Batman's Shiny New Costume Has a Very Specific Purpose

Batman's shiny new suit is apparently not an official new costume that the Dark Knight will wear going forward. Batman comic writer James Tynion IV confirmed that fact on Twitter: "This is NOT Batman's new costume moving forward. This is a costume that appears in the Joker War story but is not Batman's new suit moving forward. We only see him wear it in a dream sequence. It has a very, very specific story purpose." This all but confirms what we speculated about early on, and what DC Comics execs (sort of) tried to explain to fans...

Needless to say, fans had plenty of opinions to share, when they first saw Batman's new costume design in detail. The shiny blue metallic armor pretty much took the "dark" out of The Dark Knight, and left fans wondering how and why Bruce Wayne would even take his Batman look in that direction.

Tynion's upcoming "Joker War" event has seen Joker steal Bruce Wayne fortune and assets, effectively robbing Batman of all his many gadgets, vehicles, safe houses... all the resources Bruce relies on for his crime-fighting campaign. So when the preview pages of Batman rocking this hi-tech-looking blue metallic suit and chasing criminals down with a new Bat-cycle, it made fans take a second, deeper look at the sequence.

Many fans quickly surmised that Tynion was showing us a dream sequence, as the clues are pretty much all over these pages:

When you look at it again, it seems pretty obvious that this sequence (with a resurrected Alfred) is some kind of horrible nightmare sequence Bruce Wayne suffers through. In that context, the metallic blue Bat-suit is actually an interesting manifestation of a (literally and figuratively) brighter version of Batman, who seems to be patrolling a much more campy version of Gotham City - a place that has not been invaded and infected by Joker's madness - until the dream fades and the horrible realities of Bruce's life set in once again.

Tynion confirmed as much to SYFY Wire:

"So honestly this suit is really thematically important for the issue, and for this entire arc. This is the Batman that Batman has been building himself towards, that he thinks is sort of his own happy ending. And this story is very much about Joker seeing the happy ending that Batman wanted to build for himself and destroying all of the pieces that would be necessary to build himself that happy ending. So that suit is an aspirational suit that we're going to see ripped away. You'll see it for the first time in #95, you'll see it in the future in #96. And then it's going to come back in a big way towards the end in a way that isn't going to necessarily be the utopian situation that [Batman] was hoping to put that suit on in. So, that's a big piece of what we were trying to build."

As "Joker War" begins, Bruce already has a lot to deal with - and no backup. Alfred is dead. Gotham is now in Joker's hold. The Bat-Family is scattered, with Nightwing and Lucius Fox both under Joker's mind-control. Even veteran allies like Harley Quinn and Catwoman have already suffered near-fatal injuries and are out of commission (for now). Now that we know this new Batsuit isn't any secret weapon to turn the tide, the question remains: how will Batman manage to fight back in this Joker War?

"Joker War" kicks off in Batman comics late summer / fall.