Warning! Spoilers for Heroes Reborn: Marvel Double Action #1!
DC Comics’ Bruce Wayne has always had a hard time finding ways to keep the general public off his scent when it comes to keeping his playboy image and the vigilantism he partakes in at night as Batman separate, and now Marvel’s version of the character, Nighthawk, just showed how easily that problem can be solved. Hint: it has something to do with using fancy technology that Bruce should totally have access to by now.
Revealed in the Heroes Reborn tie-in issue of Heroes Reborn: Marvel Double Action #1 by Tim Seeley and Dan Jurgens, Nighthawk aka Kyle Richmond has his hands full pulling double duty as a member of the House of Representatives and as the nightly protector of his city. Often having to escape his day job when his alter ego’s vigilante skills are needed to thwart the newest threat, Nighthawk has a foolproof way of making sure both his civilian identity and superhero persona never mix; something that Bruce Wayne should have figured out long ago.
Imbued with heightened powers each time the sun dips below the horizon, Nighthawk is usually still on call as a politician whenever a political emergency comes about regardless of the time of day. So to make sure that both Kyle and Nighthawk can not only be in two places at once, but also successfully occupy the same room or space if needed, Nighthawk has resorted to using a highly advanced LMD, or Life Model Decoy, to achieve this goal.
Basically a fancy kind of android in all but name, using an LMD is the most high tech way to throw people off to the idea that Kyle and Nighthawk are one in the same, giving him the opportunity to seamlessly transition from one “life” to another with barely breaking a sweat. Seen in this issue when it’s relayed to him that Kraven the Hunter is on the loose, Nighthawk switches his civilian self out for a Kyle Richmond decoy that’s tasked with fielding questions from political reporters outside of his office, while feet away on the other side of the door the real Kyle is donning his costume and hopping out of the window; a technique that should be a no brainer for Bruce Wayne to employ at this point in his career.
Constantly having to come up with random and contrived ways to keep Bruce and Batman separate from the public eye, Bruce has resorted (on more than one occasion) to quite literally dressing up any available members of his extended Bat-Family – Robin, Nightwing and even Alfred included – to make sure Batman and Bruce can be seen in the same location, going so far as to use smoke and mirror tactics to literally trick people into thinking Bruce and Batman can’t be the same guy. But what’s most confusing about this consistent problem is that Batman – and by extension the playboy that is Bruce Wayne – is the most highly intelligent and technologically savvy character in DC Comics, so the idea that Bruce hasn’t found a way to make some kind of bat-version of an LMD over the years is a head scratching conundrum to say the least.
So although it seems entirely plausible and easily attainable that Bruce Wayne could follow in Nighthawk’s footsteps by developing a high tech doppelganger to take his place when needed, Bruce still hasn’t been able to come up with a better idea than to dress his sidekicks up and drown them in shadow so no one gets the idea that him and Bats are living the same life. Because if it works for Nighthawk, there’s no reason it wouldn’t work for Batman.