Tuesday Testimonial: Killing Batman

I know I’ve been on a bit of a Batman kick and the assumption that I’m not a fan can be raised but the opposite is true. For the record I think Batman is cool. It’s just that I’m not completely attached to Bruce Wayne. The character has taken a backseat to Batman for years and I really do believe that the two can and should be mutually exclusive.

What that means is Batman can continue without Bruce Wayne and still be a fun and interesting story. I’ve never openly campaigned for Bruce Wayne’s death, but when the idea was presented it didn’t take long for me to warm up to the idea of a new face behind the cowl. Then they killed Batman twice! Once in his book and once in the dreadful Final Crisis. Now don’t get me started about Final Crisis and RIP because that is beside the point. The point is what was it all for in the first place?

If in the end of all that mess Batman is alive but lost in time what does it matter? Why go through all this when the way to bring Bruce back is obvious and easy. The thing about character deaths is that they are rarely final, I know this, but you have to treat certain characters a certain way. Creating so much build up for a simple ‘death’ is a slap in the face to readers.

When they killed Cap off his death was at least final on its face, sure there are ways to bring the character back, but it will take some doing if you know what I mean. In the case of Batman any time traveler can go back and pick Batman up no problem, where is the finality in that?

Let’s take the case of Barry Allen who has recently returned from the dead in the pages of Final Crisis. Barry died in 1985, and his death was very final, it took a lot of years and plenty of stories to bring him back to the living without taking away the importance of his death and sacrifice. Can the same be said for Batman? What does Batman’s ‘death’ signify?

All it looks like to me is a way to sell books for a while, not a desire to tell an interesting story. The Omega Sanction was supposed to be a fate worse than death, not Batman holed up in a cave drawing bat symbols on a wall. And don’t think I missed the beard he was sporting as if he’d been gone a long time, that’s BS.

What happened to the alternate lives, each one worse than the first? When you tell stories you put certain rules into place, and violating those rules is a sign of bad storytelling. This is clearly a violation of the rules set in place concerning Darksied and his abilities.

The bigger picture begs a question: What’s so wrong about the idea of a new Batman? I mean, why can’t we have someone else wearing the cape and cowl? Look and see how great Captain America turned out with Bucky carrying the shield. Wouldn’t you love to see Dick Grayson assume the mantle of the Bat? I think it would bring Batman full circle and allow for new readers to come into the book.

The sad part is we might get to see Dick become Batman (again) but for a limited time. I’m aware that several readers will swear off Batman forever if Bruce dies but DC needs to think about how many new readers they’ll gain and how many will come crawling back once they realize the story is still good.

How do I know the story will be good? Because Dick Grayson has a rich history with the DCU and the odds are good that a writer will be able to build on that history. Plus the story doesn’t have to move very far from its core to appease longtime fans. Afterall, Gotham still needs a protector and the original Boy Wonder would be just as good a pick as any.

This is all a moot point as Bruce Wayne (the ageless wonder) will be back sooner rather than later. I’m taking bets on how long they’ll leave old Bruce stuck in the past before Booster Gold goes back in time and saves him from a T-Rex or something equally lame. This is what you get when you ‘kill’ characters in an ill-conceived manner DC (I’m looking at you buddy), they come back in the dumbest way possible, but if you look at DC’s track record, it starts to make sense.

Jason Todd, Oliver Queen, Kal-El, and Bart Allen all have died. Not all of them died well, with Bart going out like the biggest chump of the group. Their resurrections were all suspect however, and that’s what concerns me about Batman. It’s almost as if the key to his resurrection is so obvious that it’s too obvious, and that DC will be forced to do something drastic if not stupid to right the ship.

The biggest loser in all this is us the fans. In this economy where money is so tight we should be able to look to comics as a cheap form of entertainment but it’s not. The prices are rising as a matter of fact, which is a shame considering how bad things have been at DC since ‘Countdown’ started.

On the bright side it can’t get much worse for DC. In the grand scheme it could have been way worse, and there are still plenty of great DC books out there like Secret Six and Booster Gold. I guess we’ll have to sit tight, stay tuned and hope that DC can work itself out of the mess that it finds itself in.