Batman and Joker were bleeding out after a brutal fight then buried alive under Gotham City in the Endgame finale.
After a break, Batman #41 introduced James Gordon as an all-new Dark Knight stepping up after the death of Batman.
But there’s a mystery man on the mean streets of Gotham.
Endgame has lead to a new long game for writer Scott Snyder. Along with a new villain, this week’s issue has a big revelation about the Batmen…yes, BatMEN.
Before we continue here’s a…
SPOILER ALERT:
If you have not read this week’s Batman #43 stop reading now.
Seriously.
OK.
Here it comes:
Bruce Wayne is alive but as this issue spells out: he’s not putting the famous cape and cowl back on anytime soon.
Snyder reveals what happened to Bruce Wayne. The mysterious elixir that was seemingly making the Joker immortal brought Bruce back from the brink of death but without his memories and everything that made him the Dark Knight.
“Now that the secret is out that Bruce is part of this story, the thing that we can finally talk about is how the story was never conceived as a “let’s kill Bruce Wayne” story. It was conceived as a story about what would happen if Batman died and Bruce Wayne came back.” Snyder told DC Comics.
“One of the questions that I’ve always had since I started writing Bruce, and really even before, is who he would be if he didn’t have the scar that had made him Batman. This story gave us an opportunity to both explore that singularly, as well as the flip side of the question that Commissioner Gordon is asking himself, which is if the original Batman went down, is there room for a new Batman that’s a reflection of the old one, but on the other side of the mirror? Is there room for a Batman who works within the law, within the system, who’s human and not legend or folklore? They’re both kind of asking themselves the same question. Bruce finally has a chance to be this person that he could have been had his parents never been shot. To me, that was always fascinating, that idea of who Bruce would be without this specter of Batman hanging over him.
So it was always conceived as a dual story with Bruce on the one hand, Jim on the other and Batman somewhere haunting the middle of this story. Batman almost is a third main character who might sort of come back to take over in his own way.
I feel like when we put Batman in a death trap at the end of the issue, you know that he’s not going to die. It’s not like we’re going to kill him and show a decomposing corpse for ten issues. The fun of it is always how he’s going to get out of it. What is the journey we’re taking you on? Hopefully it gives you new angles on the character and new glimpses into the psychology and mythos of the character. That’s really what we’re trying to do here. It’s less a story about whether he’ll ever become Batman again than it is about who he would be this way, and what tragedy would need to happen to make him suddenly lose all of that again to once again become this thing that haunts him.”
What do you think of the twist with Bruce Wayne? Is a confrontation between Bruce and Gordon inevitable?
Batman #43 is in comic shops now.
By Editor