Batman is back just as writer Scott Snyder reveals his exit from the series.
The fan-favorite writer revealed issue 51 would be his last on the series via Twitter and the last issue with artist Greg Capullo for six months.
Snyder and Capullo have been the creative team on the Batman title since The New 52 launch in 2011.
Artist Yanick Paquette and co-writer James Tynion IV joined Snyder for this week’s Batman #49 – a huge and emotional moment in the series as it builds toward Snyder’s departure.
The obsessed, haunted and tortured Dark Knight is back. DC teased Bruce Wayne would reclaim the title after nearly a year. Now we know why and how Bruce became the Batman again.
Gotham City believed Batman died with the Joker in the Endgame finale. An amnesiac Bruce Wayne emerged (with no painful memories of his past) as a happy man with a fresh start, helping Gotham City’s troubled kids and enjoying a romantic relationship with Julie Madison.
Jim Gordon has been the Batman fighting the threat of Mister Bloom.
Wayne’s encounter with a man who could be the Joker reborn and Bloom’s rampage made him realize he’s the Batman and in the previous issue made him go to a sobbing Alfred demanding to go to his cave.
What happened in the cave? What does it mean for the Batman mythos?
Before we continue here’s a SPOILER ALERT!
If you have not read Batman #49 stop reading now.
Seriously.
OK.
Here it comes.
There is a Batman-making machine.
The device was introduced by Snyder in Detective Comics #27. No other human mind could survive the trauma. When Alfred believed Bruce was dead he destroyed the machine but of course Batman would have another.
The backup machine is packed will all of Bruce Wayne’s memories up to the final showdown with the Joker in Endgame.
Bruce decides to sacrifice his new happy life so he can become the Batman again to save Gotham from Bloom. Alfred is ordered to turn on the machine.
In a heartbreaking twist, the happy new Bruce must become brain dead in order to implant the old memories. Alfred can’t go on but enter Julie Madison who realizes the Bruce she loves must “die” so Batman can be reborn and let Gotham City live.
Julie pushes the final button Alfred can’t.
Bruce is brain dead.
Sadness. Sacrifice. Heartbreak. It is the Dark Knight after all.
Julie and Alfred watch their Bruce dies and are there for the “new” Bruce’s orders, “let’s go to work.”
It’s a new origin for Batman, sort of, as the real Batman takes on Mister Bloom next in issue 50 – the penultimate chapter in an epic run by Snyder and Capullo.
DC’s co-publishers are teasing a “Rebirth” with fans speculating a shakeup in the entire line but Bruce Wayne’s rebirth in this week’s issue joins the pantheon of greatest Batman moments.
By Editor