WHO IS THE BLACK GLOVE? PLACE 'YER BETS

I'm kind of leaning that the Joker has driven Bruce Wayne completely crackers.

I've read it all over either two or three times and there doesn't seem to be anything else that makes any good sense. I think anything else would be something from way out in left field.

I'm also leaning that Batman won't die per say more than vanish in Final Crisis. I don't think there will be a body, he will just be gone. I think it could end up that somehow in the battle at the end of Final Crisis he somehow disappears into the multiverse.

I also think it might end up that there are more than one person being Batman in his absence.

That is at least my Bat-hypothesis.

That being said, the psychological nature of the attack upon Batman seems to perhaps indicate Hugo Strange, who might be my dark horse out of nowhere guy to pick.

If Grant Morrison was going to go way out of nowhere to do a "GOTCHA" like Kevin Smith did with Mysterio in that Daredevil story, I think Hugo Strange would fit he bill. Hugo Strange has been around forever, but is not over used like so many of the other characters, he knows Batman is Bruce Wayne and is a psychologist.

For as little as the character has been used, there has been some really classic Hugo Strange stories.

I voted for the safe option. Grant Morrison is Black Glove.

Dick....

CHENEY!

The Black Glove is plainly Bruce Wayne himself, perhaps having travelled back in time from the future.

£5 on a depowered future Superman, please.

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So... having finished RIP, we still don't know who the Black Glove is?

I don't really understand what happened there... can someone explain or point me to an explanation?

Ditto.

Shit, I should have added an option for "!???!?!??" to the poll.

Great stuff (I guess), in the incidentals at least, but what's the big "betrayal" we were promised?

for frustratingly oblique conclusion, it was an awesome single issue. I bet if you handed it to a kid who'd only seen Batman movies and cartoons, he'd want more.

Oh, it was definitely awesome. I just wish some more questions had been answered.

I was pretty psyched up on Morrison's run, but had gotten the blahs about it all, mostly as it has been pretty slow coming out over the last few months. That being said, I'm not disappointed, as this past issue was really wild. The part with the Joker was great. I'd rather have a crazy ending like this one, where the next story can pickup than something that explains everything yet is completely terrible like the punch heard round the multiverse.

Cool thing is that while it RIP has been slow in finishing up, if everything ships, the follow up by Morrison hits next week with the second part in two weeks AND the two part Denny O'Neil story about Gotham without Batman also coming in December. So if you are still along for the ride, you can slap down your ducats and maybe find out a little more. I am interested to see how Grant Morrison ties this back towards Final Crisis, which hopefully gets back on track in December too with four issues (FC 5 & FC 6, Revelations #4 & a Secret Files special).

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I voted for myself. I'm kinda glad I was wrong, but still...

I kind of love the way that the ending is "there was a big explosion and no body", as an acknowledgement that there is nothing that could have happened this issue which can't/won't be reversed if and when Dan Didio wants it to. A friend said that it would have worked better as a character piece than Enormous Event, which is fair enough.

I'm still feeling really dense about this final issue. What actually happened there?

I thought Batman specifically said the Black Glove is the Devil... Though earlier in the issue there was a mention of him finding a "scar" or something like that in the innermost core of his being, so maybe the "Devil" is not actually Satan rather than the Devil in Batman. And when he destroyed the Devil it means he can't exist as Batman anymore. This would also tie everything to the last scene in the issues, where Thomas Wayne tells young Bruce that someone like Zorro couldn't really exist in the "real world". And it might also relate to the way the Joker spoke about him and Batman being the Yin and the Yang (an idea which has been around for quite a while, right?) - you can't take away the Yin without taking away the Yan too.

Or am I reading too much into all this? Because if you look at it like this, it would not just mean the end of Batman, but theoretically the end of superheroes too.

The Joker's not actually going anywhere, though.

I have a feeling the next issue is an "imaginary" story which won't offer much clarification.

No, Tuomas, I think you might well be right, and maybe Final Crisis relates to that too...!

The explosion with no body ending also echos the end of a bunch of Joker stories (including after he killed Jason Todd) and is similar to the Holmes going over the falls with Moriarty.

I would figure that Jason Blood or The Phantom Stranger might be show up investigating what is going down or at least if who we think is behind all of this is involved.

I might like this storyline more if I could remember it from one issue to the next.

OMG, what if Batman RIP ties in with Reign in Hell? We're all screwed!

Thanks, Tuomas--your explanation has clarified things a lot for me. I had wondered about Black Glove as Satan, but hadn't thought it through enough beyond that to make it clear to me. Next issue will be VERY interesting (I hope--recent interviews have me thoroughly confused as to who is writing what when, but it IS still going to be Grant, isn't it?).

What I don't get is, if we're supposed to take the Thomas Wayne reveal at face value (and are we?), wasn't that reveal itself revealed back in part 2 or something? I have to think back to Twin Peaks (or the first Crisis!) to remember something I liked so much that confused the hell out of me at the same time...

December
Batman 682 & 683 - Grant Morrison RIP epilogue & Final Crisis tie-in story
Detective 851 & Batman 684 - Denny O'Neil- Last Days of Gotham

January
Detective 852 & Batman 685 - Paul Dini - follow up to recent storyline w/Catwoman & Hush

February
Detective 853 & Batman 686 - Neil Gaiman - "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?"

I guess after that they are going to put Batman and Detective on hiatus for a few months with a 'Battle of the Cowl' mini-series by Tony Daniel, both writing and doing the artwork in the interim and once that is done, there is probably going to be some new series started and it is at least planned that Morrison picks up the next chapter of his storyline.

Thanks, Tuomas--your explanation has clarified things a lot for me. I had wondered about Black Glove as Satan, but hadn't thought it through enough beyond that to make it clear to me.

I'm not sure how valid my thoughts are, to be honest, since I've only read the Batman R.I.P. story, and not the rest of Morrison's Batman run nor Final Crisis. I'm mostly basing this idea on general themes Morrison likes to play with, such as finding the "third way" (a very prominent theme in Seven Soldiers) and a part of split mind manifesting itself in the physical world as another person. Based on issue 681 alone it seems pretty obvious, though, that Hurt is a manifestation of a part of Bruce's mind. First Bruce speaks of finding something dark, an undescribable scar inside himself, and later on Hurt says he has been there since the beginning, that he's "the hole in things", that he knows Bruce "better than anyone". Bruce even says Hurt is "my father's double, and mine". Also, I think the bit where Hurt says Bruce must put away his Batman costume and retire from crimefighting ties to the idea of the third way: Bruce needs his personal Devil, the Yin to Batman's Yang, in order to be Batman. If the Devil isn't there anymore, there's no Batman either. So maybe the "third way" here is the emergence of a new, different Batman?

Also, the issue seems to hint there's still some final confrontation, some final thing to do for the old Batman. Because after Hurt's taken Batman's cape he says: "Then I curse the cape and cowl, as you will soon! The next time you wear it will be the last!". But when Bruce attacks the helicopter he isn't wearing the cape and cowl, which would imply there will still come an another occasion to wear them, and that will be the last time he does so.

One more proof that Hurt is Bruce: he says that he and his henchmen "daubed the walls with a trigger phrase" ("Zur En Arrh"), but how could he know about the Batman of Zur En Arrh if he wasn't Bruce himself?

by Tony Daniel, both writing and doing the artwork

oh dear

I think the idea that Hurt might be a demon tulpa created out of Bruce Wayne's mind seems as a potential explanation for what has occurred. The hints could be pointing towards this being the case.

I wonder why people keep using the term "tulpa" to describe what's going on in here. According to Wikipedia:

A tulpa is, in Tibetan mysticism, a being or object which is created through willpower, visualisation, attention and focus, concerted intentionality and ritual. In other words, it is a materialized thought that has taken physical form.

That doesn't sound quite like the idea Hurt as Bruce Wayne's creation, especially the bit about intentionality. If Hurt is indeed a projection of Bruce's mind, he seems to be more like the creatures Dorothy unconsciously created in Doom Patrol.

Hey dudes!

Zur En Arrh = "Zorro in Arkham" (from one of the final speech balloons on the final page of #681) = Batman?

Someone's had to have noticed this, somewhere?

Yeah. I've seen that in a couple places.