BATMAN #600: Oracle accuses Batman of murder

[starwolf_oakley]

In an earlier BIRDS OF PREY post, we started discussing Bat-dickery and the death of Vesper Fairchild. Mainly how Oracle thought Bruce Wayne *had* killed Vesper Fairchild with a gun for no apparent reason. So, let's go back to BATMAN #600 where Batman and the Bat-family discuss Bruce Wayne getting accused of murder. As it's a 32 page story, I'm posting 12 pages.

First, Batman returns to his stately manor, even though the cops figure the criminal never returns to the scene of the crime.



Ah, Jason, you adorable sociopath. (We'll discuss DC's "You liked Jason Todd? What the $@#$@ is the matter with you?" attitude later.)





Yes, because who cares about Cassandra and what she knows? At all?





Sheesh, first he tugs on Batman's cape then he asks "Hey, are you guilty of cold blooded murder or not?" Are we sure Tim's the genius of the group?



"Yes, we want to make sure you didn't kill someone with a gun."
I can understand Batman getting upset over the gang thinking he might be guilty... since Batman gets upset over everything.

It's a little like the Mel Gibson movie "The Man Without Face."
McLeod: Think Norstad, reason. Have I ever abused you? Did I ever lay a hand on you of anything but friendship on you? Could I? Could you imagine me ever doing so? And what about the past?
Chuck Norstadt: Just tell me you didn't do it, I'll believe you.
McLeod: No, no sir! I didn't spend all summer so you could cheat on this question.
(Of course, in the original book, McLeod *is* a child molester, but let's ignore that.)



Oh, that. Well, the Scary Bat-God that lives in Bruce Wayne's head told him to.
Seriously.
In BATMAN: GOTHAM KNIGHTS #24.
Go ahead, read the issue if you don't believe me.



We learn later the disk was tampered by David Cain. Someone on the board said Vesper never figured it out, while I know I read somewhere that she did.

Barbara got the original disk in a BIRDS OF PREY issue, with Dinah asking "What's so important about this Bruce Wayne guy?" Must have been before one of those reality punches.



*That's* all he can say?

I've posted some of the following pages before. Even though Ed Brubaker wrote this issue, Greg Rucka said in on the TPBs that part of the purpose of the "Bruce Wayne: Murderer/Fugitive" was to take the "There is no Bruce Wayne" idea and show that it's a fallacy.




Oh, there is no Bruce Wayne. Well then, what does it matter?
I cut the pages where Batman and Nightwing fight and Jason's memorial case gets smashed. After all, Jason's memorial case ALWAYS got smashed. SHORTPACKED did a joke about it.

http://shortpacked.com/comics-archive/2006-07-31-jasontodd.png

Anyway, here's the ending of the issue.



"And as the last remnants of this mask fade away... I feel something I haven't felt nearly all my life. I feel free."

A lot of that makes a sad kind of sense.
Of course, it also seems to say Batman can only be happy if he's beating the crap out of criminals. Which is just disturbing.



Suggested tags: char: batgirl/oracle/barbara gordon, char: batgirl/cassandra cain, char: batman/bruce wayne, char: robin/nightwing/dick grayson, char: robin/red robin/tim drake, creator: ed brubaker, creator: scott mcdaniel, title: batman

Comments

[pyrotwilight]

It's sad, but kinda funny I totally understand Bruce as being just a mask as stated here.

More so than when Bruce later says "I was always Bruce Wayne, I just never realized it" or somesuch later.

[jaybee3]

I think the story fails in that sense in that no matter what Brubaker/Rucka's intentions to put the "Bruce Wayne" part of Batman fully back in play as part of the Bat-matrix, within months of this storyline was busy back at work with more of the same old paranoiac controlling Frank Miller BS Bat-jerks stuff (and based Rucka's comments in the TPBs I don't think they were happy with the results - that could be why the ending of Fugitive seemed more concerned with the Bruce/Sasha fall-out then the fallout out of Gotham #1 citizen being falsefully charged and imprisoned and HUNTED by the Gotham PD). In a matter like the whole recent New Krypton mess, the minute the story was over they hit the re-set button on the bat-books, BW was back in charge of WE like nothing had happened, Sasha was technically "dead" for all the world knew and Vesper has basically never been mentioned again.

Meanwhile, Morrison and Dini have been doing NOW what Brubaker/Rucka tried to do back then but are doing it more successfully - proving that Bruce Wayne does exist and is more than a mask. The question is will it take with DC Editorial this time?

[whitesycamore]

God, I hope it does. The unfeeling batjerk is so depressing to read about. There's a reason that Bruce is surrounded by loyal followers, and it's because 'grave, reserved, dedicated to the mission' ! = 'personality of a cold wet brick'.

[starwolf_oakley]

BW was back in charge of WE like nothing had happened,

Some of that was covered in the BATMAN FAMILY miniseries. The board of directors of WE were considering voting Bruce out, figuring "You let Lucius Fox handle most of the day to day stuff anyway, so what's it matter? Plus there's the whole fleeing the country after getting arrested for murder" I posted it a while back.

http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/953828.html?#cutid1

Sasha was technically "dead" for all the world knew and Vesper has basically never been mentioned again.

Sasha said "Poor Vesper" while talking to Bruce, once she realized Bruce had *let* her find out her was Batman.

I don't know *that* much about Vesper. She did stay in Gotham during No Man's Land to provide "Radio Free Gotham" or something.

I believe (or choose to believe) that Vesper's death affected Cassandra Cain a LOT. She found out part of David Cain's reasons for killer Vesper was to see if Batman was "worthy" of raising Cassandra.

[jaybee3]

It's funny I hadn't forgotten that Batman Family (one of my favorite mini-series of the last decade and one that really should be collected if only for the development of Martha Kane Wayne's background) but it's almost as if the events of that series had never happened certainly the group of villains developed in that series haven't reappeared. But yeah, Delilah Wagner who had become CEO during M/F had organized a coup-te-tat of the Wayne Board and then Bruce (with the unknowing help of the villian of the piece - his mother's "old friend") organized a counter-strike and Wagner was out. But what I was getting at was that none of that was ever mentioned in the regular Batman books at the time - so if you didn't get the mini you had no idea. I don't have the issues anymore but someone who dos should really post something from Batman Family - it was awesome. And Bruce doesn't act like a dick or jerk at all (a rarity during that period).

As for Vesper, she was one of those characters who was brought back out of mothballs just so she could be killed for this storyline (I think either Rucka or Brubaker said as much) so I didn't really feel anything at her death. And I'm really curious if she really WOULD have told the world Bruce Wayne=Batman, maybe it's only me but Bruce's exes who are "in the know" seem to be very loyal to him (Selina, Talia, Silver, even Vicki Vale now who has figured out the "secret" is still holding on to it - and she's a reporter with the biggest scoop of her career!)

[jaybee3]

Thanks for posting this. I had forgotten the exact wording of some of these issues and maybe my hard thoughts on Barbara could be boiled down to the bad art here, which is what I remembered in my head. Babs looks hard and unsympathetic compared to the others who look merely confused. The art did no one any favors especially in a storyline that was the big "event" of the Bat-books that year. But then I never liked this story so I'm biased.

I liked the set-up but it floundered midway through - for instance there's no way in heck, even the corrupt GCPD charges Bruce Wayne with murder 1 within hours of being questioning and before his lawyer arrived and the charges against Sasha were even more flimsy. The fact the the case was led by maybe the 3 most honest cops in Gotham at the time (Gordon being retired), Maggie Sawyer, Crispus Allen and Renee Montoya did nothing to help their reputation, since when the truth came out their supposed "air-tight" case fell apart like sand (heck, even Renee was having doubts about Wayne's guilt AFTER they sent him to prison but she and Crispus never bothered to do any more detective legwork once Bruce was charged). If Bruce HAD gone to trial his lawyer (a tough female lawyer who had didn't get enough panel time) IMO would have shredded the D.A.'s case - a point the now long-gone D.A. of the time must have known since he offered to drop ALL charges against Sasha if she would turn on Bruce.

Instead of an interesting court-room drama we get the heights of Bat-Dickery maybe ever in continuity with Bruce acting like the most unfeeling unlikable jerk ever and it didn't help that we have people like Babs (and I stick with her because at this point in time Tim was relatively new as Robin in comic time and Cass was literally a newbie but Babs had known Bruce since SHE was a teen) questioning whether a man who had witnessed his parents being gunned down in cold blood would actually in-turn gun down his ex-girlfriend (in such an obvious and overt way) even though Bruce just told her he didn't think Vesper knew who he was (which gets out the motive) and Babs knew his aversion to guns (buying one is not the same as using one) and his no-kill rule. But to make this story work everybody in the Bat-Crew had to act like they were in some melodrama of some kind.

Of course since during this period we were supposed to also believe that Black Canary didn't know who this "Bruce Wayne" guy was, maybe we can dismiss all of M/F as discontinuity thanks to a Superboy-Prime punch of some kind.

[alienist]

I think Barbara was struggling because she's taught herself to follow facts first, and all of the facts pointed to Bruce. She didn't just shrug and accept he did it - she kept searching for evidence to the contrary. But she still doubted. It didn't help that Bruce had been acting worse than usual, lately , which affected Tim's stance, too.

It's still a very flawed storyline, though, for all your reasons and more - and dammit, I liked Vesper.

[swatkat]

IIRC, there's an exchange where Barbara says that she's following the evidence and searching for the truth, the way Bruce has taught them to. And in this case, all evidence points to Bruce. It's not exactly easy for her, the most poignant instance being where she tells Cass 'tell me he didn't do it and make me believe it.' The storyline has its flaws, but I did enjoy the contrast between Babs' skepticism and Dick's absolute trust.

[jlbarnett]

shouldn't knowledge of a personality affect the evidence? I find it strange that Bruce Wayne even owns a gun. And he could easily have killed her "hands on" in a way no one would have suspected Bruce Wayne of being capable of.

[anoolka]

Exactly. If he had killed her in cold blood/ premeditated as buying a gun for that would suggest, there would have been no evidence to tie him to it. He's too smart for that. I could only see him kill someone in an act of passion under some drug or some such. In that case he would not go buy a gun for it, he's a martial arts master, enough said.

This was the first or second story with Babs that I've read. One of the reasons why I'm not a fan of her, or Tim.

[swatkat]

It should, as Babs states in the very beginning when Bruce is arrested - they know about Bruce and guns, but the general public does not. The fact that Bruce couldn't possibly have killed with a gun is brought up multiple times by various members of the Bat-clan. Again, if IIRC, Babs and Tim have a conversation where Babs refers to her own fear of guns, and how she worked through it. All the evidence - before they figure out that it's been doctored - points to Bruce owning a gun. The point is not that he did kill Vesper, but that he could have, because the evidence appears to say so, and they have to at least open themselves to the possibility of it even if they don't like it.

[starwolf_oakley]

It's still a very flawed storyline, though, for all your reasons and more - and dammit, I liked Vesper.

What made Vesper likable? Staying in Gotham during No Man's Land as a voice on the radio is very brave. Was is there more to her character than that?

[alienist]

There could have been, if they didn't kill her first.

[icon_uk]

Tim could no longer possibly be described as a newbie as Robin, having been in the role for 12 years real time, and through Knightfall, Knightsend, No Man's Land etc in comics time.

[whitesycamore]

Lol "muscles of sculpted steel", and "there's a dangerous passion hiding somewhere beneath his surface, and it scares me". I love how the Bat writers go out of their way to show us that Bruce is total paragon of manliness. I mean, he's supposed to be too busy being Batman to even care about this sort of thing, but the chicks still dig him. In a suitably awed, intimidated way, obviously.

The irony is that this version of Bruce would probably be the most boring lay ever.

[jlbarnett]

Except it's actually referring to his obsessions/dedication. The passion is his war against crime. The muscles are due to his training. The way Bruce Wayne acts he should be soft. Instead trying to tackle him out of the way of an assassin as Sasha once did is like slamming yourself into a wall.

[whitesycamore]

No, I get that she's talking about his drive and obsession. But the wording is so purple it could have been taken from a romance novel; part of the Batman mythos is that Bruce is the archetypal 'ideal' male, and that women should be shown swooning over him as proof of his awesome manliness. It makes me laugh a bit, is all.

[3_jane]

David Cain apparently digs him too, if he's the source of the notes on the disk; in a Mills and Boon testosteronific, chest-thumping sort of way, of course. (And how much do I want to read the rest of those notes? "November 12: met Bruce for lunch. When he was eating his ham sandwich and got mustard on his face, I knew he was Batman. Only the Dark Knight would be so heedless of his condiments that close to those lips like chiseled velvet, soft yet firm.")

[whitesycamore]

Oh my. David Cain: The Lost Notes. We need to make this happen.

Also: chiseled velvet? *sporfle*

[yaseen101]

Though admittedly I found the B:TAS Bruce/Bats to be kind of hot: http://media.photobucket.com/image/Bruce%20Wayne%20B:tas/Merry_Mutant/53.jpg

http://media.photobucket.com/image/Bruce%20Wayne%20B:tas/Merry_Mutant/18.jpg

[whitesycamore]

I agree, B:TAS Bruce is totally hot! Because he's not a jerk.

[yaseen101]

I agree.

Voice in head: but he ended up all alone! Because he pushed everyone away!

Me: Not now!

[jlroberson]

You know, having now gotten used to Dick as Batman...Bruce really IS pretty damn huge by comparison. I wonder why no one's commented on that if they've noticed the smiling.