SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Batman #50 by Tom King, Mikel Janín, June Chung, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, Trish Mulvihill, Becky Cloonan, Jason Fabok, Brad Anderson, Frank Miller, Alex Sinclair, Lee Bermejo, Neal Adams, Hi-Fi, Tony S. Daniel, Tomeu Morey, Amanda Conner, Paul Mounts, Rafael Albuquerque, Andy Kubert, Tom Sale, Jose Villarrubia, Paul Pope, Mitch Gerads, Clay Mann, Jordie Bellaire, Ty Templeton, Keiren Smith, Joëlle Jones, David Finch, Jim Lee, Scott Williams, Greg Capullo, FCO Plascencia, Lee Weeks and Clayton Cowles, on sale now.


Ever since Batman proposed to Catwoman a year ago, that’s what the comic has been about, but that’s not how Tom King began his run on Batman and as it turns out, that’s never what this run has been about. The final page of this week’s milestone Batman #50 reveals the true scope of Tom King’s plan for the Caped Crusader, and his relationship with Catwoman was only part of it.

There’s a lot going on in just one page, so it’s worth taking some time to dig into what happened, why it happened, how it relates to stories from earlier in King’s run and what it means for the next fifty issues of Batman.

To Break The Bat

By now, you probably know that Batman and Catwoman didn’t get married (and if this is the first you’re hearing about it, we did put a big spoiler warning at the top of the article). Bruce Wayne’s throughline of this run on Batman has been based around the question “Can I be happy and be Batman at same time?” His proposal to Catwoman was part of an attempt to have both, only for her to realize that she can’t risk being the reason Bruce Wayne stops being Batman. Thus, she chooses to sacrifice their happiness so that the world will always have a Dark Knight.

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What she doesn’t know is that everything that has happened over the course of these fifty issues has been the result of the manipulation of someone who can now perhaps claim the mantle of Batman’s greatest enemy: Bane.

The final page shows Holly Robinson returning to Arkham and reporting to Bane that everything went as planned, that the wedding didn’t occur, to which Bane replied that he has finally broken the Bat. However, Bane isn’t working alone, and the cabal of heroes and villain surrounding him all have connections and links to every major story arc of Tom King’s run.

It appears that Bane set everything in motion, going back all the way to Batman Rebirth #1 -- it wouldn’t be surprising if he was responsible for the crashing plane which was the dramatic set-piece of that issue -- and now, Batman is right where he wants him.

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The Cabal

Bane’s cabal is certainly an interesting collection of characters from throughout the DC Universe, so let’s break down who is among his allies before we look into how they contribute to this larger plan.

Along with Holly Robinson, there’s The Riddler, The Joker, Psycho Pirate, Gotham Girl, Ventriloquist and Scarface, Skeets, Hugo Strange and, most bizarrely, what appears to be Flashpoint Batman, aka Thomas Wayne. Each of them had their own role to play in Batman’s downfall, and The Caped Crusader isn’t even aware that he’s been played this whole time, making Bane’s master plan all the more ingenious.

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Tom King’s run on Batman started with the introduction of Gotham and Gotham Girl, two new heroes with Superman-level powers but not much in the way of direction or guidance. Batman tried to mentor them to the point that they could maybe take his place as the guardians of his city, but the two were too badly damaged by the emotional manipulation of Hugo Strange. Gotham died fighting Batman, and Bruce resolved to save Gotham Girl. In order to do so, he needed the Psycho Pirate’s emotion altering Medusa Mask, but the Psycho Pirate was the prisoner of Bane at the time.

Batman assembled his own Suicide Squad, which included Arnold Wesker aka The Ventriloquist and Catwoman, who was in prison for the murder of two-hundred and thirty-seven people. They managed to escape with the Psycho Pirate, but this only angered Bane who had been using the Psycho Pirate to help manage his addiction to Venom and he travelled to Gotham regain what he saw as his property. Batman learned that Holly Robinson was responsible for the deaths of the men Catwoman was accused of killing and clashed with Bane when he arrived in Gotham, but seemingly rebuffed him.

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Almost immediately after Batman’s clash with Bane, he and The Flash journeyed to the Flashpoint timeline, where he met an alternate version of his father Thomas Wayne. This other broken Batman urged Bruce to give up being Batman in order to raise his son and be happy, which is what really sparked Bruce’s desire to find a middle ground between the two, leading to his proposal to Catwoman.

He told Selina about the time he nearly killed The Riddler during The War of Jokes and Riddles, wanting her to know about his darkest moment before she made the decision to marry him and just prior to their marriage, he learned of Booster Gold’s attempt to show him what a world would be like where he didn’t become Batman, which ended up traumatizing the time-traveling hero.

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The Plan

Now that we know who all the players are and their roles in the story up to this point, the real question becomes how much of this was Bane’s plan. Did he instruct Hugo Strange to create Gotham and Gotham Girl? Was he behind The War of Jokes and Riddles, so early in Batman's career? How much of Batman’s desire to marry Catwoman and her decision to jilt him was the result of interference from the Psycho Pirate?

It seems like Gotham Girl is still under the control of Hugo Strange despite Batman’s belief that she’s cured. This, of course, leads us to ask how her role in this plan can line up with the narration from early in this run, which suggested that Batman dies and she goes on to marry Duke Thomas.

RELATED: What Will It Really Mean When Batman and Catwoman Are Married?

The two biggest question marks right now are Skeets and Flashpoint Batman. Skeets could be there for two reasons; the first being that he blames Batman for Booster Gold’s trauma, but the more sinister possibility is that he was working with Bane the entire time, and put the idea of “The Gift” in Booster’s head without the hero knowing he was manipulated. Skeets has been revealed to be an evil mastermind before, when he was used as the cocoon for Mister Mind’s metamorphosis, so what’s to say that hasn’t happened again?

Flashpoint Batman’s role in Bane’s cabal is the most puzzling. To start with, how did he get there? “The Button” ended with the dissolution of the Flashpoint reality, and of all of Tom King’s stories in this run so far, it’s the one where Bane’s masterminding of it is the least plausible. Is this Thomas Wayne from a dead reality, or is it someone with a similar fashion sense and either way, what do they get out of joining up with Bane? Bane could possibly know about the Flashpoint reality thanks to Psycho Pirate, who has always existed as slightly out of synch with continuity reboots and retcons, going back to Crisis on Infinite Earths and his subsequent appearances in Grant Morrison’s Animal Man.

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People might be upset that the result of the wedding was spoiled, but with Batman #50, we’ve only reached the halfway point. What's more, with the reveal of Bane’s master plan, it just became one of the biggest Batman stories ever told.

Just looking ahead to the recently solicited issues, we’ve got some Mister Freeze stories coming up, and the return of Dick Grayson to the cape and cowl too. King’s Batman — along with his collaborators who have truly made it what it is — is unlike any Batman story in the characters long, long history and there’s still a lot of it we haven’t read yet. The final page of Batman #50 is enough to let us know that there’s a lot more madness to come over the next two-plus years.