Hey! So Hawk and I recently read this. I’ve mentioned before that I’m not much for superhero comics, but I tend to keep an eye on Batman for equal parts nostalgia and interest. Anyway, Batman: Year 100 recently came out. It’s a Paul Pope book – I’ve had an old issue of THB, and I recently picked up Paul Pope 100%, and I really liked both of those. Batman: Year 100 is interesting and I’d say a really great interpretation of the character, but there was one really huge question that is burning in my mind, and that’s: How come Batman isn’t old?
Did anyone else read it? Got any ideas?
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still Bruce Wayne? because the only thought i could have without reading the comic would be that he took on an apprentice, like in the failed cartoon a few years ago.
Naw, it’s definitely Bruce Wayne.
Botox. Lots of it.
Wahahahahahaha!! *wipes away tear of laughter
I guess “Batox” would be a bit more apporpriate…
um…he keeps getting dunked in the Lazarus pit by his good buddy Ra’s al Ghul?
Staying entirely within Canon for Batman… the Lazarus Pit. As for the side effect of insanity, well we have some guy who runs around in a spandex bat suit… not exactly the picture of mental health to begin with.
lol, exactly
maybe he did take on an apprentice though….I mean discretely, or maybe it’s a clone, yea…it’s a clone…
http://crowstudios.smackjeeves.com
however, evidence to this theory does exist as in one of the new batman episodes or jlu, i forget, terry mcginnis is supposedly batman’s clone.
terry mcginnis is bruce wayne’s biological son, not clone
only because STAR labs rewrote his genetic sequence after he was already born.
the way the story goes, its not bruce. its jus meant to be a story 100 years after bats first appearance. i dont think it is bruce cuz we also have a new gordon. its a new batman that isnt dick either. in the context of the story, however, we dont need to know who it is so were never told.
Nah, it’s definitely Bruce Wayne. They make a big deal about it. Your argument works if we say that in the context of the story, it doesn’t matter how he’s still young – but it’s definitely meant to be Bruce Wayne.
if it is truly bruce ( i havent read it) he is one of the most richest people in the world…right up there with the green arrow and some other rich guy thats a superhero that i dont remember…he could have researched cloning, some regenative elixir/thingy, eat some golden fruit of longlivity ect…
Tony Stark/Iron Man?
Nah, not Iron Man, he’s Marvel, let’s keep this DC, lol.
He was in the Justice League with Wonder Woman. The whole mystic fruit thing isn’t so far off. Unless he’s skinny dipping in the Lazarus Pit and the fruit may offset the insanity.
What if he’s already insane?
I mean, he does have an overly developed sense of ‘revenge’, so to speak, in that he now protects Gotham in a way he could never have protected, or even been expected to protect, his parents.
So, perhaps the boughts of instanity/mania that often follow a dip in a Lazarus pit have bonded with his existing issues.
Also, he has been dipped in a pit once before, what has DC canon established about their effects and longevity of them – perhaps an initial dip doubles or triples human lifespan and viability?
Plus, as has been stated before, you cannot ignore Batman’s ‘next gen’ nature for technology, as he is beyond even the bleeding edge of technology in the DCU.
Be it cloning, DNA/RNA self-replication treatment, or what not – heck, maybe smooching a demi-goddess increases the lifespan. ;)
No, Everyone’s wrong! It’s Bruce Wayne from the parallel Spanish clone stem cell-verse. He looks so well preserved because of the stem cells from… You know, his stem cell universe.
Didn’t Bruce Wayne marry Ra’s al Ghul’s daughter Talia? Would that make him the inheritor of League of Assassins? As such, wouldn’t that give Batman access to the Lazarus Pits?
In the show, Talia was taken over by the spirit of Ra’s al Ghul. So that would make Batman gay. Wouldn’t that be interesting though. (Hawk just had a heart attack)
Maybe he froze himself i time or something…lol
i dont remember if this is in cannon or not, but in some superman/batman comic book there is this weapon that sells on the black market that uses tech bought/stolen from an alien race to create a wormhole so that they can send weapons of really big distruction really far really quick (they are illegal, the US gov (lex is president…it sucks…) needs to blow up a big thing of kryptonite (if you know any chemistry krypton is an element but its a noble gas so kryptonite is impossible) because its going to collide with earth and kill everyone, superman travels through time to warn superman and batman in the past, cause hes depressed and old), the point being that there is time travel in batman canon…so… he could have gone to the future…
While they hint that he is Bruce Wayne, they never explicitly state who he actually is. If he is in fact Bruce Wayne, perhaps he was cryogenically frozen or somesuch.
Why would he freeze himself, though? While he’s frozen so much crime could go down, and it’s possible he’d be vulnerable to attack. I mean Nightwing, Azrael and all the others couldn’t be there all the time…
No one has stumbled on the obvious. He is a vampire.
C’mon, people. Think about it. I think we all know that in a Batman vs. The Grim Reaper showdown, Batman would kick Death’s bony ass.
Because… you know… he’s Batman.
Yah, he probably called Chuck Norris in too!
I’d have to support some sort of time-travel theory if it really is Bruce. Perhaps he was unwillingly trapped in some liquid nitrogen, or some enemy used a time machine of some sort…. either way, it wouldn’t be willing – there’s too much crime to fight now!
I’m gonna have to go with the Lazarus Pit theory. It’s how he stayed young in the Generations books by Byrne.
when I read it I got the impression that he wasn’t the original Bruce Wayne, but I should go dig it up and reread it I think.
Canon idea : lazarus Pit
non Canon idea: he had a son, named him bruce, trained him well.
non canon idea 2: Clones
non canon idea 3: he beat the person known as death in a game of chess, battleship, twister, so on…
non canon idea 3: robot. vampire. zombie. elf. i dunno.
i’m thinking time space unraveling and he magically appears 100yrs later … but thats kinda stupid… so maybe it is a son or prodigy and he is named bruce
I didnt even know there was a 100years (i’m out of net so not so mutch in to things lately.
Ever seen the Batman of the future animation?
You can see old Bruce and i really mean bruce…he’s really old but for some unknown reason he’s still really packed(woah like a walking statue) with white hair and all the litle things that come with being old…+ he has a cain. So the new Batman was some normal punk (really a nice guy but a tenager with some problems and gets angry a lot faster) being the new batman he has problems in his life with his girl and all….but in the end it trns out good.oh….forgot to say that there is no more Joker…..only a gand of jokers witch makes more than enough trouble.
Maybe its related in some way.
http://www.amazon.com/Batman-Future-Animated-Guide/dp/1405304286
Batman Beyond, yeah. This is a lil different, but I really liked that show!
Me too! Another one of those things that I don’t think deserved the flak it got…
Bruce Timm > (by an order of magnitude) than anything else that’s been on TV.
I never said it’s the best of the best…just not as bad as it seems to be made out to be.
because “Batman Forever”. hehehe…
I think ti was when Ra discovered that one could achieve immortality through the Lazarus Pit when two people submerge in it and the better person comes out,immortal of course.Ra and Bats went in and Bats went out
that’s interesting because in the dark night returns (frank miller book, i’m not a big comic book fan but it was a good read) he IS old and it shows in his fights. i think it added something to the story (especially when you see who he ends up fighting) to show that he is in fact human after all.
In the DC Batman and Superman Comic series, released in (I think) the late 70’s early 80’s, (not sure if its canon)Bruce Wayne and Superman are made immortal. Could be it.
I remember reading the collected ones of those, I think superman was already just about immortal, aging very, very slowly, and the lazarus pits made Batman immortal. I don’t know if they were canonical though.
I am pretty sure that the Bruce Wayne that is in the story is the originals great grandson. Just like with the commissioner.
maybe he is actually Bat-mite. ‘Cause like.. whatever happened to the little guy?
What I’d like to know is why it took so long for people to ask this question. Bruce Wayne has been in in his 30’s since the 1930’s. Suddenly we jump ahead 100 years and someone finaly says “Hey, Bruce. Boy you sure look good for a man of 203, what’s your secret?”
I think the problem is that in every other comic book, they sort of “look the other way” regarding how long the character has been around, whereas in this series, it is specifically addressed (though left unanswered).
or they start over…see spiderman. evolution all that stuff…there are like 5 different x-men and they are considered correct…to some degree…
It’s actually an elseworld title branching off from when Bats fought Dracula and got bit. In the real storyline he was “cured” meaning DC forgot he was a vampire. This is a storyline 100 years after being bitten.
I think you guys are way overthinking this whole thing. I don’t think the age thing is supposed to have a logical explanation. I believe in the context of this story, it’s supposed to be his status as a symbol that accounts for his youth. In literary terms he’s sort of an embodied idea, thus who is as a man is irrelevant. That’s one of my theories.
My other theory is that Pope bit off more than he could chew with a four issue run, because he brought up more and more questions in every issue, and he had to wrap it up “bang bang” at the end, so there were bound to be some loose threads.
See, this is an answer I really like … ! I am kind of in love with this answer. I mean that in the most platonic way possible, Matt K.
Maybe the belief in the symbol transformed the man?
I mean, honestly, there have been several arcs within DC comics that give some level of divinity to the Justice League and it’s members, even one arc (I think) in which the old gods themselves complained about the League’s status amongst the human populace.
Hence, isn’t Black Adam (reformed, sorta, Supervillain), aka Teth Adam, a ‘god’ of the country he rules?
Perhaps, just perhaps, maybe Pope is implying that Batman is a mortal made into a demigod – I.E. So many people believe so many things about the Batman and his unstoppable nature/legend, that the man is now a demigod, ala Hercules in ancient myth.
It’d be sort of an interesting take on the character, especially if Batman doesn’t ‘get’ it. Not only is he something more than human now, but he’s so focused that he doesn’t notice that he keeps outliving his loved ones.
Damn, I almost wished I hadn’t written this because it’d be a damn cool concept to pitch to someone for a comic book.
Always a writer, never an artist, it’s a curse I say, a curse. :D
I don’t think it’s supposed to be so much “how the hell did Bruce Wayne survive to 100 years later?”.. I think it’s more of just a, holy crap.. this man cares so much about fighting crime that he somehow (probably using his billions) found a way to elongate life just so he could continue fighting. It doesn’t really matter how he did it.. just that he’s doing. Here’s a man who refuses to die so that he can continue on fighting. And THAT’S Batman.
I have to say that I didn’t care for this at all. Batman like so much of storytelling seems to have fallen into the hands of people who think that the tale is some sort of free form Jazz session as oppossed to anything of Classical import. Batman, Bruce Wayne is in a struggle with his own soul beating people up is ancilery at best, this thing had pretty much no story, and the guy who did it went into a whole riff about the army boots and the seams on the costume like that is all important. It is the same reason why those Baley movies stink so much this obsession with objective realism (always off by the way) flies in the face of what art is meant to be an evocation of the soul. There was no bruce wayne in this and there was barely a batman. Plus the art sucked. Miller was a million times better even with his (shudder) less than functional boots! Humbly:Your fellow Geek.