I was going to write about how the Dow Jones took a huge beating in light of low retail sales and the looming panic over Q4 earnings for the blue chips. I even considered talking about how Geithner is a shady character for owing around $34,000 in back taxes to the IRS or how he likes to hire (exploit) undocumented immigrants as nannies. I even thought about talking about how Citigroup proved that American financial institutions are incapable of being financial supermarkets like their counterparts outside of America. But not today. Instead I am going to write about the death of Bruce Wayne, a popular character also known as Batman.
Batman (Bruce Wayne) finally meets his end facing a supervillain called Darkseid, who is a being known as a “New God” in the comic book world. Earlier in the year, there were headlines from the corporate media about Batman meeting his death in a controversial storyline called “Batman RIP” where he supposedly endures a series of psychological attacks from a villain purporting to be his father. This storyline generated controversy by forcing readers to question Batman’s origins and his sanity and ended with Batman attacking his “father” before disappearing.
A follow-up storyline to “Batman RIP” tied into the mini-series where Batman meets his final fate. In this story, we learn that Batman did survive the events of Batman RIP and is currently imprisoned by Darkseid’s minions who are attempting to extact Batman’s mind to clone an army of soldiers who think and act like him. Bruce manages to break out of the trap and goes to put an end to Darkseid’s plans.
Still psychologically scarred from his encounters in “Batman RIP” and from Darkseid’s torture, Batman confronts the villain and threatens to shoot Darkseid with a bullet that can kill New Gods:
He manages to wound Darkseid but is hit by Darkseid’s Omega Beams, which are known to instantly kill anyone on contact. It would seem odd to see Batman threatening to kill someone with a gun given his tragic origin, but the events in Batman RIP forced him to question his background, his sanity, and his motivations.
In that storyline, the villain claims to be Thomas Wayne, Batman’s father, who had hired Joe Chill to kill his entire family so he can start his life over again as Simon Hurt. Most of all, he had planed hypnotic suggestions in Batman to make him mentally shutdown and quit crimefighting. Unfortunately, Batman was unable to investigate any of Hurt’s allegations as he was captured by Darkseid.
If no one believes that Batman was killed in Final Crisis #6, here is the final page of the comic that just came out this Wednesday:
Batman is killed by Darkseid’s Omega Beams; not even Superman can save him. Batman RIP. It looks like Dick Grayson, the original Robin, will take over as Bruce Wayne has met his end.
The writer responsible for both the controversial storylines “Batman RIP” and “Final Crisis” is Scotsman Grant Morrison. His official website is http://www.grantmorrison.com/. Let him know what you think!
January 14, 2009 at 11:32 pm
[...] and background info via Life in Motion. Thanks to Blair for the [...]
January 14, 2009 at 11:42 pm
You are pure awesomeness. I just gave you the credit in the comments on my blog.
Rock on!
January 14, 2009 at 11:55 pm
http://popculturewilleatitself.com/2009/rip-batman/trackback/
January 15, 2009 at 1:34 am
Ah finally someone has uploaded some great screens. Thanks for the shots. I wrote my thoughts about it here: http://karthickgopal.com/2009/01/they-killed-the-batman-in-final-crisis/
I think Morrisson has just given the most insulting death ever for a superhero. No dignity in dying like this.
January 15, 2009 at 3:50 am
i really saw this coming i have this issue and called my best friend back home in NY and he was stunned. Morrison is the same man who brought back the Phoenix in New X Men only to kill her off. This is DC’s answer to the death of Captain America. if Darkseid isn’t dead himself, then he’s fately wounded.
January 15, 2009 at 10:05 am
One reason why it’s not Batman.
In Batman RIP his cape and cowl were left behind. If he was found by Darkseid’s men why is he still wearing a mask. He should be unmasked.
That’s not Bruce Wayne who was killed. He was burned to the bone so Superman can’t even check if it’s him.
January 15, 2009 at 11:36 am
Oh Ryan, you’re in denial. If you read the blog you would have known that I mentioned the tie in story that explained how Batman survived Batman RIP and how he got captured in Final Crisis while investigating Orion’s death.
Read http://www.wizardworld.com for confirmation of Bruce Wayne’s death
In the tie-in, Batman mentioned going back to get a backup cowl before heading to the JLA HQ to investigate Orion’s killing. He was then captured by Darkseid and tortured for months. This explains his “disappearance” in the comics prior to the events of Final Crisis
January 15, 2009 at 1:13 pm
[...] SHOW SPOILER!Batman is dead. Batman is killed by Darkseids Omega Beams; not even Superman can save him. Batman RIP. It looks like Dick Grayson, the original Robin, will take over as Bruce Wayne has met his end. Batman is Dead in Final Crisis #6 Life In Motion [...]
January 15, 2009 at 8:57 pm
[...] It looks like Dick Grayson, the original Robin, will take over as Bruce Wayne has met his end. Batman is Dead in Final Crisis #6 Life In Motion Time to mourn, the caped crusader (or Bruce Wayne at least) has met his end. R.I.P., Dark [...]
January 16, 2009 at 1:50 am
I don’t know how to feel. I just got back into DC last year and didn’t see this happening to batman. (bruce wayne) For me, this is worse than Marvel screwing up Spidey’s life with mephisto last year and I stopped buying Spidey right after that. You can’t kill off Batman, especially when there making movies about him. No one will be able to don the cape like bruce wayne. Very Hurt about this….
January 17, 2009 at 7:30 pm
Food for thought:
1) darkseid says “The death that is life” purple beams, batman hits darkseid with a special bullet.
2) beams that actually hit batman are yellow!! not” anti-life” but “life”.
3) batman say “gotcha” he already had a plan devised for this to happen to him.
So id say we havent seen the last of bruce wayne bye a long shot. Wondering if the flashes may of had something to do with the color change OR he has been changed somehow after the hit from darkseid. When it comes to his beams its all about color. REd = death, purple = antilife yellow = life??
January 17, 2009 at 11:31 pm
But an old Bruce Wayne is show in the Batman beyond comics and tv series, so he had to survive.
August 9, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Batman beyond is the world of earth 12
January 18, 2009 at 4:15 am
I’m still a bit skeptical(lol green arrow) about this, but they might have really pulled of a Cap here.
January 18, 2009 at 1:09 pm
This is silly and stupid. The storyline was sad(and not emotionally sad), it is obvious there is a way out of this if you ready the batman RIP line of comics, where in the end there is a room of clones. Obviously it could be said that the one that came out of this was a clone. This is pathetic storytelling and I wonder how many more times we, the fans, will have to put up with this sort of storytelling “genius”, not to mention the RIP story line was a mess of gobbly gook. *Sigh.* The creativity has gone out of comics and until Batman returns I will be reading no DC titles, if the whole industry hasn’t lost me by then. Pathetic.
January 19, 2009 at 1:08 pm
What’s sadder? Batman being killed in a stupid manner or as a result of bad storytelling?
A reminder why there is a growing trend to download scanned comics instead of buying them…
January 21, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Sapphire, Batman Beyond is a whole different reality ( maybe one of other 52 universes of the DC multiverse ) than Final Crisis ( which takes place on Earth-1 ) . Whether there is an older BW in BMB has no bearing on his death in FC …
January 21, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Guys! Guys!
Come on!
His 70th anniversary’s on the way.
I just wished they’d stop all this stunting.
JJB
May 7, 2009 at 12:34 am
After the events of FC #7 Batman is re-created due to the massive amount of reality restructuring (Wish machine, hole in reality and etc..) but stuck in 2 Million B.C.
May 7, 2009 at 3:12 pm
He is a Black Lantern. Batman is so dead
May 9, 2009 at 5:25 pm
LiM –
Batman is alive and well at the end of Final Crisis, his hand drawing the bat glyph in the last panel.
See:
http://glspotlight.blogspot.com/2009/01/black-lantern-list.html
JJB
November 22, 2009 at 1:20 am
yay!
May 16, 2009 at 10:16 pm
Did Darksied succeded in making the Batman clones?
If so, shouldn’t one(or all) of them be able to beat him?
And isn’t Dick Greyson Nightwing now? Or has that even happened yet?
May 17, 2009 at 2:34 am
SHIT DC WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT? GOD DAMMNIT YOU DON’T GO KILLING OFF THE BEST HERO YOU HAVE!
November 22, 2009 at 1:21 am
so true
May 21, 2009 at 12:46 am
Nightwing is the new Batman – http://lifeinmotion.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/the-new-batman/
June 3, 2009 at 5:41 am
OHH Some very interesting and insightful thoughts. Adding this to my bookmarks. ^_^
June 25, 2009 at 1:59 pm
la imagen esta super chingona no puedo creer que batman quede asi y pues la imagen que tiene con superman esta super waooooooooo.
July 25, 2009 at 4:18 pm
[...] Batman died in January, but he might get better. That’s an implicit message of the first issue of Blackest Night, an eight-issue miniseries that also refers, collectively, to DC Comics’ big “crossover” event of 2009. Since Blackest Night started earlier in July, you can barely set foot in a comic book store without spotting some reference to it. I even got a free “Black Lantern power ring” when I bought Blackest Night #1 at my neighborhood shop, although I have to acknowledge that it’s made of plastic and exhibits no powers over life and death. So far. [...]
August 15, 2009 at 11:09 pm
who cares if he’s dead or not? it’s a comic book… they’ll invent some magic way of bringing him back at some point when they realize that they’ve destroyed one of the best superheroes in both DC and Marvel history.
September 2, 2009 at 2:54 am
if you don’t care why write in here?
September 10, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Batman’s bones help power Black Lanterns…
October 14, 2009 at 2:23 pm
Whoa I can tell that you guys really love Bats as much as I do.
Upon reading the heroic (make that ‘legendary’) sacrifice that our beloved hero committed, I was nothing short of stunned. It was a ‘holy shit!’ kind of reaction; this is definitely Batman’s crowning moment of awesomeness. And the way he used that gun, it’s like coming full circle with what created Batman in the first place. If you guys have noticed, it’s like evil was winning everywhere, from the start when Joe Chill murdered the Waynes, up to this point where a ‘new god’ of pure malevolence imposes his will on Earth and the universe. But then you have Batman, now attempting to end evil with a gun, the very tool that was once used by evil to cause the incident that would create him. It’s kind of a double metaphor– Batman using a gun to kill evil, which ends up killing him; at the same time, the character itself is going to die by the same token gave birth to him. And that character, in some metaphysical level, is gladly making that sacrifice. Batman using a gun to kill evil, even if it means that he dies in the end. It’s not just irony, it’s sheer poetry.
But then we do see that the Bruce Wayne/Batman we know is carving up his symbol on a cavewall…sure, Dick Grayson becomes the new Batman, and we do see a charred corpse in Superman’s hands, which would later become a Black Lantern, and I’m pretty sure those guys at D.C. are gonna keep on building up on those kind of plots (especially with the 70th year coming up, as you guys pointed out)… I believe it all works out in everyone’s favor. This way:
- they (the writers) can have more room to play around with a 70 year old charac–oh excuse me, “legend”– play around with the Bat family, characters that have taken the backseat of late;
- perhaps breathe even more life to an already awesome character concept;
-truly bring Bruce Wayne to a level that he’s never been before (think about it: Bruce Wayne probably knew he wouldn’t really die, just shifted around to another reality, and now he’s got the biggest detective puzzle to solve in his life. Alternately, for the first time since ever, he gets a vacation)
-and us, the fans, while we stay on the edge of our seats, get to anticipate an even bigger come back for our beloved dark knight detective.
If you think about it, it’s a little like how they tied-off the continuity dilemma in the new Star Trek movie. But that’s for another post/comment.
November 3, 2009 at 9:39 pm
pfft… my favorite hero just died, i hate dc universe i just think right now “Fuck You DC Universe!!” damn im so freaking pissed, to cut of the most epic hero that beat villains without super powers, is just damn insane fuck you grant morrison.
November 22, 2009 at 1:31 am
“during which Batman confronts the story’s villain Darkseid. Making rare exception, Batman uses a gun, loaded with a Radion (which is poisonous to the New Gods) bullet, to shoot Darkseid’s shoulder, just as Darkseid unleashes his Omega Sanction, the “life that is death”, upon Batman and his charred corpse is recovered by Superman. However, the Omega Sanction does not kill its victims: instead, it sends their consciousness travelling through parallel worlds, and at the conclusion of Final Crisis, it is made clear that this is the fate that has befallen the still-living Batman, as he watches the passing of Anthro in the distant past. While it seems we won’t get Batman back as a Black Lantern, no one said the Waynes wouldn’t come back.”
quote from : http://glspotlight.blogspot.com/2009/01/black-lantern-list.html