Yesterday Newsarama's Matt Brady had one of his regular chats with Dan DiDio, where he asks stuff like "Jesus, are you guys ever going to publish something by J. Michael Straczynski?" and "So is it true that you tampered with the brakes on Sean McKeever and Dwayne McDuffie's cars?" (I'm paraphrasing) and DiDio answers in zen koans and phrases that appear in Magic 8 Balls (true).
One of the exchanges brought up something I had never even considered, but am now quite perplexed by:
8. A Batman question – since there actually was a body, and that is such a rarity in superhero deaths – was there a real funeral for Batman?
DD: No. And it’s not because they don’t think he’s dead, but rather because he specifically requested not to have one. We’ve alluded this to in several of our books as we’ve referred to Bruce’s Last Will and final wishes – everyone had come to agree that there would be no memorial, there would be no burial, and there would be no celebration of Batman’s life due to his death. Although, as we’re doing in the two-part Neil Gaiman/Andy Kubert story, that tale is just told there. It doesn’t play a role in the current continuity.
Yeah, remember at the end of Final Crisis #6, where Superman shows up all pissed-off looking cradling the already decomposed corpse of Batman? What did Superman end up doing with that?
Did he misplace it in the fight against Darkseid, and it's like buried under some rubble at the moment? Did he give it to Alfred to bury next to the Waynes? Did he heat-vision it and spread the ashes in Gotham Harbor? Did Nightwing and Robin use Batman's bones as clubs with which to beat up the criminals of Gotham City, because they know that's what Batman would have wanted them to do with his body? Is it in the JLA trophy room, or in a glass case at the The Fortress of Solitude?
This is totally gonna bug me now.
After the way Jason Todd was brought back, Batman probably told Supes to chuck the corpse into the sun.
ReplyDeleteSo when a retcon punch happens and he's bought back to life he gets to be burnt alive? That doesn't seem to fit Batman's usual level of forward thinking. I'd rather assume he'd tell super to dress his skeleton in a comfortable bath robe and slippers and prop him up on a couch in a back room in Wayne Manor, with a bell to tell Alfred to make coffe and mufins when he comes alive again.
ReplyDeletePresumably, he had the body stuffed and mounted above the fireplace at the Justice League Hall.
ReplyDeleteThe body got misplaced in issue 7's whole destruction and recreation of the physical universe. It wandered off to join Bruce in his alternate world while nobody was looking.
ReplyDeleteIt's probably hung by invisible wire inside a glass cylinder in the Batcave, which will subsequently be smashed to bits during the climactic fight scene between all the different Robins in Batman suits in Battle For The Cowl #3.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that his body was simply given to Alfred so that he could be buried with his parents. Yeah, I don't feel like being sarcastic or inventive right now.
ReplyDeleteDid Nightwing and Robin use Batman's bones as clubs with which to beat up the criminals of Gotham City, because they know that's what Batman would have wanted them to do with his body?
ReplyDeleteOh please let that have happened. *hopes*