how did the idea for the death of Batman come about?
Way back in 2005 when I was hired to do Batman, I spent a few days working out my plans for the long-term arc, and they included a sketch of Batman kissing the woman, who turned out to be the Jezebel Jet character, in bright sunlight, and underneath I’d written “Batman R.I.P.” It combined with a story idea I’d scribbled down as “Doctor X,” where Batman would be up against the ultimate “diabolical mastermind” mystery character in a paranoid duel to the finish. So this long-form story was plotted to end at the same time as Final Crisis, which was intended to cross over right after the final six-part Batman R.I.P. deconstruction of Batman. When Dan [DiDio] heard the title, he said, “Well that’s great.” He goes, “I’ll actually go for that, we can do something here with Batman that we haven’t done before, if we take that title slightly more literally.” I then put the death of Batman through my own filter and here we are. Batman is a huge and very profitable franchise for DC — was there any
