Random Happenstance

So far this week we've looked at Atlantis Attacks and Julius Schwartz tributes, as I very slowly progress towards blogging all of them. This next crossover we've blogged maybe four parts of over the years; and it was upwards of 40 issues, so I don't think we'll get all of these! From 1998, Shadow of the Bat #1,000,000, "A Never-Ending Story" Written by Alan Grant, pencils by Mark Buckingham, inks by Wayne Faucher.

Batman is MIA this issue, trapped in the 853rd Century with the rest of the Justice League, so today we've got the future's version from Justice Legion A. As he tries to stay ahead of the cops and get to the Batcave for equipment to fight the Hourman Virus that was driving the city paranoid and insane; Batman One Million narrates on a tape for his villain, Xauron, that promises to reveal his secret identity in the end.

Despite looking like a small-b batman, Xauron was the future Batman's Joe Chill: on the prison planet Pluto, after infecting the guards with "the Laughing Virus," Xauron led a massive prison riot that culminated in the murder of the entire prison staff and their spouses, before the eyes of their children. Some fifteen thousand kids, most of whom were traumatized perhaps beyond repair, but one would become the Batman. As the tape ends--and that's more than a bit weird of an anachronism, in that future--Batman swoops in, taking down Xauron and his gang, sentencing them "to life imprisonment--in tesseract space!" I'm guessing that's not unlike the Phantom Zone, if not actually the Zone. They sure don't seem happy about it.

Like I mentioned, we've seen the Creeper, Nightwing, Green Arrow, and Superboy issues; but it seems like it would take me to the 853rd Century to finish this one...