Bruce Wayne Has To Be Alive!
To follow-up on the earlier Comicbook.com article “Batman Dies Again And Still No One Believes It,” the “demise” of Batman in Batman 681 and now Final Crisis 6 did surprise me and I give the staff at DC Comics respect for even entertaining the notion that Bruce Wayne could die. His death, unlike the “death” of Superman over a decade ago, is surprising because it reminds us that Bruce Wayne is simply a mortal with lots of tools, gadgets and learned skills. I’m not surprised that it gained media attention, as typically it seems that modern news outlets only give comics the time of day when a major pop-culture event happens, much like the ballyhooed “Death of Superman” and most recently the death of Captain America. Even the dissolving of Spider-Man’s marriage made it onto a few outlets’ web pages when that happened several months back.
For all the news surrounding the event of Batman’s death, and there was a bit, I’m not convinced, and I question DC’s motives in even doing the storyline to begin with. Even when the Batman RIP event was announced and the ominous artwork of a hollow, floating cape graced the cover of Batman 676 to kick off the storyline, I thought to myself “ok, this will be a metaphorical ‘death’. He’ll go on some dark night of the soul again and emerge as some sort of ‘new’ Batman.” My other thought was that the Batman we knew was dead and he, I don’t know, would reveal his identity to the public, briefly retire and give the mantle to long-time colleague Dick Grayson, or some other scenario where Bruce would take time off but eventually return. Even writers and contributors to the series acknowledged that Batman R.I.P. would be a more psychological piece. What happened? Enter Final Crisis.
Batman Dies Again And Still No One Believes It
In Batman #681, DC Comics apparently killed off the title character in a helicopter crash. The issue gained a fair amount of media attention, but no where near the amount of attention that earlier comic book deaths of major characters like Superman and Captain America gained.
The reason that the story came and went quickly in the media is basically that no one really believed Batman was dead. Even DC Comics executive editor Dan Didio admitted that Batman wasn’t really dead. However, the storyline and information coming out of DC Comics suggested that someone else would soon be wearing the Batman mask, so something had or was going to happen to Bruce Wayne.
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