It's Raining

It is absolutely POURING rain outside. I'm contemplating building a raft.
COMIC REVIEWS!!!!

                                                          Avengers #4

Thanks, Brian Michael Bendis, for finally getting to the friggin' point four issues into the new Avengers series. I was this close to dropping this book, but it seems as if the plot has finally moved forward after three issues that contained two fights and a whole lot of sitting around talking.
This issue finds Iron Man, Captain America, Wolverine, and Marvel Boy making their way to one of the possible  future time lines, where they are "saved" by their future children, along with the future Hulk, The Maestro. Apparently this is a different, non-evil version of The Maestro, as he seems excited to see Tony Stark and co. Meanwhile, in the present, a bunch of characters from alternate time lines seem to be popping up in modern day New York City, leaving Spider-man, Thor, Hawkeye, and Spider-woman to clean up the mess and try and make sense of it all. While I'm glad to finally start seeing some momentum building in this title, I'm still on the fence as to keep following it. I'm going to give it one more issue. If you only have to get one "Avengers" title, then pick up Secret Avengers.

Batman #702

Remember how I said that issue 701 of Batman would hopefully lead to some answers as to what happened to Bruce Wayne between "R.I.P." and "Final Crisis"? Well, you don't exactly get them. Much like Grant Morrison's recent outputs at DC, for every answer you get, you end up with two or three more questions.
Like the one before it, this issue fills in more of the gaps between Batman's investigations of the "god bullet" from "Final Crisis".  The issue breaks up into segments that take place before, during, and after the "Final Crisis" event. We follow Bruce as he initially begins the investigation into the death of Orion,  to his capture by Darkseid. We also get the feeling (or at least I did), that Bruce knew about the "time travel" of the Omega Beam, and how time has now changed due to Bruce being sent back. I think......cause Darkseid was holding this box thing when he hit Batman with his omega beam, that somehow affects time or something. The narrative was somewhat easy to follow, though I did tend to get lost at points due to all of the time jumps, as seen by the above sentence.
I get the feeling that if I read these two issues directly after "Final Crisis" they'd be easier to follow, but I have no real strong desire to go back and re-read that confusing mess. While I find it interesting to see Bruce's thoughts during his investigation, and "death", I'm starting to get a little tired of the hype surrounding Bruce Wayne's return. However, DC, like all companies, is going to hype this thing to no end, so it's just something we've gotta deal with. I'm sticking with it.