"Oh and Dead Batman/Todd Batman/God Bruce Wayne? So not happening. You can still expect a status-challenging new scenario, still expect Alex Ross covers and designs, still expect some intricately complex yet instantly entertaining Morrisonia, just, expect something else. Did Internet reaction affect this? Not one jot it seems. All decisions are taking place at a much higher level, and Warner Bros. have made their feelings known."
All this flip-flopping is getting rather ridiculous, isn't it? And yet, it's completely plausible.
Batman -- with its core mythos intact -- is a cash cow for Warner Brothers.
You can't f**k it with it.
My impression? The corporate higher-ups applied the Smackdown.
These smackdowns, in the interest of "brand purity," happen all the time.
I would argue that you have less leeway to f**k with Batman than you do even with Superman.
And then there is the whole "brand confusion" angle. You can't have Dark Knight in theaters and Jason Todd as Batman in the comic book.
And you can't have Jason Todd as Batman because thematically, it's all wrong. And Todd hasn't earned it.
But basically, the fans would have rioted. And so the Smackdown was most likely applied.
While I agree that the Internet buzz didn't directly kill the Todd/Wayne Death storyline, I'm sure it might have underlined it a little to Those Who Know.
Bruce Wayne tells his fans:
(God, it's too late at night to be reading or writing these posts...)
Assuming, of course, that LITG (or his source)knew what he was talking about in the first place.
ReplyDeleteThat's the problem when you report unsourced rumors...when it turns out you're wrong, you can just say someone else flip-flopped or backtracked.
Oh thank god.
ReplyDeleteI kind of saw this coming. But I'm betting Batman as New God will be pushed through, just not in a "he dies and ascends" kind of way.
ReplyDeleteWow. I never ever get to say this.
ReplyDeleteTHE CORPORATE FAT CATS ARE RIGHT.
Argh, it hurts just typing it. Blech. :P
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ReplyDeleteWell of course this wasn't going to happen. Batman is not a traditional fictional character, in that he's not under the control of a creator who is empowered to make such changes to make a creative statement. Batman is a corporate brand, and they're not likely to bring in Jason or Dick or even Tim to be DC's New Coke.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's a simple fact of superhero origins that the more archetypal and simple the origin, the easier it is to suspend disbelief for the character. Rocketed to Earth from the doomed planet Krypton? Check. Swore a lifelong war on criminals after watching his parents gunned down in an alleway? Got it. Was the former sidekick of a caped crusader murdered by the joker and resurrected via alternate reality version of metropolis marvel punching the walls of an interdimensional prison, ostensibly explained in the current 'primary reality' of the DCU by dipping the dead sidekick in a pit in the Himalayas that can restore life to the dead at the cost of sanity, former vigilante psychopath now the heir to the empire over two worthier successors? Doesn't sound like anything you could slap on a t-shirt or build a cartoon on Kids WB around.
I'm just saying.
Never underestimate the power of the casual fan. You can change the identity of Batman all you want, but to the average man on the street, Batman is Bruce Wayne. And when the average man on the street is a Hollywood producer? Batman better freaking become Bruce Wayne, or a sixty million dollar movie goes down the drain. :)
ReplyDeleteEven the tiniest parts of the mythos become sacrosanct. During the sixties, they had to resurrect Alfred the butler from one of the most definitive deaths in comics history (boulder dropped on head, on-panel) because the producer of the Batman TV show wanted to use Alfred. Because Alfred was Batman's butler, dammit, and that's just the way it is.
WHAT "Smackdown"? It hasn't been obvious for weeks that DC's been deliberately leaking misinformation about what they're doing to Batman? Each rumor was progressively more ridiculous than the last.
ReplyDeleteI did say it was a red herring. Did its job, too - got everyone talking about the bat-franchise.
ReplyDeleteWas there ever anything resembling confirmation on this? Even an insider's whisper to someone outside of LITG that this was possibly true?
ReplyDeleteThe "Batman dead, replaced by formerly dead side-kick. Alex Ross to re-design" all seemed to be a bad joke reflecting the happenings with Captain America that nobody got.
Yeah, I called red herring (not as vociferously as I have before) on this & stopped paying attention to it a while ago.
ReplyDeleteReplacing the top three heroes with their adult former sidekicks would never fly for long, but I think it would make a great Elseworld, a la Batman Beyond but with the already-established characters.
ReplyDeleteThis is true, but why not just do an Elseworlds one-shot or mini set on Earth-15 some years before EmoboyPrime showed up? That seemed to fit every kind of bill. It had Zod Superman for Rao's sake. Zod Superman! The mind reels.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I would really like the "52" to be a sort of "core Elseworlds" but I don't see that flying given the current direction.
ReplyDeleteYeah, this whole Multiverse2.0 debcale strikes me as more of the DC Ice Cream truck pulling by on a hot day and saying 'Here you go, a delicious chocolate ice-cream cone and it's all for you!'
ReplyDeleteFollowed of course by their slapping it out of your hand and letting it fall to the ground to melt on the hot asphalt with a hearty 'Oh. . .no, sorry, you can't have it' kind of scenario.
I think they should just throw the doors to the multiverse wide open. Let creators do whatever stories they want and just slap an icon on the cover telling you what Earth it takes place on.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Dean, Lea and Chris!
ReplyDelete