The sixth issue of the Final Crisis comic mini-series came out today. Normally I wouldn’t cover that, since I haven’t regularly read comic books in almost 20 years. But this issue was special. This was the issue where DC Comics did the unthinkable: they killed Batman. In the midst of a giant spike in the character’s popularity, through Christopher Nolan’s massively successful Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, they decided to kill one of the most iconic characters in American culture. Does this seem like a bad idea to anyone else?
I know what you’re probably thinking: “Comic book storylines are like soap operas. Characters die and come back all the time.” True. That does happen. The writers leave some small, usually unbelievable loophole, and use that to resurrect the character. They did it to Superman in the 90s. They did it to The Flash. So they’ll probably do it with Batman, right? Eh, maybe not.
Check out the last page of Final Crisis #6 below. Batman’s toast (pun very much intended). He got hit by supervillain Darkseid’s Omega Beams, which kill instantly on contact. I have no idea what that last sentence means, but it sounds bad. And the picture’s bad.
Apparently there’s more backstory to this, involving someone pretending to be Thomas Wayne, Bruce’s murdered father, and Bruce going insane. But really I don’t give a shit. Batman’s dead. That seems like the only important point.
Goddamn it. Batman and Ricardo Montalban in one day? Fuck. Who’s next? Mr. T?
[image and background info via Life in Motion. Thanks to Blair for the tip]
6 comments
January 14, 2009 at 11:06 pm
Rian Fike
Very exciting times.
More on the Batman events:
http://fullbodytransplant.wordpress.com/2009/01/15/batman-is-really-dead-final-crisis-6/
And more on Ricardo Montalbon:
http://mightygodking.com/index.php/2009/01/14/ricardo-montalban-1920-2009/
Wallowing in the brief span of a human (or superhuman) life has never been so twisted.
January 14, 2009 at 11:43 pm
Blair
Time to earn my geek cred. Darkseid is one of the New Gods, primarily the leader of the evil gods of Apokolips. Bad dude. Fights the JLA and Superman quite a bit. Darkseid wields the Omega Effect, which can take the form of the Omega Beams, which he fires out of his eyes. The beams can change direction according to Darkseid’s will, so he very rarely misses. They almost always kill on contact, especially if they hit a human or non-god entity, so Batman had little chance. He did go out a hero though. He walked right up to Darkseid knowing full well what could happen and shot him with a bullet of Darkseid’s design meant specifically to kill a god. One of the rare instances of Batman using a firearm, which in itself is significant.
January 14, 2009 at 11:51 pm
Sean
Ok, besides Batman being dead, what really bothers me is the villain’s name. Why “Darkseid”, and not “Darkside”? Is he Dutch? Batman shouldn’t get punked by a dude in wooden shoes.
January 15, 2009 at 12:09 am
Blair
I dunno. He was created by Jack Kirby a long time ago. I don’t know if he ever said why he spelled it the way he did. Maybe he was just trying to be different. Maybe “Darkside” just didn’t strike him as a name, but liked the sound of it so he changed the spelling.
February 18, 2010 at 2:55 pm
Chris
they did do a story with killing off Batman called only legends live forever, however this was on Earth 2 so the old parallel dimension saved our earth 1 that day
July 15, 2010 at 8:49 pm
Alex
I know about Darkseid being able to bring back people he’s killed with the Omega Beams, and a lot of people are saying that he’ll bring Batman back, but isn’t he dead? The bullet DID hit him before Batman died (or at the exact moment)