Warning: Spoilers ahead for Batman #94
A new evolution for Batman is coming in the pages of DC Comics, and while it is motivated by one of the greatest heartbreaks Bruce Wayne has ever faced, it looks like it will be for the better. For Gotham City and the fans.
It shouldn't be any surprise for fans to hear that Bruce Wayne was left very unsettled and unmoored after the death of Alfred Pennyworth during the recent City of Bane event. Now, with Joker War on the imminent horizon, and its promise to be more challenging and terrible than anything the Dark Knight has faced before, Bruce realizes he needs to make a leap: to be something beyond what he originally intended for the Batman persona and identity when he first designed it. He needs to become a better Bat.
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The loss of Bruce's butler, mentor, and friend created a vast void in his life, forcing Batman to look back and realize how much more Alfred had always wanted for both Bruce and the Dark Knight. He always wanted Bruce to go beyond what was his first initial leap of becoming the Batman. The first leap happened after Bruce had returned to Gotham and tried to battle its criminal element, but was left bruised and battered. Entering his father's study in Wayne Manor, Bruce stumbled into a chair and asked for a sign, speaking to a marble bust of his murdered father. That's when the first signal was made, motivating Bruce's first leap as depicted in Batman: Year One from Frank Miller.
That first signal of the bat inspired Bruce's design for the Batman persona, to instill fear into the cowardly and superstitious lot that criminals are. But now in Batman #94, Bruce realizes that it's time to go further, to make a new leap and be the brighter vision that Alfred always saw in him. As he climbs the rails and girders to the heights of his city, he asks Alfred for another signal, and gets an answer: a crack of lightning and the dark storms surrounding Gotham opening up in the form of a bat. With that, Bruce Wayne responds.
This moment is huge, and a fantastic mirrored symmetry to an epic moment of Batman's origin (major props to series writer James Tynion IV. Absolutely amazing.). Potentially, this could be the beginning of a new Batman that starts to let go of his typically tight, unrelenting grip on his past darkness, choosing to embrace the potential for a brighter future. If there was any time for a new leap and evolution for Batman, it's now. Joker is prepared to attack Gotham and the Dark Knight like never before, having taken control of the entire Wayne Fortune. He's never had power and resources like this, and it looks like he's planning a final confrontation with Batman that will be the endgame, the final punchline in the running gag he sees as their relationship.
What could upset Joker's plans and throw him off balance more than facing a new Batman unlike anything he's ever seen before? Fans will have to eagerly wait and see when Joker War begins at the end of this month.