't even Janet, she's the great bat god Barbatos taken human form, obsessed with the stories of Batman. And we see the books upon the shelf, reminiscent of many DC fans' shelves who are reading the comic.



And indeed, continuity is often up in the air. Grant Morrison had a word for that too. But it gives us a chance to revisit other stories with Bruce and Barbatos…

…from the Return of Bruce Wayne, the story that saw Morrison resurrect the idea of Barbatos…

To the Dark Night, Dark City story by Peter Milligan and Kieron Dwyer which originated the idea of the great god Barbatis being involved with the life and history of Batman as this scene…

…is recreated anew with a more active Thomas Wayne.

And a willing sacrifice…

…who suddenly looks a lot like Catwoman.

And she can see him. She can see us. And knows her place in the story as nothing more. There are other stories revisited and retold, but one in particular is brought up again…

That Barbatos was the bat that broke through the window.

But now that Barbatos was more than just an inspiration, was a guiding hand.

And that the Dark Knights from the rest of Metal are what Batman would have been without such a guiding hand.

Which itself has allusions to previous issues of Grant Morrison's Batman…

"A place where all seems lost…"

And as for Hypertime, that also gets a mention today, over in Detective Comics…

Hypertime was a storytelling device created by Grant Morrison and Mark Waid in 1999 and primarily used in Waid's comic, The Flash, as well as the limited maxiseries, The Kingdom. It was an early attempt to restore the DC Multiverse, presenting it as a multitude of alternate realities that somehow diverge from the "main timestream" in one way or another and sometimes reconnect with the "main timestream" briefly.

This is not the only time it has had mention in DC Rebirth… in both Flash…

…and Justice League.



With Morrison co-writing Metal and currently working on Multiversity Too, is this a Hypertime rebirth as well?

Batman: Lost #1 by Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, Josh Williamson, Doug Mahnke, Yanick Paquette, Jorge Jimenez, Jamie Mendoza, Wil Quintana, Nathan Fairburn and Alejandro Sanchez is published by DC Comics today. Dark Night, Dark City and The Return Of Bruce Wayne are available in collections.