So That's What Happened To The Caped Crusader

Detective #853 concludes the two-part story that began in Batman #686, with Neil Gaiman wrapping up the life of the Caped Crusader and then starting it all over again. The mystery turns out not the way I saw it going, but in one of the other ways I thought it might go. Ultimately, in just the right way. I thought we might see if Selina was trying to get Bruce to give up his war on crime. In retrospect, that's not interesting at all, because we all know what happens when someone asks Batman to give up. There's no story there at all.

The word "story" is not quite right, because in the end, this look at Batman's life, poignant and full of awe, is not a story. It doesn't have a plot to follow, at least none that you didn't already know. As we'd already seen in the first part (and the preview), we get many tales of Batman's death, and this story is not about telling us that one of them was "real". All we know is that Batman dies and before he dies he gets to say goodbye to himself. If there's a real literary inspiration for this story, it's Goodnight Moon, and as Batman says goodbye to himself, he says goodnight to Robin, and Alfred, and the Giant Penny in the Batcave, and even to the Joker, too, because all of those things are him.

By recycling all past eras of Batman at once, Gaiman gets to the heart of the character without choosing any of them. When we see the key to Superman's Fortress of Solitude, we get an entire era handed to us in one tiny geometric figure. The Betty Kane Bat-Girl hands us another, and Kubert's impeccable take on Brian Bolland's art from The Killing Joke hands us another, and it's all there -- everything that Batman ever was. Batman's life story is not a plot. It is a cycle. Villains try to take advantage of victims, Batman stands in their way, and he wins again and again.

There are three main impressions that Gaiman and Kubert try to get across, and they get them all across brilliantly. One, that Batman has a wonderfully colorful cast of characters around him, sometimes goofy and sometimes lethal and sociopathic, but always diverse, like a puzzle built to confound the world's greatest detective. Two, that Batman never gives up. People sometimes comment that Batman is more realistic than other superheroes, and it is quite rightly objected that swinging a hundred feet on a rope into a gang of armed murderers and surviving the experience is as much science fiction as any deed could be. But Batman's real superpower is not the incredible fighting prowess (which we all lack) or the incredible knowledge (which we couldn't acquire in a lifetime) or even the personalized helicopter that we can't afford. It's that he never gives up, and in our weakest moments, we can forget that it's a story and tell ourselves that we don't need to give up. And the third, perhaps most powerful part of this story -- of Batman's story -- is that it's very tragic. Five spare panels in Detective #33 told us the origin of Batman that can be read in a minute, but never really faced fully -- the horror of a little boy watching as two gunshots take his parents from him. The rest of his life is an attempt to respond to that event. He saves other lives, saves the city, and with the Justice League often saves the world, but he can never do the one thing he would so desperately wish to do -- to undo that terrible minute.

But Batman's life is not just a cycle that lasts one issue at a time. It is a longer cycle encompassing his whole life and taking him from newsprint to digital animation to the big screen. It is a cycle within which the cycle of fighting crime occupies a smaller part. When each new medium begins anew, his parents die, and he starts his war again. But he gets to be the boy who lived before the tragedy again and again. Watch 1989's Batman film, and you see the innocent, happy boy. Watch Batman Begins, and you see him again, just as he was for one panel in 1939's Detective #33. In DCU continuity, Batman has left us for a while. Somewhere, he's a little boy again and has not yet known tragedy. Somewhere, he is sitting on his mother's lap reading a book. He has not yet faced down psychopaths and become Dick Grayson's mentor. He's just a boy. He's just happy.

The Black Glove's Plan

Purple haze inside my brain,

Lately things don't seem the same

- Jimi Hendrix

During Grant Morrison's run on Batman, we saw clues from the very beginning (well, from the spread on the second and third pages, when we first saw a replacement Batman) that there was a bigger, darker plan that was lurking behind the smaller adventures that the Dark Knight faced. He beat numerous opponents as they faced off against him, but a mastermind was lurking in the shadows. The real nature of this plan was let slip only very gradually, over a span of 23 issues.

The first clues (the "Gun" Batman, Zur En Arrh graffiti, and uncharacteristic violence on Batman's part) appeared in Morrison's first issue, #655. The name of the villain, The Black Glove, was first mentioned on the first page of Batman #667. In almost every issue, there were more clues regarding the Black Glove's plan against Batman. And we were asked by Morrison (both inside the story and outside the story) to discover the identity of the Black Glove.

But a parallel mystery, much less high profile, was to figure out just what exactly the Black Glove's plan was. That was a tougher mystery, in my opinion. Even when we got clear information as to how the Black Glove operated (the wagering in the Club of Heroes storyline, Batman #667-#669, resembled the climax of RIP, The Danse Macabre) we didn't know that we'd gotten clear information because Grant Morrison was trying to fake us out at every turn, just as the Black Glove was trying to fake out Batman.

Among the many curveballs was the fact that Morrison took the "Robin Dies at Dawn" story from Batman #156, from way back in 1963, and worked it into his plot. But even more so was the remarkable fact (worth its own blog post) that the Black Glove worked as hard to cover up every one of his moves as he did to make the move itself. Deception, a key priority in warfare, was part of everything the Black Glove did. Comic book stories are not known for their subtlety. Usually the bad guy makes bad-guy facial expressions and has bad-guy character flaws, and you know who it is from the beginning. But this plan was hard for the reader to piece together -- and naturally so. If it couldn't surprise us, how could it possibly surprise Batman?

Here is the play-by-play of the Black Glove - Batman war:

1) The Wayne Murders: This is something hinted at, but never stated outright. Simply put, the details of the Black Glove parties subtly matched the story in Detective #235 wherein we found out out that an encounter at a costume party led to criminals targeting Thomas Wayne for a deliberate killing, not the accidental mugging we'd seen in earlier versions of Batman's origin and the final pages of Batman #681 show shadowy figures apparently watching as the Waynes leave the theatre and head to their deaths. Nothing was asserted, but there's reason to suspect that the Black Glove may have targeted the Waynes for death. If so -- why? Maybe there's a concrete motive like revenge. Maybe they were killing them just as something to wager on. We can't possibly know unless the story continues in the future.

2) The Black Glove Organization: We do know that the Black Glove has been holding annual parties for the purpose of betting on matters of life and death, for five members chosen among the world's wealthiest people to wager on. These parties go back "way back" according to Doctor Hurt, and we were told that Jezebel's father participated twenty years ago.

3) The Isolation Experiment: Sometime early in Batman's career, Bruce volunteered for an experiment that subjected him to isolation for ten days. This experiment had three purposes: The Army organizers stated that it was to help with the exploration of space. (Something that made more sense as a research project when the story was set in 1963 and spaceflight was new.) And Batman's purpose, which he only revealed to Robin, was to experience the madness that was supposed to result from isolation, so that he might better understand the Joker. But Doctor Hurt's purpose was to use the access to Batman to program him with psychological commands. To understand Batman? Perhaps -- we don't know if he actually cared about understanding the Caped Crusader. To attack Batman? Yes. He tried to program Batman with a mental command to stop being Batman and retire. This effect was the topic of the 1963 story, as an accidental side effect of the experiment. But in Morrison's re-rendering, we have to understand it as a deliberate attack, for Doctor Hurt to see if he could stop the world's most determined individual from continuing with his crime-fighting career .

Batman did not realize that it was a deliberate attack. It sidelined him for "a couple of weeks" (according to Nightwing in Batman #675) but he overcame the influence of it, and resumed his Batman career. His recovery probably matches the details given in Batman #156.

4) The Gotham City Police Department Experiment: Here's what happened -- Doctor Hurt trained three Gotham cops to be like Batman. He tried different approaches for all three, and was willing to kill people in pursuit of that goal. One night, he had all three of them fight Batman (apparently he was able to get Batman's cooperation thanks to mind-control going back to the isolation experiment), but none of them were a match for the real thing.

Now -- why did he do it? Two of the three men had their memories of the episode wiped out, and were left to resume their lives (worse for the wear), ready for him to recall them to service thanks to psychological keywords in their minds. The third was turned into a brutal monster whose mental state was fairly limited. But all three re-emerged, clearly at Doctor Hurt's behest, to trouble Batman. To kill him? No -- only one of them seemed to be trying to kill Batman (one at least wanted to torture him first). To be loyal and capable servants to Hurt? Perhaps, but two of the three died very shortly after being re-activated. I think it's most likely that the specific encounters Batman had with the three were designed to have a psychological effect on him. Not wearing him down so much as undermining his confidence in his own identity and capability. 

It is the case that one of the three, Lane, has been used as a lackey to Hurt (flying the helicopter in Batman #681 and serving his evil master in the far future as seen in Batman #666) but Hurt expected to have already beaten Batman before he needed Lane in those respects.

5) The evil monk's attempt on Batman's life: In Batman #681, we see that an evil monk poisoned a good monk and then tried to kill Bruce right after Thögal. The attempt failed (because Batman thinks of everything). It is very hard for me to square this away with the rest of the plan, because if Batman had simply died that that point, the rest of the plan would have been pointless. And Hurt later passed up easy opportunities to kill Batman. So maybe the idea was simply to send one of his lackies down swinging and to use the occasion to try to undermine Bruce's confidence. It seems that Bruce was aware of the plan against him from this time, and considered himself to be in a duel that played out slowly over the months to come.

6) Jezebel's role as Bruce's lover: Plain and simple, a bad woman entered Bruce's confidence and used her access to him to plant psychological suggestions undermining his role as Batman (especially in Batman #677, but really in every single scene where she opened her mouth and said anything). She delivered the fateful psychological command to him by saying "Zur En Arrh" and she played the bait in the trap that was thrown at Arkham. But it turns out that Bruce saw through her acting very early on and was on guard, even making preparations against her. Batman thinks of everything.

7) John Mayhew's Island: John Mayhew is rich -- rich enough to be a member of the Black Glove. He bets he can kill Batman. He loses. Almost certainly, it's Doctor Hurt we hear (but don't see). So the question is: Is this really part of the Black Glove's plan against Batman? Like the monk's attempt to kill Batman, it is something which would have ruined the rest of Hurt's plan if it had succeeded. So we have to figure that either Hurt was sure that Mayhew would fail (which seems like a sure thing, since Batman beats everyone and Mayhew is more like a nobody) or that Hurt was willing to deal with the outcome no matter what. I think the answer is 75% that Hurt was sure that the monk and Mayhew would separately fail and 25% that perhaps the plotting by Morrison hadn't worked out that level of detail. But it seems key that the event, while failing to kill Batman, would have a psychological impact on him, showing him that rich people are sometimes very bad. Like his parents? And Bruce himself?

8) Zur En Arrh: Apparently, Doctor Hurt planted a trigger word into Bruce's mind that allowed him to switch off the Batman personality whenever Bruce heard it. The Black Glove spray-painted this phrase all over Gotham, which seemed to erode Batman's mental well-being gradually. Finally, Bruce was left incapacitated when he heard it. This might have led to Bruce's permanent downfall if he hadn't begun programming himself with a backup personality, the Batman of Zur En Arrh. Ideally, it would have led to ZEA Batman taking over right away and fighting the Club of Villains as soon as they entered the Batcave. His preparation hadn't started soon enough, however, and it took a day or so for the personality to take over. Luckily, he survived the drug injections that Hurt gave him and was ready to fight off the rest of the plan against him.

9) RIP and The Danse Macabre:  Doctor Hurt expected Bruce to wallow in the alleys of Gotham for a day or so. Then the gargoyle henchmen would round him up and bring him to Gotham where the Joker would "kill" Jezebel, leading Bruce to rush in to save her. Bruce's use of the ZEA Batman changed this only slightly, enabling him to fight his own way in, but still fail to save her. However, he had prepared in a number of ways. The "Bat Radia" had a transmitter that locked the doors of Arkham. He had given himself an antidote to the Joker toxin, so he was only knocked unconscious by it, not killed. And he was in his right mind when he re-awoke inside the coffin. And moreover, was not upset by his betrayal at the hands of Jezebel, because he'd never trusted her in the first place: a reference to a line she said way back in Batman #664 was the smart indication that Batman was always ready for this plan. Once he dug himself out, he was Batman again, ready to knock down any of the hired muscle and to out-smart or out-will the mastermind of the plan.

10) Grasping at straws: When Doctor Hurt and Batman faced off outside of Arkham, Hurt tried to use the mental command from the past to get Batman to "retire from crime-fighting". This didn't work. Then he tried to shoot Batman, and the bullet glanced off of Bruce's body armor (which Hurt and his henchmen put on Batman themselves?!). Then he claimed to be Thomas Wayne. And finally he threatened to tarnish the Waynes' reputations with a sex-and-drugs scandal unless Bruce agreed to join him in a war against virtue. Bruce faced down all of these challenges in about thirty seconds.

11) The curse: Knowing that he had failed to break Batman's body or spirit, Doctor Hurt cursed Bruce to wear the cape and cowl just one more time. This actually worked, and in Final Crisis, Batman "died" when Darkseid zapped him with the Omega Effect.

The ultimate goal of Hurt's plan was to break Batman. Not kill him, but force him to give up. To ruin a "noble human spirit". And at root, that is Hurt's motive in all cases. With the Black Glove organization, he's been ruining human spirits for years. Because Batman was the ultimate in human attainment, he became Hurt's target. And he passed this test, proving that he could out-smart the ultimate opponent, and never quit fighting.

Is Batman Dead?

In early 2008, when it was announced that a story called "Batman, R.I.P." would be coming out, DC fans began to deal with the possibility that Bruce Wayne would die. No comments from DC indicated that he would "really" die, like Barry Allen did (bad example, maybe, but Barry Allen was dead for 22 years). Wiser fans guessed that he would perhaps "die" like Superman did in 1992, dying but then later come back somehow.

So what exactly was claimed of Bruce Wayne's death, and did it happen?

The teaser lines at the end of issues in RIP threw down the gauntlet. Although many at DC dismissed the idea that they would kill Batman ("Not in a movie year."), the teaser at the end of Batman #677 said "Next [...] The fate of Bruce Wayne!" The teaser image at the end of Batman #680 promised "the final fate of the Dark Knight!" And we were told that Batman's story would "conclude" in Final Crisis #6. That's some heady stuff! The issues are out. Did it happen? Did Batman die? Or did those claims lie?

The answer to those yes/no question is: "Sort of." The fact that three issues were mentioned throws up some red flags right away: He couldn't die three times, right? Right. He didn't.

Let's speak medically. In the final pages of Batman #677, Bruce Wayne was hit with a sort of psychological whammy, when a command that shut off the Batman personality was cued. Bruce fell down and stopped being Batman or Bruce while his body was medically fine. So that was the "fate of Bruce Wayne". Other bad stuff happened later, and his personality flipped through some weird states, but his body remained alive.

In the final pages of Batman #681, Bruce was on board a helicopter that crashed. We got no answer as to his medical condition after that, but we found out later, in Batman #683, that really nothing bad at all happened to him. He apparently swam out of the river and made his way back to the Batcave just fine. For some reason, Nightwing and others didn't find out that he was OK right away, and Outsiders #11 shows a number of his allies grieving for him as his enemies celebrate his disappearance.

If you piece the timeline together, he proceeds from the Batcave to JLA Headquarters to begin working with his JLA allies on the case that became Final Crisis, and the Batman shown in Final Crisis #1 is Bruce, back on the job, briefly. However, he is soon taken prisoner by Darkseid's forces in Final Crisis #2, and from that time until the present, has never been seen alive by anyone but Darkseid and Darkseid's cronies.

I think the account in Outsiders #11, with Superman and Green Arrow grieving for Batman, has to be regarded as a glitch because it indicates that Superman didn't know where Batman was the day after RIP, even though Superman and Batman were working side-by-side for at least a day or so during Final Crisis. So forgive that glitch: I suspect that Grant Morrison's plans were concealed from Frank Tieri and other writers.

To the world at large, Bruce Wayne has indeed not been seen since "the fate of Bruce Wayne" was announced. To the heroes, according to Tieri's account, Batman was not seen by the heroes after RIP. But to the heroes, according to Morrison's account, Batman disappeared from the other heroes' lives slightly later, in Final Crisis #2.

But back to the end of RIP: Right before the helicopter crash, Doctor Hurt curses Batman to wear the cape and cowl only one more time. Is this a mad rant? Well, no -- it's a 20-20 prophecy, or curse, because Doctor Hurt is the Devil, and has the power to cast such curses. (Although mysteriously, he lacks the ability to right a balky helicopter.) So at that point, Bruce was a walking dead man, medically fine, but mystically doomed. He had one more chance to wear the batsuit, and he used that chance up in Final Crisis.

The significant event took place in Final Crisis #6, when Darkseid zapped Batman with those zig-zagging eye-beams of his. Superman arrived about two minutes too late, and found a charred corpse in the batsuit. So medically, we have the answer to our question: The body that was born as a little baby to Martha Wayne, and that grew up into Bruce Wayne was zapped medically dead. Put a tag on the toe and have a funeral. Superman knew he was dead, Dick Grayson knows he's dead -- he's dead.

Except he's not dead. Because what Darkseid hit him with was the Omega Sanction, something we saw Mister Miracle (Shilo Norman) escape from in Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers miniseries. What it means is that Batman will be alive, in some other form, some other timeline, and have to escape from it somehow. By default, you'd expect no one to be able to escape from it, but Mister Miracle and Batman are just the kind of guys who can. So he's medically dead, but he's still out there. Maybe he's in the 1700s. Maybe he's a mechanic in a garage in New Jersey. Maybe he's a potted plant or Douglas Macarthur. But he's not gone, and he will be back, eventually.

And on the very last page of Final Crisis #7, we see him, in the remote past, writing on a cave wall beside the very, very old Anthro about sixty or so years after "the dawn of time". A rocket/time capsule that is clearly intended to resemble the one that brought baby Kal-El to Earth is in the background. (The Daily Planet staff launched it at the darkest moment of Final Crisis.) That leaves a lot of blanks: How did he get there? Is that his body or some cave dude with the bat-spirit, or merely the bat-gadgets? But the gist is this: Right now, on our Earth, Bruce Wayne's body is dead. Somewhere or sometime, Bruce Wayne's spirit is still kicking, and will eventually get back to laugh at Darkseid's attempt to kill him.

If the man puts the batsuit on again, won't that invalidate all of the promo text (and Doctor Hurt's curse)? If he never puts the batsuit on again, won't that be an unthinkably bad business move by DC? That's a question for DC to answer, and I don't expect their top money-maker to be forsaken. But in the meantime, we will see Bruce Wayne as Batman again in the semi-in-continuity titles Superman/Batman and Brave & Bold. His presence there is meant to be in some side niche of continuity. But in the main DCU, he is dead. Sorta.