I thoroughly enjoy when people leave feedback. Thanks, UDC. Let’s get into some FAN INTERACTION!
Cool story. I like the idea of stripping Ra's of all his regality and eloquence and just turning him into a monster; it's something I like seeing in villains.
I was trying to figure out which villain to use for this story and my thinking was to go mythic, to make these characters larger than life, and because the Joker is going to be the focus, somewhat, of
Gotham Knights: The Last Laugh, I was struggling to figure out who to use. But then bits and pieces fell into place. I like the DCTVU, so integrating aspects of that, for example the "lineage" of Ra's Al Ghul, were at the forefront of my mind, and I knew I had this cool visual for Damian, which Doc delivered on the first issue's cover, so it all just made perfect sense. Plus, I mentioned before, but the Lazarus Pyramid was a massive part of my original launch plans for the Bat-title at the beginning of the site, so it was serendipitous.
Ra's being the monster, this Lazarus-fuelled vengeful wraith, was something I wanted to see and I thought it would be a cool visual. If Damian has transformed the League into the League of Shadows then what's left would be Ra's, stripped of the purity and lineage of the League of Assassins, just this angry bastard who's been driven mad by his solitary confinement. If I had more space, if I had more story and it didn't go against my mission statement for the book, I would have spent a lot more time with him, and what his little League of Assassins unit could do in Gotham. More on that in a bit...
And last week Roy delivered the cover to
Gotham Knights, and it's beautiful, and I'm really excited for that story to hit. I need to finish it first, of course, but still...
I also dug the ending; something that bugs the crap out of me in Batman stories is the idea that he's entirely on his own, that "the mission" is his burden to bear alone. Him being with his unconventional family not only creates drama and character interactions, but does a lot of good in humanizing Bruce.
I know that some of our alum—David especially-- don't like the idea of a Bat-family, so I originally tried very hard to keep
The Final Knight as Bruce-centric, without much of the family making an appearance, but the coda wrote itself, I was really proud of it.
I’m re-reading a great book at the moment, Sequart’s “
The Anatomy of Zur-En-Arrh”, ‘Understanding Grant Morrison’s Batman’, and it’s really influencing how I approach the character, and reinforces how I’ve
always seen the character.
Firstly, it introduced me to five criteria that Jim Beard came up with in his book, “
Gotham City 14 Miles”, that distils what Batman is.
1) Batman is Bruce Wayne
2) Bruce Wayne’s parents were murdered when he was a boy, inspiring him to become a crimefighter.
3) Bruce Wayne dresses in a bat costume and calls himself Batman to fight crime.
4) Batman’s mental and physical powers are at the peak of human capability.
5) Batman is an inventor who has created many devices and vehicles to aid him in his crimefighting.
“
Anatomy…” goes on to explain how Grant explores, enhances and disregards the points made in that list, e.g. Batman is Bruce Wayne unless he’s Dick Grayson or Damian Wayne. The book is great, I really recommend, but then it goes on to add two more points.
6)
Batman is never alone.7) Batman does the impossible.
My Batman is never alone. I bloody well love the following from
Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne and the tail end of the first volume of Morrison’s
Batman & Robin, and it’s so perfect and encapsulates everything I love about the character:
With all this in mind, this could never happen to my Batman, not when he’s built this family around him:
Batman physically can’t go on any longer? Then, unlike what others might think, he can’t just… keep going. In
Kingdom Come, his body gave out before his mind did, but what if there were options? There’s not just one Batman, there’s a Nightwing, a Shrike, Batwoman, Spoiler, Black Bat, a new Robin, Red Hood, so many more heroes that he’s inspired. There’s an Academy of young heroes being raised with the influence of his work thanks to Jason being on staff.
In our universe, in the last ten years, Bruce hasn’t alienated everyone. He’s not a sociopathic monster like he’s sometimes shown to be in the regular universe, or in Elseworlds. He’s married now, and he has this problem. If he keeps going with this problem, then isn’t that betraying point 4 in the list? If his mental and physical powers are no longer at the peak of human capability, doesn’t that make him a liability?
Besides, one thing I’ve always loved about Tim Drake was the fact he’s consistently been portrayed as training to be the next Batman. And transitioning from the role of the Shrike to the Batman was perfection. We’ll revisit that later. I have another announcement to make soon enough.
And finally, one moment I think is vitally important, that reinforces everything I’ve ranted about here:
God damn, the relationship between Alfred and Bruce is so vital too. Even when he’s alone… he’ll always have the man who raised him to be the man that became the Batman.
Same goes for Damian; the bit at the end was a nice touch (though it does rob Talia of some agency, but that's a discussion for another day).
I worried about the Talia thing. I thought the happy ending aspect overpowered the fact she’s had her life taken from her, but Ra’s was the one who that, and the Lazarus Pit bought her back as a clean slate. Damian saw an opportunity to free his mum from this horrible cycle, and took it. Does that mean the change will stick? I mean, there are League of Shadows operatives watching over her, but wouldn’t that--
couldn’t that-- draw attention to the situation?
If there's any complaint, it's that the ending with the youth potion feels like a deus ex machina. I know Ra's was going to lose no matter what, but this feels like a weird way to give him a second chance.
With this, it felt like no matter what, Ra’s wouldn’t stop. He no longer respects Bruce, so his secret wasn’t safe. Very clear, he was no longer ‘
the Detective’, so it’s kind of implied that Ra’s would do anything to bring down the man who he believes is the reason his daughter is dead.
Damian has transformed the League of Assassins into the League of Shadows, an extension of Batman, Incorporated in a way, and they follow the tenants of the Bat. The League of Shadows
does not kill. And isn’t the youth potion-- more Lazarus Pit shenanigans-- the complete opposite of that? Instead of condemned to death, condemned to a second chance?
Similarly, the idea of Ra's being a walking isotope doesn't seem like it amounted to much beyond a way to off the rest of the LoA (unless we find out Bruce has cancer now or something).
Right, so I initially had a much larger plan for the story, but due to the stop-start nature of this event (hell, by the time
OMEGA CRISIS #2 hits, it'll be the ELEVENTH YEAR ANNIVERSARY) I lost a lot of momentum writing it. I introduced the DC2 version of Chase Meridian, a reformed Harvey Dent and set up Mayor James Gordon. In the
Ten Years Later Prelude, we met Commissioner Sawyer, the two Questions, Gotham City was looking good and strong and relatively crime-free.
If I had more time and drive for it, the plan was for the League of Assassins to strike out against all these positions of power across Gotham City. Attack Gordon, attack the Meridian institute (there’d have been an affirmation of Dent’s rehabilitation there), attack Sawyer, and then have the Gotham Knights be there, always one step ahead, maybe bring in the Club of Heroes, have this all-out war between Ra’s and Batman, throwing in references to Grant LaFleche’s "
A Mirror, Darkly" arc-- which in itself was an homage to the Sherlock Holmes story “
The Final Problem”-- and have it be the ultimate
DC2 Batman story. The radiation thread would had played a much larger role, but unfortunately I didn’t follow through on my intentions.
I intended to throw in a reference to this being the last gasp of Batman, and therefore it being the ultimate version of himself, costume and all, so his suit was rad-proofed, but I didn’t do that for whatever reason. Sufficed to say, Batman thinks of everything, and dressed appropriately.
Still, there's a lot of strong ideas, good emotion and character stuff, and solid action scenes. Nicely done.
Thanks a lot for taking the time, man. I’ve said it before, that as much fun as it is to keep writing these stories in this universe, the lack of feedback, the lack of knowing if anyone’s out there reading, can sometimes be a right motivation-sucker. I get the analytics, I know we have a massive chunk of visitors to the site, but it’s not the same as hearing how people feel about what you put out there. Anyway, there’s more stuff to acknowledge and respond to, so up-- up--
