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Batman is Bruce Wayne – but come January 2021, that’ll no longer be the case as DC is introducing a new Batman – the Next Batman – as part of their Future State line-up.
Set several years in DC’s future, Future State: The Next Batman focuses on a Gotham City overtaken by a totalitarian police force known as the Magistrate. They are a police group whose first order of business was taking down the rogue vigilante Batman – and they did, ending up with Bruce Wayne/Batman’s apparent death.
And while you can kill a person, Batman has enough friends and followers that you seemingly can’t kill the dream of Batman – and a new hero will take up the role…
… but DC has been mum on who the next Batman will be, playing it up as a mystery.
Newsarama asked DC’s Batman group editor Ben Abernathy about the next Batman’s mystery identity, and he doubled down on writer John Ridley’s vague teases – but added another piece to the puzzle.
“To paraphrase John Ridley, there’s a 48% chance he’s a person of color,” Abernathy says. “I can’t reveal who he is though.”
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While he can’t reveal who the Next Batman star is, he can say when you’ll see him – and it’s well before ‘Future State’ begins in January.
“I’m excited for what I hope will be a genuine surprise for readers,” the editor continues. “By the end of this year, the new Batman will have already appeared out-of-costume somewhere in the Bat group of titles.”
With October 20’s Batman #101 fresh on our minds, two of the month likely suspects seem to be Luke and Timothy Fox, the sons of Lucius Fox – who, in Batman #100, acquired ownership of Wayne Enterprises (and almost all of Bruce Wayne’s money).
Why just those two? Well, the Next Batman will, according to Future State: Next Batman #1’s solicitation, have a “connection to former Batman weaponeer Lucius Fox” – and Ridley has already said the book centers on the Fox family.
“[Fox] has a family and this is a family that has secrets, has kept secrets from one another,” Ridley explained in August. “It’s a little bit different dynamic than the Batman that we’ve always seen.”
Of the two, Luke Fox seems like the obvious choice, given his tenure as Batman’s hand-picked successor to the Batwing mantle early in the ‘New 52’ era. Luke grew up idolizing Batman, and carried out a similar fighting training process to Bruce Wayne – and like the Dark Knight (and his father Lucius), has an aptitude for tech. Another factor in this is that Batman writer James Tynion IV used him as a supporting character in his 2016-2017 Detective Comics run, so would presumably have some familiarity (and interest) in the character going forward.
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With all that going on, Timothy Fox would be the dark horse candidate out of the two Fox brothers – although his recent re-introduction after being the Fox family outcast for decades seems to denote more than just a simple coincidence. And if it helps, Tim moonlighted for a short time as a masked vigilante already – as the Culture in the Terrible Trio gang (although it didn’t last long).
And yes, both of them appeared in Batman #101 out-of-costume like Batman group editor Ben Abernathy said the Next Batman would.
A new Batman will be a big change – but the Dark Knight is familiar with change. Check out our rundown of the biggest changes to Batman in his 80+ year history.
