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Don't die, Officer Parkman. You're my hero.
All which invites some fairly delicious speculation, but also, I think, makes it pretty obvious that Bruce will be back under it when the 'battle' finishes up; it's my opinion that at least one of the purposes of the run is to show why it has to be Bruce under the mask.
This certainly doesn't mean it won't happen, but isn't that, essentially, the plot of Knightfall? I said elsewhere that there is a belief that Final Crisis is essentially doing what the Death of Superman was meant to - DoS aimed to show that you couldn't revise Superman in the Leifeld manner, as a cyborg, a killer, a teenager or Shaquille o'Neill because the character simply does not work unless he is Clark Kent (although as a concession he was given awful Liefeldian hair for a bit), and Final Crisis would show how awful the conclusion of the grim and gritty trend was, before reviving a sparkling new Silver Age sensibility. Batman RIP, by the model above, would similarly be mirroring Knightfall, in which Batman was replaced by a Liefeldian Batman - with armour, and shuriken guns, and a flamethrower - to show how it didn't work. Of course, this stacked the deck rather, intentionally or unintentionally, by making the stories involving Jean-Paul Valley (whose return, you will be glad to know, has been foreshadowed) utter arse. Dick Grayson also became Batman for a while during that period (collected as Prodigal, fight fans), for some adventures that were presumably deliberately underwhelming.
I am still rather hoping that Batman RIP will not be a straight retread, but it's certainly not inconceivable... |
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