OK, as much as it’s a logical extension of the psycho-loonie that O’Neil wrought during his reign of terror, let’s face it: the marketing boys won’t allow Bruce Wayne to become a murderer, no matter how much it makes sense, given the backstory and Denny’s hatchet job on the character.
That leaves three possiblities
#1) It was a nobody. Aliens. Some stranger. Someone who wanted to frame Bruce but didn’t care about Bats.
Je Shablotnik who we never saw before and will never see again was upset because Bruce bought that last bottle of Chateau LeFiette '47 out from under him. So he had Vesper murdered and framed Bruce? :rolleyes: Lame, lame, lame.
I don’t buy this theory for two reasons. 1) It’s boring and Rucka’s a better writer than that. 2) They had a few token nobodies who were cleared.
#2) It was Bruce, but he was possessed/mind-controlled, etc.
There’s been no hints. If it was possession, Deadman (or someone) would’ve shown up by now. There’s a vague possiblity that the mind-control theory is possible: that’s why Bruce is acting so weird…he doesn’t want to risk hurting anyone else while being controlled. I don’t like it, but it’s just barely plausible. Either way, who’s doing it?
#3) It was someone gunning for Batman.
Whoever it is would have to know that Bruce is Bats and there aren’t that many and most of 'em (Ras, etc) have been ruled out.
However!
Think of the situation:
Someone who knows Bruce is Bats.
Someone who hates Bruce as much as Bats.
Someone who’s great at screwing with people’s minds
As a matter of fact, someone who’s whole gimmick is the mindf*ck!
Thus:
It’s
<drumroll>
Hugo Strange!
Please. Please. Applause only. Don’t throw money.
I only hope that Rucka allows Bats to be wrong about the “Isolate himself” strategy. It’d be a good learning experience for the character if the whole “I’m a psycho-loner” thing made things worse. It’d also be a way of healing all the damage O’Neill did (“Urban legend” my bat-butt!).
Batman can’t be a psycho murderer because he’s a superhero. That’s like making Wonder Woman agree to stay home and be a house wife for Superman or something.
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But somebody did care about Bats. Someone went in and changed Vespers notes about Batman. I think they discovered that someone altered Vespers. If I’m remembering it right someone made it look like Vesper discovered who Batman was and then made it look like someone tried to delete all that information.
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If they’re going to do that then they might as well end the story with Bruce waking up from a bad dream. It worked for Dallas.
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Unless maybe they got it wrong. I knew early on the ruled the usual suspects like Al’Ghul and Bane.
In the latest Nightwing they discovered that someone has broken into the Batcave on at least 3 occasions around the time the murder took place. The list of suspects has got to be short unless they plan on pulling some lame ass deus ex machina on us. My money is still on Al’Ghul. He’s the only one I know of with the resources, the motive to see Wayne seperated from Batman, and the knowledge of Batman’s identity.
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Strange? I didn’t know anyone cared about him these days.
Batman seems to be rather annoying these days. I don’t mind him being a control freak but good gravy he’s not suppose to be a complete asshole.
I have been leaning towards Strange or al Ghul. Much too subtle for everyone else that knows. It is kind of interesting following the story, since I don’t actually get any of the actual Batman books. Just the rest of the Batman family.
That’s what’s great about the current team: Rucka and (the other guy, from Batman). They’re looking at the psycho that O’Neill created and saying “What are the logical consequences of and reasons for someone acting this way?”
And even better, they’re having the supporting characters act correctly in response: Batman has been so insane for the last decade or so that the characters are shocked to find that they’re not as shocked as they should be at the thought that Bats could have killed someone. And given his lunatic behavior over the last few years, their reaction makes sense!
As for Hugo Strange, I think the fact that he’s not been as horribly overused as Ras makes him more likely as prime suspect. Also, I can’t for the life of me figure out a motive for Ras. Ras wants Batman-the-Detective as an heir, not Batman-the-grim-psycho.
Hugo Strange on the other hand has wanted to take Batman/Bruce’s place (the famous Marshall Rodgers/Steve Englehart storyline for one). What better way than to A) Frame Bruce, B) Drive Bats insane (Hugo’s specialty), C) Watch the insane Batman alie C) Kill the now-insane Batman wh D) Take both of their places, after exonerating Bruce with a prepared explaination.
And Loc, I highly recommend Detective: Greg Rucka is the best thing to happen to Batman since Doug Moench in the pre-Crisis '80s and Steve Englehart in the mid-'70s.
I am not as knowlegable as current events as you all but I have a question. What about Talia (sp?), daughter of Ras? Maybe she has been manipulated by her father to do this? No?
Motive and opportunity. And why isn’t Bats chasing down the “real” killer.
Given the rule that the hero cannot be a murderer, and indeed didn’t have powder burns, it wasn’t Bats or Bruce.
It was Sasha. She is in love with Bruce and a rival of Vesper, and Vesper found out Bruce’s secret. So she has two motives. One to “protect” her beloved, and the other to keep Vesper away from Bruce. She also knew about and had access to the murder weapon, having convinced Bruce to buy it. She was in the house at the time of the murder.
I like Sasha: she’s one of the best characters to come along in decades.
Luckily, I think I see a loophole: It would be cheating: Sasha was the viewpoint character during the “Bruce Wayne: Murderer?” arc and the individual stand-alone 10c comic.
We saw Sasha during the time the murder was committed. The camera stayed on her while Bats was out doing whatever. She has an alibi: we were watching her. Batman is the one who was off-camera during the time of the murder. So unless the Gotham Coroner is wildly wrong (as are the rest of the Bat-characters) about the time of death, OR unless the writers are cheating (she snuck off between these two panels and they didn’t tell us she did or that time elapsed) which I don’t accept, she’s innocent. (I hope!! )
The camera was indeed on her the entire time. So if it is her then this would certainly be cheap. I suppose by next month we should have more clues about who the real murderer is.
Batman’s “toys” cost money. All the Old Gothamites with cash up & left during NML. Wayne Enterprises & Lexcorp are the only games in town. Lex ain’t dumb.
Besides, all he has to do is order the FBI to find out who the JLA is. They would. In the name of “National Security” of course.
And make no mistake–Luthor ain’t in this for fun. He wants to destroy them.
Yeah, the cost is how Ras figured things out years ago. And Batman said he would have to plug that hole.
Let’s see, Flash, public identity, Atom, public, Wonder Woman, public, Aquaman, public, about the only big members not known are Batman, Superman, Martian Manhunter, GL, and Plastic Man. And the DEO probably has the info on GL and Plas. So he can’t figure out Batman, doesn’t believe Superman’s, and J’onn’s were all (as far as the public knows) outed by the DEO. He doesn’t need the FBI to do any looking.
I agree Luthor wants to get even with the JLA, but he has never been one to rush into things like that and he is probably pretty busy with the Presidency. As long as he is there, he will probably make them jump through hoops (Like he did with the JSA in World at War) and make plans for after he leaves office.
Scared the pants off of ya, didn’t I Fenris? Hee hee. Yes, I know that the “camera” was on Sasha the whole time, and haven’t figured that part out yet. But she is the only person who is a likely suspect, unless it was Bruce.
My next link in the story arc, and I didn’t pick up today’s yet, is that Bruce escaped and disappeared, and he is not looking for the real killer. Nor is he making perfectly appropriate denials. This is because he already knows who the murderer is. Since Batman locks up murderers and neither he nor Bruce would ever shoot someone with a gun, much less in cold blood, we can assume that he has already figured out that it is Sasha too. And since she is in jail, he doesn’t need to go out and catch her and lock her up, which he would otherwise feel obliged to do. And the police also think that she did it, although you haven’t seen that yet (unless it is in this week’s installment.) They are holding her as an accomplice, but whereas they think that Bruce couldn’t shoot worth beans, they know that she can.
I think it’s kinda silly that everyone’s overlooking Azrael as a potential subject…
And as for Lex not believing Superman has a secret identity… not anymore. A few months back the NSA gave Luthor satellite photos from 30 years back… of an alien space ship… crashed outside a farm… in Kansas. The last panel of the issue was Mr. President, looking all self-satisfied, delcaring to himself… “Clark Kent is Superman!” So he knows.
Sadly, I’ve dropped the Superman books. I love the character, but I hate “four storylines a month,” and none of the books stands heads and shoulders above the rest. If they had kept the “traingle”, interconnected-each-week format, I’d have kept picking up the books.
Unless there’s a crossover, I usuallly only pick up 'Tec, Robin and Birds of Prey. Though I’m sad to see that 'Tec has dropped their cool, retro-two color coloring.
I started buying around '91 or so, so the “grim ‘n’ gritty” Batman seems normal to me. But I thought that was a result of Frank Miller’s “The Dark Night Returns,” plus the movie. Is O’Neil associated with a certain time period, or with a certain story arc, such as “No Man’s Land” or “Joker: Last Laugh”? (Most people liked NML and hated J:LL, I believe.)
I don’t have a problem with “grim -n- gritty”, I do have a problem with insane.
And Denny O’Neil’s legendary status is dubious, IMO.
His '70s Batmen were exciting and stylistic, granted, and the stories were inventive, but the dialogue is atrocious beyond belief (in general: the original 4 part Ras Al Ghul stands out as an exception).
His GL/GA’s were groundbreaking, but bad. The person in the GL suit wasn’t consistant with 10 years of prior characterization (the correct response from Hal to the old black guy when he says “You work for th’ blue folk to save the yellow folk from the orange folk. Whatcho done for the black folk” should not have been “I…don’t know <sob>” it should have been “I’ve saved this planet countless times so you’re still here. What have you done for yourself?” But O’Neil is incapable of writing a strong character who doesn’t share his politics.
When O’Neil came back to Batman after Crisis, he saw all the publicity that Byrne was getting for the Superman revamp and decided to ditch Robin, so he rebooted Robin’s origin to give him an explaination for Robin being obnoxious. Then he had his infamous 1-800-ROB-LIVS or 1-800-SNUF-ROB contest. But he didn’t have the brains or foresight to realize that to all those people out there Robin=Dick Grayson and the ROB-LIVS lines were jammed. Since the artwork for Robin surviving was never actually done, apparently O’Neil had to dragoon a bunch of DC Staffers to spend evenings calling the SNUF-ROB line to stuff the ballot box. (Per Jim Starlin, I believe). Also note that in the end of the story, Batman beats the snot out of the Joker in front of the UN. There are TV Cameras everywhere.
A while later, O’Neill noticed that Urban Legends were a niftly little micro-trend (primarily because of Brunvand’s books, I guess) and decided that everyone in the whole world thought that Batman was an Urban Legend. Despite the fact he’s been seen on TV. And he was in the Justice League. And he’s had press conferences. And despite the fact that the whole freaking point of being Batman is to scare the criminals and how scary is he if he’s just a legend? Peter David had some serious fun with that over in Young Justice.
Bane was created because O’Neil wanted a character of his own who could be in a Bat-Film! Merchandising and royalties galore!
The “Breaking of Batman” was a rip-off of the very successful “Death of Superman” storyline from about a year earlier. The difference is that the Superman creators knew where they were going. O’Neil’s group apparently winged it, hence that one doctor’s Deus-Ex-Machina magic healing powers
Basically, O’Neil spent the 10 or 12 years he was editing the Batbooks following other people’s trends, trying for cheap publicity (and it worked: don’t get me wrong, sales of Batman had been pretty high during his stunts…but between the stunts he didn’t seem to know what to do), and creating a Batman who’s insane (literally.)
Bats wants to scare criminals, so he fosters the impression that he’s not real, so there’s nothing to be scared of.
Bats is so paranoid that he has no friends, confidants or colleagues.
Bats is on one hand, drawing in a whole bunch of marketable, merchandisaible characters (Oracle, Robin, Azrael, Nightwing, etc) but on the other hand, treating them like sh*t.
I’ve got no problem with a driven, obsessed, hard-to-get-along-with Batman. I do have a problem the psycho he’s become: really, under O’Neil, what’s the difference between Batman and Roarschach? Hell, Grant Morrison even poked fun at how Roarshach-like nuts Batman had become: why do you think Morrison’s Batman kept making Roarschach noises (“Hrm”) during his JLA run?
I love the fact that Rucka et al are dealing with the fact that O’Neil’s Batman was nuts: the fact that the supporting cast is willing to consider the idea that Bats may have done it is believable, given Bat’s behavior and it may provide a believable, in-story way for the writers to help restore Bat’s sanity. I’m really hoping that the Bat-Cast solves the murder while Bats is skulking around looking dramatic.
Basically, if O’Neill’s years on the book showed a character spiralling down to the depths of madness, I’m hoping the current storyline will be part of a larger “The Redemption of Batman” plot.
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