SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Detective Comics #966 by James Tynion IV, Eddy Barrows, Eber Ferreira, Adriano Lucas and Sal Cipriano, on sale now.


The revelation that Mr. Oz didn’t just have Tim Drake of the present day held prisoner in his otherworldly pocket dimension but also had a Tim Drake of the future held hostage as well is one that is going to rock the Bat-books and the DC Universe for a long, long time.

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Of course, the Batman of Tomorrow that Mr. Oz plucked out of the timestream isn’t exactly a stranger to fans of Tim Drake; people that have been following the character over the last thirty years know exactly who he is and what he can do. However, the character hasn’t been around for nearly a decade, and in that time a lot of things have changed, both for Tim Drake and for the DC Universe at large. Thus, the Batman of Tomorrow has discovered that today is very different from how he remembers it, and he stands a chance of changing his own future... if he can just kill Batwoman.

Batman of Tomorrow, Yesterday

Batman of Tomorrow first appeared in Geoff Johns and Mike McKone’s run on Teen Titans, way back in 2004. He was part of a future group of Titans alongside Superman (Kon-El), Wonder Woman (Cassie Sandsmark), The Flash (Bart Allen), Animal Man (Gar Logan), Aquawoman (Lorena Marquez) and Dark Raven. Following an adventure with the Legion of Super-Heroes, the Teen Titans accidentally found themselves ten years in the future where they were intercepted by the Titans of Tomorrow. Although they presented themselves as allies and heroes, it wasn’t long until Superboy discovered them torturing Deathstroke and he realized that he and his friends grow up to be villains.

Teen-Titans-Tomorrow

The Teen Titans manage to escape their evil counterparts and meet up with the Titans East, the heroic team working to stop their West Coast counterparts. While the three teams brawled, Batman of Tomorrow kept Tim Drake hostage and explained to him how everyone died following a botched jailbreak of Arkham Asylum, forcing him to step up as Batman after Nightwing retired with Starfire. In order to keep the city safe, he resorted to killing everyone that crossed him, be they villain or hero. Eventually, the fight wound up at Drake Manor, where the Titans of Today were able to get their hands on the Cosmic Treadmill and make it back to the present with a new goal of rewriting their future.

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Batman of Tomorrow, Today

We learned in this week’s Detective Comics #966 that the future of the Titans of Tomorrow has changed from what we know it to have been, or at least some of the blanks have been filled in to explain how Tim Drake became Batman. Of course, Dick Grayson filled the mantle first as he has done numerous times in the past, but according to the future Tim, Dick eventually settled down and retired from superheroics to raise a family. Then, with Gotham needing a Batman, Tim tracked down Jason Todd, only to find him defeated and broken following a clash with the League of Assassins.

RELATED: Detective Comics #965 Reminds Readers Why Tim Drake Is Important to the DCU

During that time, Bruce Wayne’s son Damian stepped into the role of Batman. We’ve seen Damian as Batman before, mostly in Grant Morrison’s run on the franchise where he supposedly sells his soul to the devil to become the best Batman he possibly can. While that future for Damian saw him die in a nuclear explosion after Gotham was infected with a Joker virus, Batman-Tim tells his past-self that upon his own returning to Gotham, he killed Damian to keep the city safe, and to give it a Batman it deserved.

Batman-Tomorrow-Red-Robin

Batman of Tomorrow explains that just like how they stepped up to fill the void of Robin following Jason’s death, his team eventually stepped up to fill the void of Batman when no one else could. He cryptically warns Tim that very soon he’ll understand that Kate Kane (Batwoman) isn’t a person he can trust. Further, if young Tim chooses to go to Ivy University, that's the beginning of the end for the Bat-Family.

Once the pair escape Oz's prison and find themselves back in Gotham City, the Batman of Tomorrow quickly realizes that his future can be changed and that the present is his own. In a world where Kon-El/Conner Kent doesn’t exist, and a wound he gives his younger self creates a similar scar on his own arm, Batman of Tomorrow realizes he can change what “tomorrow” means. In order to do that, however,he has to kill the person responsible for The Fall of The Batmen: Batwoman.

Batman of Tomorrow, Tomorrow

The Bat-books have been setting up The Fall of the Batmen for a while now, first teased in Batwoman #6 by James Tynion, Marguerite Bennett, Renato Arlem, Adriano Lucas and Deron Bennett. In that issue, set in the Gotham of Tomorrow, most of the city is ruled as a police state by Tim Drake and his Batmen. The Colony, led by Batwoman with Jason Todd as her second in command, is the only force seeking to free the city, while a small chunk of land known as Free Gotham is the only territory not under Tim Drake’s control. In that story, Kate Kane visits Commissioner Renee Montoya to try and work together to free the city from the Batmen, but their rendezvous is compromised by the Batmen, who shoots and nearly kills Montoya, forcing Kate to call for Tim’s death.

The Fall of the Batmen officially starts next month in Detective Comics #969, and from the solicit text it seems to be a story about Batman’s enemies learning from the cooperation of Batman’s team and forming a cabal of their own while the individual members of the Belfry are all at their lowest. However, that’s not the only place we can expect to see Batman of Tomorrow in the near future. In December, a crossover between Super Sons, Teen Titans and Superman begins — titled appropriately "Super Sons of Tomorrow" — and the teases for it name Batman of Tomorrow as the antagonist who wants to kill Superboy. In all liklihood, this is Tim Drake of Tomorrow who wants to find a way to bring Kon-El back to the role of Superboy and set the timeline right as he sees it, so it seems that Batman of Tomorrow will be sticking around in the today for a good while yet.