Remember this year’s New York Comic Con, where Grant Morrison said of “Batman R.I.P.” that “when we find out at the end who the villain is, it’s possibly the most shocking Batman revelation in 70 years?”

Well, last Wednesday in Batman #681 we found out who The Black Glove is…sorta.

So, who is The Black Glove? Thomas Wayne? Alfred? Batman himself? Jezebel Jett and four random, nameless bad-guys, all of whom represent different “fingers” in the glove? The Devil? Just some guy named Mangrove Pierce? Bob Kane? The dinosaur and giant penny from the bat-cave? The bat that flew in the window of Bruce Wayne’s study in his secret origin?

No.

According to one of the several mainstream media news articles about Batman’s “death” (if that’s what we’re calling superheroes disappearing in helicopter explosions these days), the real Black Glove is…Grant Morrison.

“For almost 70 years, he’s seen off every ‘baddie’ fate has thrown at him, from The Joker and Mr Freeze, to Catwoman and The Riddler,” Guy Adams of The Independent wrote in an article over the holiday weekend. “But now Batman’s alter ego, Bruce Wayne, seems to have finally met his match: a middle-aged comic book writer from Glasgow.”

Of course! As the writer, it was ultimately Morrison who was pulling all the strings! His is the hand that wears The Black Glove! Man, it’s just like the ending of Animal Man!

Of course, Adams’ Independent article also says Batman was “ejected from a speeding aeroplane” rather than riding the windshield of a helicopter that exploded, that the closing page “ends with an eerie picture of the outfit fluttering to earth” rather than the flashback to the night of the Waynes’ murder that actually ended the book, and was headlined “Holy smoke, Batman! Are you dead?”

Ha ha, like Robin used to say in that teevee show! Man, that joke will never get old!

Seriously, I always enjoy reading articles in the mainstream, non-comics media in which the specifics of comics stories are discussed. As cringe-inducing as the results often are, there’s something kinda cute about it, like hearing a young child naively and innocently ask a silly question.

Like this paragraph, which takes as news someone online saying something negative about Morrison’s take on the future of the franchise: “The comments prompted an instant backlash from fans, who flooded the internet with protests. ‘Do not buy this book,’ wrote one blogger. ‘Bruce IS Batman. There has to be a campaign against this.’ Another disgruntled fan wrote simply, ‘Thanks for vomiting over my childhood’.”

Dude, everything said on the Internet about comics prompts an instant backlash from fans, who flood the Internet with protests.

And vomiting over one disgruntled fan’s childhood? That fan’s lucky that that’s all that was done to his childhood. That fan’s childhood could have been raped, which is the usual online complaint against what DC and Marvel intend for the childhoods of their fans.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 1st, 2008 at 10:30 am and is filed under News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.