Two Thoughts on "Batman R.I.P."

Two Thoughts on "Batman R.I.P."

Jul 19

I’ve been snarfing down all the great content posted across the internet about Grant Morrison’s current Bat-epic, “Batman R.I.P.” There’s some terrific work being done out there by minds far more expansive than my own.

But here’s two thoughts that struck me as I re-read Batman 678. On this, the second day of my 32nd year on God’s green earth, I share them with you.

1) A pretty tiny one–there’s a line early in 678 where Honor Jackson, the homeless dude who helps Bruce Wayne regain his alter ego, says something about “bat-fairies.” My uneducated theory: Either Bat-mite brought Honor back to help Batman, or Honor actually IS Bat-mite.

2) My theory on the Black Glove? Thomas Wayne, Jr….aka, Bruce Wayne’s long-lost secret brother!!! Dorian Wright wrote up the original Bob Haney tale over at postmodernbarney; basically, there’s a serial killer loose in Gotham, and the culprit turns out to be another Wayne son, turned forever crazy by a car accident as an infant.

Maybe it’s a stretch, but there’s something to the idea of Bruce’s brother as an unfulfilled version of Bruce; he never got the rich parents and the snug life, so he never got the chance to experience the transformative event of those parents dying, and thus he never became the hero Bruce has become. Maybe Thomas Jr. envies Bruce his agony; Bruce has sometimes viewed his secret identity as a burden taken up to avenge the murder of his parents, but Thomas Jr. never even got the chance to experience that agony and become this remarkable creature of the night.

Doctor Hurt’s final appearance in 678 echoes; he’s dressed in the costume of “the first Batman,” an outfit Thomas Wayne Sr. wore to a costume party one night in an old Batman story. As I recall, he thwarted some crooks and thus supposedly was a form of “Bat-man” before Bruce took up the cowl. Thomas Jr. could be filling the costume as a double symbol–of the father he never got to know, and thus never got to lose; and the brother he never got to become.

The main reason I like this theory is the same reason I like David Uzumeri’s theory about Alfred as the Black Glove: It’s transformative to Batman’s story, but it doesn’t necessarily substantially change it. The idea that the Glove is Thomas Wayne Sr. himself is pretty damn shocking, but it’s almost too great a seismic shift in Batman lore. So it fits with Grant Morrison’s quote from this year’s New York Comic-Con:

“When we begin to suspect the identity of the villain, I think it’s the most, like I said the other day, it’s possibly the most shocking Batman revelation in 70 years.”

But it doesn’t necessarily require seventy years’ worth of retconning to do so.

Whoever the Black Glove is, I expect it will put a rotten, delicious cherry atop the Bat-sundae. Looking forward to it.