A Tale of 2 Batmen

Remember that thread about Bat's "new" outfit? Well, turns out he's keeping the old one, too.

Bruce *and* Dick are both going to be Batman, thus sayeth Dan DiDio over on IGN Bruce gets the yellow oval emblem, Dick keeps the plain black bat.

So basically Bruce and Dick are going to become Homer and Krusty from the episode when Homer attends Clown College?

Are these people trying to mess up characters or something?

Dick's whole thing was "LET ME GET OUT OF THE SHADOW OF BRUCE"

Dick becoming Batman permanently goes against everything the characters would do and not to mention it's just plain stupid.

This is 4 Liefelds on the JoeQ scale of stupidity.

Now we are going to get Batman vs. Batman debates with a whole lot of planning involved.

Soooo, DC is just copying what Marvel did with Captain America? Meh.

Once again, **** you, Morrison.

Final Crisis should have ended with the last Golden Agers (Ted, Jay, and Alan) sacrificing themselves to save the universe, hopefully against something better than an enemy that's been defeated time and time again (Darkseid) or one that we haven't really heard of (the multiverse vampire monitor thing oh god I almost threw up in my mouth a little bit just remembering it). They could have actually stayed dead and it would have been more meaningful. At least, I think so.

I'll play that MMO: City of Batpeople.

I believe that the arc will be called "Batman Inc." and will actually feature many Batmen all over the world.

I'm pretty jazzed about it.

Bruce sucks, long live Dick.

I'm in the camp that says Bruce should have actually died, and Dick should be Batman. But I accept that killing Bruce takes a lot of balls, so I accepted his return as long as Dick stayed Batman. Batman, Inc... kind of gives me my wish. I think the concept of Bruce expanding the bat-brand isn't in itself a bad idea, however, I think there should only ever be one Batman. Dick should remain Batman, and Bruce can travel and train others and allow them to use the logo, but there should only be one actual Batman.

I agree that there has been some convoluted failures in recent Batbooks (notably Jason Todd), but I am honestly enjoying the stories now than most in the last few years. Morrison isn't a writer for everyone. He balances his stories upon small, obscure references or his own previous stories. Not everyone wants to have read and fully digested Seven Soliders (basically impossible to do, anyway...) to understand Final Crisis. I know FC made no sense to me when I first read it. But when you really get into it and you can follow him, Morrison is a man who understands what he's writing. I'm not saying "if you don't get it, too bad." It's a bad thing that he's not accessible to everyone all the time. But Morrison does hit a sweet spot sometimes, like in Batman & Robin. If you're a Batfan and aren't reading Batman & Robin, you're making a mistake. Final Crisis was kind of... out there. But Batman RIP and the follow-up to that in Batman & Robin have been stellar. It's kind of a roundabout way to say it, but I'm going to trust Morrison a little longer to make Batman, Inc a classic story.

The problem with it isn't the concept... it's that it doesn't work with the characters.

Dick doesn't want to be Batman. Bruce doesn't want Dick to be Batman. He has only asked him to take over the one time because he was the best choice at the time. Bruce said NOT to be Batman in his message to Dick and he told Tim long ago that he'd like Tim to take over one day as Batman.

So it doesn't make sense for any of the characters involved to have Dick remain Batman and it doesn't make sense to toss out Nightwing.

On the other side it doesn't make sense even from a logistics point of view and Batman would know that. There are very few people that can match Bruce on one skill, let alone all, and to train a Batman takes like 10 years of specific training and that can sometimes fail. The only option for him is to get other known heroes to be Batmen, but then that destroys their comics and they have their own way of doing things so it lessens the overall effect of what Batman stands for.

Also it's lame as it's a running joke that is used that Batman CAN'T be one person because of his coverage and abilities and Robin is thought to have switched a lot rather than only a few time for various reasons.

The entire thing just doesn't make any sense in continuity nor as a story thing as it makes a joke of the entire series.

I actually like the idea. I know Dick was resistant to becoming Batman, but the simple truth of it is: he's very good at it. There have always been those who have speculated that there was no way that Batman could be one man, that there had to be a committee of them who shared the role. In a way, they're going to make that happen. I would love to see Dick remain the Batman in the Justice League, as he is much better in any team dynamic than Bruce ever was. That would leave Bruce free to concentrate on Gotham, which has always been his first and greatest love.

The interesting thing I'm looking forward to seeing is who Damien goes with. They've had their prickly moments, but Dick and Damien have developed a fairly decent relationship. For all of his arrogance, Damien respects and trusts Dick (as much as he can trust anyone). Damien and Bruce... well, there's really not much there. Will Damien stick with the relationship he's got with Dick, or will he jump at the chance to work with his father? Will Bruce insist on taking over Damien's training? Does Bruce even want Damien to be Robin? Will Dick insist on keeping the team as it is? Lots of questions to be answered. It could be fun seeing what they do with it.

For the record, I would much rather have seen Dick remain as the sole Batman, and have Bruce take on something new. Let him run Checkmate, or take over the Titans so those kids stop getting their ***** kicked and dying. Let him run off with Selina for a while and just have a life for a bit. Or, Bruce Wayne for President. Hell, they let Luthor do it. I would just have liked to have seen them do something to shake things up a little more than having him come straight back into the Batsuit.

When the Batman franchise hits a Latin American country, or Spain for that matter, will we see a Bat Manuel?