SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Justice League #1, by Scott Snyder, Jim Cheung, Mark Morales, Tomeu Morey and Tom Napolitano, on sale now.
A longstanding trope in DC Comics is that Batman has a contingency plan for just about every single scenario you could possibly think of. From storing small explosives in his dental fillings to help him escape from captivity to constructing elaborate plans to take down his fellow heroes should they ever go rogue, the Caped Crusader is nothing if not prepared.
However, in Justice League #1, Batman takes the notion of “prepare for the worst, hope for the best” to an extreme that quite literally transcends the limits of Earth’s atmosphere.
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As the world comes undone thanks to Vandal Savage and his Neoanderthals, newly appointed Justice League chairman Martian Manhunter attempts to assess the situation and determine the most appropriate course of action. Unfortunately, he soon finds himself pressed for time when the Earth’s surface begins breaking apart and rising into orbit.
“The moon, “J’onn says to Batman via a telepathic link. “Its molten iron ring has become a cyclotron to pull the crust! We need to destroy it!”
To save the planet, J’onn uses his shape-shifting abilities to transform into a massive dragon called a quonar, but before he strikes the moon at full speed, he has one simple request for Batman.
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“Can you activate the bombs you long ago planted inside [the moon] as I make impact?” J’onn nonchalantly request of the Dark Knight.
Of course, Batman tries to brush off what would otherwise be an absurd accusation, had it been directed at just about anyone else in the DC Universe. However, the World’s Greatest Detective’s poker face is no match for Martian Manhunter’s telepathy, and he eventually concedes, uttering a defeated “… Fine” as J’onn rams into the crater-filled space rock with all his power.
As outlandish as the idea of Batman secretly hiding bombs in the moon is, there’s no denying that it’s also such a quintessentially, well, Batman thing to do. After all, we already knew the Dark Knight set up a secret, secondary Batcave on the moon’s surface in the past, so rigging the rest of it with explosives is pretty much par for the course. Plus, considering Snyder used Dark Nights: Metal to bring the "Batman Always Wins" meme into DC Comics canon, it makes sense that the writer would double down on building the Dark Knight's mythology up even more in Justice League's first issue.
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