No clue how this jives with his spirit showing up in Thor which Brubaker signed off on.
The spirit made it clear that he wasn't passed on; he didn't know where he was (actually, depending on when that issue of Thor was relative to #42, when Sharon broke the machine, possibly he wasn't bouncing around at that point, he was just waiting to be summoned).
And it seems slightly similar to what Batman is going through
It does have some superficial similarities, but this was set up a long time before RIP (as Brubaker said elsewhere, it's inspired by Slaughterhouse-Five).