Flash Facts

The Scientific Method

As far back as Action #1, many of the earliest superheroes have been grounded in science fiction. This was true even more so in the Silver Age: While only three of the original Justice Society characters had super powers via science, as many as eight of the first ten Justice League members had a scientific basis to their origin.

All four DC characters who have gone by the name "The Flash" have had scientific origins, with lab accidents that serendipitously conferred super-speed being the key origin moment (the speed is also passed on to descendants). The Barry Allen Flash stories beginning in 1956 were perhaps the definitive coupling of science and superhero. Not only was his origin based in science, but his stories very often slipped real scientific facts into the text, frequently making them into plot elements. Being a scientist himself, the Flash could often analyze a scene using his knowledge, helping him craft tactics to overcome his adversaries. Even some pages between the stories were used for features of science facts pertaining to speed under the title Flash Facts.

Of course, every story was based on a combination of science fact and science fiction. After all, the origin of every science-based superhero is based on pseudoscience, not actual science. Therefore, the real science is mixed in with made-up science that helps drive the story along. This is by no means exclusive to Flash stories, but to discuss the role of pseudoscience in comic books, I'll use the Flash as the main example. Moreover, I'm simply going to refer to "the Flash" without much concern about which Flash I'm discussing, although usually, I will mean Barry Allen if it makes a difference.

The Facts about Fiction

There are two ways we can get a "fact" about a comic book character:

Declaration The writer or a reliable character in the story can make a direct assertion. For example, a numerical expression of speed or strength.

Induction The action can show a feat, and from that we can conclude that the character is capable of the feat. For example, if we see a character run from Los Angeles to New York, and something in the story tells us how much time the run takes, we could apply simple mathematics to calculate the speed. (This provides what is known as a "lower limit". It means that the character is capable of at least that feat, but doesn't tell us how much more the character is capable of. For example, when Superman lifts a truck, it doesn't mean that he can't lift two trucks.)

Reductio Ad Absurdam

The non-reality of Flash stories would seem to be so obvious as to go without saying, and therefore to be accepted by all readers without need for further explanation or apology. And yet, reader response has always contained an element of unease. Letter columns as far back as 1960 show readers writing in to question whether or not some event in the story were actually plausible. It's noteworthy that the letters printed by DC often bear the names of fans who later went on to become writers, and one of the most critical letters printed in 1971 was sent by Marty Pasko, who was writing for DC a few years later. Pasko railed bitterly about the physics (and plotting) in Flash stories by Robert Kanigher.

There are three kinds of contradiction:

External Inconsistency An event in the story contradicts real-world logic or physics and provides no explanation to bridge the gap.

Internal Inconsistency Writers simply disagree on some particular point, and there is no convergence on an agreed-upon position. For example, Flash #106 describes Barry Allen as "endowed with enormous strength by his ability to move at super-speed". Many years later, JLA #152 made the diametrically opposite claim that the Flash was "not much stronger than an ordinary man".

Retcon The way something is explained changes, with one writer contradicting earlier versions, and writers after that point backing up that account. For example, Flash #117 states that the Flash has a "friction-proof uniform" not too long before Flash #128 introduced the apparently-contradictory notion that he has an aura that protects him against friction. The aura has become accepted by all writers since then.

Retcons are a necessary evolution in serial stories, but what about the two forms of inconsistency? They bother some vocal fans, but are they really a problem? In response to fan letters identifying scientific External Inconsistencies in earlier issues, the editor responded to one with a comment in Flash #120 which I paraphrase (removing context-specific puns) "While some events in the story may not be scientifically sound, we allow them because they make for a better story!"

The entire premise of the Flash depends upon External Inconsistencies -- the notion of a man who can run at or beyond the speed of light is inherently in conflict with real physics. So there's good reason -- tentatively -- to agree with the editors and allow External Inconsistencies.

Internal Inconsistencies seem like more of a valid complaint. But they can be subtle. Many Internal Inconsistencies arise when information had by means of Declaration conflicts with other information that comes from Induction. In other words, the story shows something on the surface, but when someone "takes it seriously", they find a contradiction. This is not always a conflict between two different writers -- it can take place in the same panel. For example, in JLA #152, just as the claim is made that the Flash is not much stronger than an ordinary man, he and Batman, falling from a toppling building, have a brief exchange of dialogue as they fall, and when the exchange ends, Flash flings Batman upward to a safe location. If you reason through the amount of time that the discussion must take, then this feat is seen to be far beyond that of an ordinary man. In one second, the Flash and Batman would have fallen about 16 feet. To throw a man of Batman's weight upward 16 feet is far beyond ordinary strength, particularly when the thrower is airborne, and must therefore throw twice as hard! 16 feet is double the world's high jump record, which involves a person springing off the ground to hurl himself upwards. To accomplish the same feat with one arm while airborne is in the realm of super strength. But the writer didn't see it that way. If you don't work out the physics, it may not seem like the feat contradicts the narration.

The subtlety here comes from the fact that the Internal Inconsistency is seen only through Induction. The writer contradicted himself, but only the application of physics makes the contradiction obvious. So let's conjecture that the following summary covers the set of fair reader reactions:

- Retcons are acceptable.
- External Inconsistency is acceptable, and in fact necessary.
- Internal Inconsistency is acceptable if it requires Induction to reveal it.
- Internal Inconsistency on an Explicit level really is a problem, and is worthy of complaint.

However, I will argue that the right way to look at Internal Inconsistency depends on the writer.

Two Wrongs Make a Write

From 1971 to 1985, The Flash was written by Cary Bates, who also wrote shorter stints on the high-profile titles starring Superman and the Justice League. Like most of the writers who wrote the Flash before and since, he incorporated science -- and pseudoscience -- into his stories. A villain would put the Flash into a deadly situation, seemingly taking into account the Flash's super-speed, neutralizing it somehow. But then, the Flash would think up some ingenious way to use his powers that would circumvent the villain's plan. And once the Flash escapes from a trap, it takes little more for him to win the fight that follows.

For example, in Flash #259, when Black Hand (now starring in Blackest Night) figures out a way to rob the Flash of the aura that protects him from friction, the Flash maneuvers their fight into a vacuum chamber. Without air, there is no air resistance, and thus the Flash can use his speed without hesitation. He holds his breath long enough to win the fight. Clever! This is real science.

At about the same time, the Flash faces four deadly threats in Bates-written stories. He gets out of those fixes as follows:

a) The Flash is seemingly killed by a deadly blast. But then he simply recovers by reordering his molecules, because total control over all of his molecules is one of this powers. (Flash #251)

b) The Flash is beaten and warped into an unrecognizable puddle. That blob is still sentient and manages to form a lightning-shaped symbol that communicates to Iris to use an electric shock to revive him. The blob reforms as a healthy Barry Allen. (Flash #253)

c) When a foe escapes by flying, the Flash runs on light beams in the air to ascend to knock the villain out. (Flash #255)

d) Stripped of his aura by Black Hand, the Flash is seared by heat while running. With total control over all of his molecules, he makes his entire body compress into the compartment on his ring that normally contains his costume. The ring shields him from heat, and when the problem has subsided, he emerges from the ring to achieve his normal size and shape. (Flash #259)

All of these are examples of pseudoscience. External Inconsistency, to be sure -- none of those things are possible in the real world. But are they also Internal Inconsistency? The Flash is not traditionally accorded with powers like shape-shifting, invulnerability, flight, and size control. In fact, in Flash #258, the Flash is trapped by Black Hand in a situation where the ability to run on photons would have allowed him to escape. Later in Bates's run, Barry's face is pummeled and disfigured. What would that matter if he had "total control" over all of his molecules? If he can return himself from a bloblike shape and near-death, putting his face back together should be no problem.

Does the inconsistency here require Induction, or is it really explicit? To be sure, it requires a bit of reasoning to see the inconsistency (eg, to know that in any daytime scene, there are photons that the Flash can run on... if he can run on photons). But I hold Mr. Bates responsible here, because of another form of inconsistency -- he sets ground rules that expect the reader to think tactically about the laws of nature. For example, with the scene where a vacuum gets the Flash out of his predicament. In another scene in this time frame, Bates has some narration where he asks the reader explicitly "how many of you figured out?" If he wants the reader to figure things out -- if he asks the reader to figure things out -- then he has to play by the rules where figuring things out is possible. Giving the Flash an ability that is contradicted by other issues in the same few months means that figuring things out is completely out of play. The problem here is not inconsistency with physics, or even with the story, but inconsistency with his own rules.

A reader does not just process the words in a story for the same of having recited them aloud (or in their internal "voice"). Readers interact with stories, experience emotion as appropriate, try to guess what's coming. The writer plays a role in letting the reader know what sort of expectations to have. Bates wrote real physics into some of his stories. He asked readers to anticipate the Flash's clever escapes. But he didn't write the physics up to those standards.

In contrast, the early Flash stories of the Golden Age, starring Jay Garrick, built up no such expectations. In the Forties, the Flash ran rings around his opponents, but the stories had almost no science in them at all. He simply moves fast. His speed is never offered with any consistency: On the first page of Flash Comics #1, he is said to move faster than light, but in All Star Comics #4, he takes three and a half minutes to run from New York to Maryland -- less than 0.006% the speed of light. In the same issue of All Star, he leaves Maryland headed for Toledo and arrives, apparently, simultaneously with the Sandman, who was arriving by car from El Paso. Simply put, the Internal Inconsistency requires a minimum of Induction that the stories of that time (by Gardner Fox) were not making part of their ground rules. By holding his readers to a higher standard, Bates must hold himself to a higher standard, or he's asking them to engage with his stories on a level they do not deserve. This reads like an Encyclopedia Brown story where a made-up rule of physics is the answer to the mystery.

Consider a third writer's work. Early in the Silver Age, a Flash story in Showcase #13 was chock-full of science facts. Mr. Element's modus operandi of using elements in his crimes was really a vehicle for writer John Broome to show off science facts about the elements. In that story, the Flash is ejected from the Earth on a path in outer space. While in space, the Flash uses his vibrations to set himself on a path that bends his path around the Moon, whose gravity returns him to Earth moments later. This suffers from a bad case of External Inconsistency -- Newton's Laws dictate that a "closed system" cannot change its path in space (i.e., the Flash is not ejecting any fluid to produce thrust). Moreover, if he were moving fast enough to reach the Moon in less than a minute, his velocity would be much too high for the Moon's meager gravity to bend his path back towards Earth. In my view, however, the science of the story is much more basic than the level on which the story is inconsistent. The science facts (e.g., magnesium creates a bright flare; glass is made of silicon) are trivia-like, whereas the Induction necessary to see the inconsistency in the story is deeper than that. Broome doesn't really break his own rules because he's not asking the reader to understand the sort of physics that prove his story wrong.

To delineate the rules that writers should follow, it's worth understanding the physics of the Flash's feats for the simple reason that there are a number of weighty inconsistencies right at the forefront of the very notion of the Flash. These inconsistencies are not to be overturned -- they must be nourished! The fundamental nature of the Flash depends on them, so writers should steer clear of any story elements that "use" this sort of physics, because that turns the forgivable External Inconsistency into a verboten Internal Inconsistency.

Fast But Not Strong: By and large, we understand the Flash to be very fast, but not very strong. He can't pick heavy things up. He is in many ways like Superman if you subtract all of the powers except speed. This premise is an External Inconsistency, because it is not possible to be super-fast and not be super-strong as well as relatively invulnerable. This may seem counterintuitive since it is, after all, for a person or animal to be relatively fast without being relatively strong. A hare can run 45 miles an hour while weighing under 14 pounds. This animal is clearly much faster than any person while being much weaker physically than almost all people. So why does super-speed imply super-strength?

It's key to observe that a hare's speed owes a lot to its low weight. To accelerate to that speed, the hare performs as much work as a person who weighs 180 lbs would to accelerate to 12.5 miles an hour (which is a run, but not a sprint). If a hare had to carry a human with it, it probably could not take a single step, and would likely die from the weight being placed on it.

But the Flash weighs the same as a normal man. If the Flash can run across the United States in less than a second, then he's generating a huge amount of kinetic energy -- enough to send ten Saturn V rockets to the Moon!

If he were truly capable of super-speed, he could lift a truck simply by using his fingers to bop tiny rubber balls off of its underside at speeds approaching that of light. And obviously, if he could do that, he could just eliminate the rubber balls as an intermediary and hold his hands level to lift it like a weight. Accelerating hands to near-light speeds is super-strength. An object cannot be thrown fast but not hard. Kinetic energy is kinetic energy.

The idea that speed does not go hand-in-hand with strength is true in principle. If we consider world's best sprinter Usain Bolt and an NFL offensive lineman, we have an example where the lineman is stronger while Bolt is faster. But consider that the difference is relatively moderate. Bolt is perhaps twice as fast as the lineman. But he weighs about 2/3 as much as the lineman -- if his legs had to push a lineman's weight, he would be slower than a mediocre high school sprinter. But the Flash is millions of times faster than an ordinary man. In accelerating his weight to near-lightspeed, he shows that he's not just the fastest man alive -- he would be, in our world, also easily the strongest.

No Harm, No Foul: Likewise, a super-speedster must be relatively invulnerable. In the past, villains have drawn guns on the Flash, threatening him with gunshots. He has been knocked unconscious with a blow to the head. But running across the United States in less than a second means that every bit of his body must endure far more acceleration than the tip of a bullet would create. When a bullet moving 1500 mph hits a person, it does the harm that it does because the person's body cannot decelerate the bullet to a halt without the tissue experiencing gross trauma. If the bullet could be stopped within, say, a half inch, the bullet would just poke the person and bounce out. For a bullet to stop that fast, the person's skin at the point of contact would have to endure an acceleration of about 3 million Gs. Make no mistake -- that's a lot! But for a person to run across the United States in one second, beginning from a stop, would involve at least 10 million Gs. That would mean that his entire body -- the place where you might imagine a bullet hitting, as well as his eyes, his teeth, his internal organs, and every other location on his skin -- would endure three times the bullet-stopping force. In fact, his feet would be enduring much higher impact than that.

The Flash Doesn't Fly: The point has often been made that the Flash cannot fly -- Geoff Johns recently reasserted it in Green Lantern #44. Despite this, he has landed on Earth while returning from outer space. He survives long falls by paddling his feet and making a cushion of air. In Flash #105, he makes a tube fly airborne by using his feet to create great pressure at its bottom. These are, of course, a sort of flight, and if thrust can be created to cushion a fall, it can naturally be used also to create flight. But in fact, the Flash should actually have to try very hard to prevent flight. Running on the surface of the Earth, he would become airborne once he exceeded orbital velocity -- about 5 miles per second. If he runs across the United States in less than ten minutes, then he must exceed that rate, and of course, he is often depicted as moving much faster. If he ran substantially faster than orbital velocity, he would need to be pulling some sort of trick just to stay down -- maybe by using aerodynamics to "fly down", countering the centrifugal acceleration that should be lifting him off the planet. The problem would be much worse when he crested the top of a hill -- even fast cars get a lift from this and then scrape bottom if they aren't carefully. And it's pretty hard to run thousands of miles without encountering hills.

Moreover, any sort of downward motion should basically disable Flash's super speed. Imagine he tries to run down the stairs of a building at super speed. A normal person basically "falls" with each downward step, using his feet to catch himself at the end of the step, then move forward into the next one. There's nothing one can do on stairs to "run down". One really moves forward and gravity pulls the runner down. The Flash can leap out from the top step all he wants, but he'll have to hang there until gravity pulls him down, so he should only be able to descend a flight of stairs about as fast as a normal person could fall down them. Maybe he has a trick of using the handrail to pull himself down, but otherwise, all downward motion should be at best fast, but not "super" fast.

Relativity: In 1905, Albert Einstein pulled off the masterstroke of revising the Newtonian mechanics of motion. This set of ideas, the Special Theory of Relativity, has a number of fascinating consequences. Some of them, the Lorentz Transformations, were presented in a science feature page in Barry Allen's first solo issue. The starting point for all of this includes the assumption that matter cannot possibly travel at the speed of light. Ask a simple question, get a muddled answer: Does Special Relativity apply in the DC Universe? If so, then the Flash should not be able to run faster than the speed of light. If not, then no one in the DC Universe should experience (or discuss!) Lorentz Transformations.

Jay Garrick was said to be "swifter than the speed of light itself" in the splash page of Flash Comics #1 -- his first appearance. Barry Allen is first said to exceed the speed of light in Flash #140, overshooting the mark to go seven times the speed of light. But the Lorentz Transformations have been asserted by the comics as well, including the time when Wally West took advantage of them to throw a super-strong punch in JLA v3 #3. Because the Lorentz Transformations and the ability to travel faster than light are both part of the set-up, there is Internal Inconsistency although it requires a deep understanding of relativity to see why.

In the earliest Barry Allen stories, the Flash was capable of running just short of the speed of light, as though the writers intended to respect relativity. However, note that when a person's average speed is a certain rate, the feet move much significantly faster than that as part of the stride. If the intention were to respect the speed of light, then you might have the feet moving just shy of lightspeed while the body averaged perhaps half the speed of light.

Energy: As I mentioned in my post How Strong Is Superman?, another of Einstein's formulations, the famous mass-energy equivalence equation E = mc² indicates how much "fuel" is needed to produce the energy needed for a super feat. This applies to the Flash every bit as much as it does Superman. When Usain Bolt accelerates to his top speed, he is converting some of the food he ate into energy, turning a tiny amount of mass -- less than a ten-billionth of a gram -- in the form of chemical bonds into kinetic energy. The amount of weight lost is not measurable because it is such a tiny fraction of the man's mass, and so many other factors (like respiration) would totally overwhelm the magnitude of the mass converted to energy.

The Flash, in accelerating to, say, 10% the speed of light, would burn quite a bit more mass -- just about exactly one pound. That's noticeable, but not overwhelming. However, in accelerating to 50% the speed of light, he would burn about 6 pounds of body weight. Thanks to the Lorentz Transformations, this quantity rises steeply as the speed of light is approached, so that accelerating to 99% of lightspeed would burn about 25 pounds off the his frame. In coming to a stop, he would burn an equal amount, so that if he ran two round trips with a full start/stop at each end, he would lose close to 100 pounds!

Because the last section already explained why we may need to waive off consistency with Einsteinian physics, this point may be moot. The early part of Wally West's run as the Flash asserted his need to eat lots of food to fuel his bursts of super-speed. But 100 pounds is a lot of food to eat at a sitting.

Neurons: Imagine a person running an obstacle course (or through a house), with lots of sharp turns and the need to go over, under, or around barriers. Suppose the runner maintains an average speed of 5 miles an hour. The real feat of speed that you can't see is the wiring of the brain needed to perform the computation that keeps the runner from bashing into obstacles. The way the brain is set up, the chemical impulses that carry out the computation move at speeds about 8 times faster than Usain Bolt's top sprinting speed, or about 40 times faster than the runner meandering through the obstacle course. If the neuronal firing of a speedster did not speed up proportional to his or her body, then an awkward runner would result, one could might rev up to dangerous speeds in wide-open places, but be unable to react quickly in the event that a sudden obstacle appeared. To be specific, if the Flash were imagined as limited by the speed of light, then the true limit would be on his nervous system, and his legs would have to be quite a bit slower still (around 10% the speed of light instead of just less than 100%).

Doppler Shift: In the great Wally West story Terminal Velocity (Flash v2 #95-100), Mark Waid showed the Flash using the Doppler effect to change light from beyond the visible portions of the spectrum into wavelengths he could see. In fact, this would not be a mere option for the Flash but a requirement, with colors shifting to unnatural wavelengths whenever he ran fast, making the visible turn invisible and vice versa. If you make the Doppler effect part of the DC Universe's physics, then all speedsters must face it at all times, for good and for bad.

Bull in a China Shop: Recall the earlier discussion of how a speedster must be invulnerable to run at very high speeds. The bad news is, this also goes for everything around him, including the places on the ground where his feet plant. If a few steps are enough to accelerate the Flash to speeds much beyond that of the speed of sound, then the same steps will exert equal force on the pavement in the opposite direction. Ordinary materials like asphalt could not possibly survive or permit such a pounding (or scraping). This is in a way a more serious complaint than the need for the speedster to be invulnerable, because that only requires the speedster to be different than real people, whereas this fact means that pavement in the DC Universe has to be different than pavement in the real world! This begs for some sort of "aura" explanation, granting some invulnerability to everything around the Flash when he runs.

Some stories acknowledge the problems of sonic booms and hurricane-like winds that would follow a speedster and create aura-based solutions to the problem. In other cases (like New Frontier), the Flash is simply very careful about avoiding damage, keeping his speed below the sound barrier until he leaves populated areas.

Speed Force and Other Messes

The previous eight sections talk about physics problems with the basic premise of the Flash. The solution, I would argue has to be to preserve these inconsistencies, because the character has so much traction with his powers working the way they've always been portrayed. Nobody wants a Flash who flies all the time or suddenly has super-strength and invulnerability close to those of Superman.

The aura was the first attempt to explain one Internal Inconsistency, because one story wanted to make friction part of the science-plot. This put the inconsistency so evidently into focus that the writer needed to explain it, and the solution has stuck. I think when you look at the previous eight sections of this post, you see that explaining that one thing while leaving the others unaddressed is like correcting one spelling error on a page with a dozen.

Terminal Velocity also introduced the idea of the Speed Force, which (not a force in the strict sense used in physics) has been used to explain some of the inconsistencies. I think it (in other words, axiomatic pseudoscience in place of real science) might helpfully address some of the other inconsistencies. For example, by basing the Flash's speed on motion within an equipotential surface within a gravitational field, the problem of the Flash reaching orbital velocity, and therefore flying off the surface of the Earth, would be dealt with.

One strategy for dealing with any of these problems is -- and I mean this kindly -- to dumb the stories down with respect to physics. The Golden Age stories didn't introduce such sophistication as Bates and Waid tried to work with later. In my view, Waid generally introduced just as much physics as he wanted to deal with, whereas Bates used pseudoscience as a deus ex machina, keeping his stories scientific until he'd boxed the Flash into a corner, then introducing some utterly new manifestation of pseudoscience to resolve the story.

The Golden Age stories work by ignoring any pretense of real science. Stories with real science can work, too, if the writer is up to his or her own challenge. I believe that "When one door closes, another door opens." A great story can use science just as much or as little as the writer cares to use, but the real Golden Rule of pseudoscience is to have consistency in terms of how real the science is.

Batman and Robin #6

As Grant Morrison's 12-part run on Batman and Robin reaches the midpoint, its intrigue is at an apex. The run has been structured as four three-issue story arcs. But the fourth one will from all indications be the greatest among equals, showcasing characters who have held the power behind the scenes during the three initial arcs.

The third arc was full of action, with the dynamic figures of Philip Tan illustrating clashes between two dynamic duos, as Jason Todd and his sidekick square off against the title characters. And finally, the four of them barely matching a newcomer, Flamingo. The great majority of issues #4 through #6 were devoted to this plot. I'm not, however, going to say too much about it here, because that plot was in some regards self-contained, and has come to a neat end with Jason's incarceration.

However, just as Sasha, the human fallout from the first story arc "fell into" the second one, a comment from Jason at the end of this second arc, is falling into the third one. I use the domino metaphor because of its obvious importance to a mystery behind this run, a story element that was in concrete terms absent from #6.

For the purposes of the future, #6 ended with two short scenes that were almost bursting with hints about where the story is going. In the first, Oberon Sexton receives a phone call from a man who identifies himself with or as El Penitente. In the second, Dick Grayson, goaded on by earlier comments from Jason Todd (whose resurrection was aided by a Lazarus Pit) appears to visit the body of "Batman" in a sealed vault, with the dialogue as well as two different preview panels indicating that this body may be placed into a Lazarus Pit. For the moment, these two sets of clues appear to lead in two different directions, although the El Penitente and "body of Bruce Wayne" stories will likely end up colliding by the fourth arc.

I'm going to take the unusual (for me) step of putting a lot of pieces together in one effort. I grant that some of what I posit here may not be true, but there is such an inter-relation of clues that it would seem coy to talk about each one for a while before assembling them into a story.

The seated man is El Penitente. The "penitentes" are, after all, a Latin American sect within Roman Catholicism whose essential trait is acting out the crucifixion, including self-whipping (Jesus faced whips before the cross). And the seated man has a whip in his hand, scars on his back, and has bared himself, evidently, for that task. He is definitely "a" penitente if not "the" penitente (note that Santos was wearing the tunic of a Penitente in #4). And his language also indicates that he is the principal player on his side of this war: He uses the the first-person singular when he says "I have unfinished business in Gotham City, and scores to settle." He's not a follower.

More significant, the seated man is evidently Doctor Hurt, or is somehow or another channeling whatever essence was Doctor Hurt before. He wears the Thomas Wayne batmask. He has the same distinctive hairline. He uses the phrase "your sins have found you out" (Doctor Hurt said this in the final issue of Batman, RIP). His speech is dense with statements of his own power and his listener's weakness, something Hurt has done in every panel where he's spoken. The newspapers and notes on Oberon Sexton's bed indicate two Devil / Black Glove elements: A five-pointed star (key to the Satanic future plot of #666) under the indecipherable photograph of one person, and the exact headline seen in the "Six months later" scene at the end of RIP: "Gruesome Slaying of Beloved Cardinal"... surely Cardinal Maggi, a Black Glove member.

Somehow, Doctor Hurt has reloaded very rapidly, taking command of a large criminal organization running out of Mexico. The scores he has to settle in Gotham probably have a lot more to do with his failure to best Bruce Wayne in Batman, RIP than with a cash-driven drug pushing ring. And if he's punishing himself for anything, it's probably that loss. And the fresh injuries in the shape of the W more than likely mean that he's conscious of the name Wayne as the source of his woe.

El Penitente's comments hint that he has a past association with Oberon Sexton. We've been told that Oberon Sexton's face was "scarred" and his "wife" killed. And that suggests that Oberon Sexton is actually Mangrove Pierce, last seen hanging upside down before Mayhew's party, with Hurt about to skin and wear Pierce's face. Apparently, Pierce was let go, faceless, and has put together this life for himself. His lover, the former wife of Mayhew, was killed by her husband. He's tracking down whoever killed the Cardinal and probably other former members of the Black Glove. Which suggests that the Joker, who vowed to "collect his winnings" from the members of the Black Glove is the same serial killer that Sexton is tracking down. Remember also that in Batman #680, one of the Black Glove members mentions that Doctor Hurt is fond of utilizing actors. As he reaches out now to Sexton to do something for him, it's possible that Sexton, as Pierce, was one of the actors who has worked for him previously.

So this page gives us good reason to believe that a number of pending mysteries for the year can be tentatively resolved from the clues in just three panels. Case closed? No. In principle, all kinds of other possibilities are still open. But this is the most economical reading of the clues.

Furthermore, the Domino Killer is probably not the "serial killer" that Sexton is after. The faulty solicit for #1 said that Batman and Robin would be on the trail of a child abducted by the Domino Killer. Sasha was abducted by Professor Pyg. Pyg used the word "dominoes". His drug / plan matches El Penitente's very well. An addiction you can catch -- sounds like the sort of soul-destruction that the Devil yearns for. The Domino Killer may likely be an agent of El Penitente.

And what of the body and the Lazarus Pit? The preview at the end of #1 showed us a "Batman" rising from what we now must feel sure is a Lazarus Pit while Batwoman appears to resist Dick Grayson's efforts. The previews at the end of #1 show her and some bat-hand (almost surely belonging to the body that Dick looks at at the end of #6). Which leads to a sharp contradiction with the belief that Dick has expressed quite clearly, that the body that Black Hand exhumed as part of Blackest Night is Bruce Wayne's.

This amounts to two conflicting assertions regarding a body being Bruce Wayne's. (Let's forget about the Bruce in the past for now -- that's not a direct conflict with any Bruce body in the present.) Moreover, We have been told in an October "DC Nation" column by Dan Didio that Batman and Robin "7 was so important to events in the DC Universe that it had to come out after Blackest Night 6". The most economical reading of this is that the conflict between the two assertions will be resolved by Batman and Robin #7 but will not be resolved by Blackest Night #6. The solicit for the former advertises "the details surrounding the 'death' of Bruce Wayne!" Evidently, Blackest Night #6 has some drama that is better served if we don't know that.

If if comes down to one or the other, the odds are far on the side of the body that Black Hand stole being the real Bruce. He has used it for some nefarious raising-the-dead purpose and his project has worked. Moreover, we have reason to doubt that the Lazarus Pit project will work -- it's probably too early for Bruce to come back. Granted, Dan Didio has also said "There were two Batmen [in Countdown, or with Earth Two?]. And that, honestly, is one of the cruxes of the storylines that will be playing out in 2010." So Bruce and Dick may overlap. But January seems too early for that. Batman and Batman and Robin? So my guess is that Dick knows that the body in the grave is the real one and he takes something else to the British Isles looking to test a Lazarus Pit on it and getting something that is not Batman. Naturally, Batwoman, who's been running into devil types on her own, would have reason to be concerned and perhaps to want to stop the effort.

We have been told by Grant Morrison that the Bruce in the past is Bruce. So a body in a Lazarus Pit is probably not the way we'll get Bruce back. (But who knows what rules exist governing spirits in the past, Lazarus Pits, and bodies in the present? A writer could make anything happen that is convenient for the story.) I think Dick will get a body to rise up and do something, but it won't be Bruce. The teaser title reinforces that: Blackest Knight. That sounds like, at best, Zombie Bruce, not "Hurray -- Bruce is back!"

Given that Squire appears in the promotional art for the next arc, I should add that in the Club of Heroes storyline way back in Batman #667-669 (where Mangrove Pierce first appeared, too), the story of the Knight resembled considerably what the Black Glove soon did to Batman -- he lost his fortune and was on drugs in the streets. If I were to interview Morrison, I would ask if that was the Black Glove practicing on a lesser superhero or was it foreshadowing on his part, or some subconscious expression of the larger plot that was coming. (The Musketeer also had a story that accurately foretold the final setting of RIP as a situation in which Batman faced two of his deadliest enemies in an insane asylum.)

There's a lot of uncertainty still out there, but I think the clues in #6 makes it likely that we know who most of the players are for this run. I think we'll see Dick Grayson try something with a Lazarus Pit that will one way or another fail to bring Bruce back. (Maybe one of the clones from Last Rites.) I think that will serve as our confirmation that Black Hand, indeed, has Bruce's actual skull in his hand. And we'll see the Black Glove's supporting cast move to the forefront when this story moves into the fourth arc.

In the meantime, we can scrutinize the clue-filled pages of Batman and Robin #6 as much as we want, looking for other possibilities -- the next issue of the series is two and a half months away.

Batman and Robin: Domino

Batman and Robin intercept a car full of drug dealers. They secure Gotham City Police Headquarters when a powerful trio of metahuman circus acts try to break one of those dealers out. They stop the insidious head of the circus and bring down his operation. Later, they break in on a vigilante who has just mown down some of Gotham's organized crime bosses. All very tough stuff that only Batman and Robin could manage. But something was funny: In all four cases, someone got there first and left a taunting clue: one or more dominoes. Or so it seems.

As the first year of Batman and Robin nears its midpoint, the story is undoubtedly complex. While Morrison is providing a rigid structure to his run -- four arcs of three issues each -- the arcs seem to be bleeding into one another (at times, literally), and the complexity of the plot is bewildering. A reader might be enjoying these stories by rooting for Batman and Robin and assuming that anyone who punches back is the bad guy, but the roster of bad guys is itself a source of mystery: We have alleged bad guys who have been seen in person, other who have left evidence, others who have been referred to within the story, and yet others who have been referred to outside the story. Given the large number of villains and villain references, one puzzle is to match them and their plans up. There probably aren't enough clues to complete the puzzle yet. But we can ask: Is there one alpha villain behind the whole twelve issues? One who commands the allegiance of most of the lower-ranking villains we will see along the way? If so, is that alpha villain El Penitente, or the Domino Killer, or Doctor Hurt? Are those three different individuals or two... or one? What does Oberon Sexton have to do with it? The questions are so numerous that it's easier to start with the facts.

We know that Professor Pyg (now in custody) was a tortured soul who dealt addictive new drugs, using the Circus of the Strange and his Dollotrons as muscle. They were dealing with Russians and also seem to have had Russians working for them. That's one group of criminals.

Later, a Mexican named Santos tells us of his as-yet unseen boss, El Penitente, someone new to carrying out evil in Gotham. El Penitente's plan to addict ordinary people to drugs sounds like it might be the same as Pyg's, but is it the same plan or are they two similar plans? Santo's purple hood indicates a (real) order within the Roman Catholic Church called Los Penitentes, with a presence in Mexico and some members wearing purple hoods, with others wearing other colors to indicate their branch. Maybe Pyg was part of Penitente's organization, although they could hardly be more different in terms of style.

The Domino mystery has a logistical element to it: it's all well that a trunk that was supposed to contain cash actually contains dominoes. We can imagine the people who were supposed to leave cash leaving those instead. But the domino in Toad's hand is a real mystery: We should imagine that nobody was capable of sneaking in right before he was found dead. There are tactical possibilities: Someone invisible or otherwise "meta". Damian was on the scene, and has been in conflict with Dick since the beginning; could Dick's teasing him about detective skills have goaded Damian into faking a mystery to taunt his boss with? Or did someone sneak in and out of Toad's cell?

We have been told that there is a Domino "Killer" -- but only outside of the story, in a quotation from Grant Morrison and in the (somewhat inaccurate) solicit for #1. But Toad's case is the only murder involving a domino so far. The dominoes in the trunk accompanied no murder. The one found in Pyg's lab may have coincided with arson, but no murder. And the one found in Santos' hand took place at the scene of a multiple murder, but Santos himself was not killed. Moreover, we know exactly who assaulted Santos and the others -- it was Jason Todd.

We might imagine Jason Todd to be the one planting dominoes -- he has the ability and the anti-crime motive, even the specific opposition seen in Under the Hood to those who would deal drugs to kids. However, note that Jason was apparently never in physical contact with Santos. Jason, as the Red Hood, threw a broken glass as Santos, and the artwork seems to prohibit any opportunities for Jason to have walked over to Santos to hand him a domino.

We also have a clue from outside the story, and I mean that in more ways than one. The solicit for #1 says that Batman and Robin investigate "a child who's been abducted by the mysterious Domino Killer." It is clear that no such event takes place in #1 nor any of the issues since then. This probably indicates that Morrison tweaked his story somewhat since offering the solicit for #1; those sorts of changes happened a couple of times during his longer run on Batman, and it was potentially instructive to compare the solicit to the actual plot to try to work out Morrison's general intentions given two sets of alternative specifics. In this case, the abducted child seems almost certainly to be Sasha, who was abducted by Pyg (and by extension, by whomever Pyg worked) before going along willingly as the sidekick to Jason Todd. Again, Jason Todd seems to be mathematically alive as a suspect, but that possibility almost vanishes when you take into account another clue from outside the story. In an interview, Morrison said that the series' first arc is intertwined with a "bigger mystery, involving a character called the Domino Killer". It's hard to imagine how it would truly be a "bigger mystery" if Jason's bloody exploits, seen in detail already, also involved him leaving dominoes behind. He's been leaving business cards behind: It would be a mere redundancy if he were also leaving dominoes.

I think of the ways one can work on a mystery roughly dividing into top-down and bottom-up methods. Top-down works from the generalities -- the author's motivations and so on -- to narrow down the suspects. Bottom-up works from the clues to determine what is possible. I think the top-down approach to the identity issue, the question of who the Domino Killer is, is probably less likely at this point to bear fruit, beyond ruling out Jason Todd, than the bottom-up. So let's look at the possibilities that the clues allow:

In the most "aggressive" interpretation of the domino appearances, we might imagine a real killer who is using dominoes as taunts. Imagine that someone broke into Toad's cell and killed him (we see blood only in the "next issue" images at the end of #1) and left the domino as an omen of the killer's dreadful nature. But this pattern hasn't gone anywhere yet: No one had been found dead with the dominoes in the trunk, nor was anyone found dead with the second single domino in Pyg's lab, although a fire had been started. And then the third single domino was in Santos's hand, but we know that he was not assaulted by anyone mysterious, assuming that his facial injuries were his only ones.

At the other extreme, imagine that the "Domino Killer" is doing something quite different. Maybe the dominoes have been put into place before or beside the killing, at least in some cases. Maybe Santos was holding the domino for his own reasons -- as a good luck charm, or protection. (Clearly, he's not adverse to showing belief in the religious or supernatural.) Consider the Joker's work in his first story (Batman #1): some of his victims had already been subjected to a slow-acting poison before the Joker served notice that he was "going to" kill them. (This was used by The Dark Knight's version of the Joker as well.) Suppose the dominoes had been handed out long before the acts of violence took place. Maybe Toad was killed by some slow-acting poison. And if someone's using the Joker's original motif, are we perhaps waiting to see the Joker himself show up -- Dan Didio and Morrison have both indicated that the Joker may show up before this run is over, and his role is rarely a minor one. Consider also that if the Domino Killer is actually a passive actor, placing dominoes but not "killing" that it may be a plot cooked up by, say, Oberon Sexton, leaving dominoes where crimes take place to add an element of intrigue without actually committing the crime. He purports to be following a serial killer to Gotham. Maybe there is no killer, just a cluemaster leaving clues. And that, again, would be borrowing from the Joker, who left meaningless clues in Batman, RIP.

One key out-of-story mention of dominoes is the title of the first issue: "The Domino Effect". This phrase highlights the famous way, besides the game, in which dominoes are commonly used. When lined up and stood on end, pushing one domino over causes the next in line to fall and so on. Massive displays are created in which the toppling of one domino can cause enormous numbers to fall in a line or wave of collapses. The domino effect was historically used to refer to the way in which Communist revolutions might spread through southern Asia were South Vietnam to fall. (It proved to be partly correct: South Vietnam's two neighboring countries did become Communist, but the wave, if it was a wave, stopped there.)

This theme of criminality spreading from one person / victim to another turns up several times in Batman and Robin. Someone apparently created Pyg, and Pyg creates the Dollotrons. In particular, Pyg tells Sasha's father, just before his horrible conversion, that once he has become a Dollotron, he will help Pyg force such a fate onto his own daughter. (The Justifier helmets and other devices spread the Anti-Life Equation in Morrison's Final Crisis, with the same shock plot device used: Black Lightning puts one on Green Arrow; Green Arrow tries to put one on Black Canary.) Pyg and El Penitente both want to spread addictions (perhaps the same one), infecting as many people as possible.

Issue #5's final face on camera, Flamingo, was also created, having undergone a sort of brain surgery that turned him into a super-vicious killer (this calls to mind the forensic case of Phineas Gage and the recent Batman villain The Amygdala), although his attacks seem to end the cycle -- his victims do not become criminals themselves.

But the most direct personalization of a domino in the plot may be Sasha, who began the story as a seemingly ordinary teenager and who "fell" from the first story arc to the second. If the domino theme is being carried out with her, then we might expect to see some victim in the Red Hood arc turn into a villain for the third arc. No such victims have stood out so far, though -- Pyg persecuted the innocent while Red Hood kills the guilty.

Because we know that in some working draft of Morrison's story that the Domino Killer is who abducted Sasha, if the printed story is not too far from the draft, then either Pyg is the Domino Killer or represents him. And in fact, the remaining in-story mention of dominoes comes from Pyg as he talks to himself in captivity, saying quite directly that his victims are lined up like dominoes. If he has awareness of his putative boss's methods, he may be rambling on that topic. But then, if the person leaving dominoes is on Pyg's side, why did Pyg's henchman Toad twice end up receiving dominoes, with Pyg's lab containing another? If El Penitente is the force behind the Domino side, why did Santos end up with the domino in his hand? If all of the dominoes seen so far as part of the 12-11-10 countdown -- in Toad's hand, in Pyg's lab, and in Santos's hand were badges or good luck charms, then perhaps we haven't yet seen a domino being used as a marker of a crime, but as a sort of membership card found by people on the Domino side. But then, how is a countdown taking place if not by coincidence?

The countdown seems at least to indicate that the sequence of domino appearances has been chosen with a meaning, but it is improbable that any single agent would have foreseen the actions of Red Hood, or have known that Batman was about to corral Pyg. If we assume, therefore, that the countdown is planned and not coincidental, and that the Domino side does not control Batman and/or Red Hood, then it seems like someone must be arriving at these sites and leaving dominoes post hoc for Batman to find them. And that implies either prophecy or powers to sneak about that surpass Batman's. So while we haven't been able to pin the "killer" down, and can identify at most one killing in three appearances of a single domino, we do see that someone's got the kind of capability that could seriously test Batman if they come into open confrontation. The key question is if that test is really about "killing" or if it's a mystery first and foremost. In other words, is the Big Bad leaving silly clues while weaving a big web of evil or is someone like Sexton giving Dick Grayson a Joker/Riddler style mystery to solve and using their surprising capability just to do the clue-leaving while seeming like a killer. The blood on Toad's domino (seen only in the teaser at the end of #1) points to some real menace which is for now still well-shrouded in mystery.

Lynch, Peaks, Morrison, Batman

If you went to the movies in 1986, you might have chosen to see a romantic comedy, a historical drama, an action-adventure movie, horror, sex comedy – just about any sort of thing. Or you could have seen Blue Velvet, which blew conventional genre definitions away. It opened and closed like a G-rated film. The story had a familiar structure: damsel in distress, hero, villain. But all three of the principal characters showed deep perversions along the way. The hero eventually triumphed over the villain, but not before he found in himself a perversion which spread like an infectious disease from the villain to his victim, and from her to the hero. If there was a thematic progression, it was to show that beneath the mundane and beautiful world we enjoy exist all of the troubles of the world – sickness and violence and guilty pleasures – but even when you know that, that beautiful surface is still there, waiting for you to return to it. A movie like that doesn’t sit well with every viewer. It’s not a date movie unless you plan on a real wild finish to the date. Blue Velvet was admired by critics, but was the quintessential cult movie – loved by a relatively small group of fans. And in that respect, it typifies the film career of David Lynch.

Some three years later, the ABC network made the hard-to-believe announcement that it would begin airing a television series pitched by Lynch. The discrepancy between the conventional nature of broadcast network television and the eccentric films of Lynch created a tension that doomed the show to a limited lifespan. When Twin Peaks began airing in April 1990, it was just as "strange and wonderful", to use one of its own phrases, as one might have expected. Yet, powered by some of the sensibilities of primetime soap operas and a central murder mystery, it gained enough momentum to carry it through a second season. The show's defining whodunit -- Who killed Laura Palmer? -- became one of television's most famous mysteries. Eventually the appeal wore off for most of America (not to mention the network executives) and the show lapsed into history. 

Grant Morrison's style of writing superhero comics has at times incorporated some of the elements that make Lynch distinctive as a director. While Morrison has been tremendously successful in writing mainstream hits like the Justice League, he has also done avant garde work like Flex Mentallo, which commented on the superhero genre from within a story that broke fourth-wall boundaries. In bringing such sensibilities to features like Seven Soldiers and DC Comics' flagship story of 2008, Final Crisis, Morrison has written some classics that have won acclaim while turning off some of the larger audience by violating some of the rigid structural constraints of the genre.

In broad ways, then, it is easy to say that Morrison's work has played a role within comics somewhat like that of Lynch's work within film. However, in Morrison's work on Batman, the connection has been more specific than that. In Morrison's sixth issue of Batman, he began making explicit reference to Lynch's work, staring with the appearance of a blue rose. In Fire Walk With Me, the film prequel to Twin Peaks, a blue rose was used as part of a code to communicate that an FBI case pertained to the paranormal. When that blue rose appeared early in Morrison's extended Batman storyline, which ran for twenty-five issues, it foretold a paranormal element that had only begun to show itself.

One issue later, when Batman has encountered the second of two imposter Batmen, who wear a version of his costume but operate against him, he recollects that he had previously encountered those two, and one other, one night in his past, a night he had trouble remembering and had believed to be a dream. This left him eager to locate the third one and he refers to him as "The Third Man". This is most obviously a reference to the 1949 film of the same name, but it is more directly a link to Twin Peaks. Lynch and the 1949 Orson Wells film both use the phrase to refer to a person whose identity was the respective works' central mystery, having been seen (or heard) in the same context as two men whose identities were known. The third man becomes central to one part of Morrison's extended story line, although his identity is only a stepping stone to the larger mystery that was still unsolved when Batman had met and defeated the third replacement Batman.

That mystery came to fruition in the signature story of Morrison's Batman run, the six-issue story called Batman, R.I.P. This story began with the first on-camera appearance of a character named Doctor Hurt. (Actually, based on a nameless character seen in a single Batman story way back in 1963!) Doctor Hurt, it became clear, had brainwashed three policemen into adopting alternate Batman identities and making life difficult for the caped crusader. Now, Doctor Hurt was bringing together the elements of an incredibly long-running plan that would strike at Batman and remove him from his crimefighting role forever. When the first issue of RIP moved to a close, we saw Bruce Wayne and his girlfriend Jezebel Jet (the one who had received the blue rose over a year earlier) at the grave of his parents. The scene shifts to Arkham Asylum with artwork that initially focuses on some flowers, which had very sinister-looking millipedes crawling on them, signifying the horror that was welling up waiting to come. The scene to follow showed the Joker, Batman's deadly enemy, fantasizing about mass murder just before he is contacted by the Black Glove, the criminal organization headed by Doctor Hurt. This shot of the flowers and millipedes structurally resembles an early shot in Blue Velvet, which showed the green grass of a lawn, then zoomed in to reveal a dark subsurface with beetles underneath crawling in a disturbing battle between themselves. The image above shows three screenshots of Blue Velvet alongside the two panels of RIP that capture the same impression with a similar pair of images.

The action in the story soon thereafter shows us that just as Doctor Hurt had subjected the three policemen to brainwashing, he had reserved similar control over Batman thanks to having had access to Batman over a span of ten days when Batman had volunteered for an experiment in human endurance for the US Army (the 1963 story). As a result, Batman's crimefighting personality (as well as his personality as Bruce Wayne) was "switched off" suddenly when Batman heard a trigger phrase that had been programmed into him. This resembles the plot of another movie that Twin Peaks had referenced: The Manchurian Candidate. In that film, captured US Army soldiers had been brainwashed by the Chinese and Korean Communists during the Korean War. The equivalent of Doctor Hurt's trigger phrase was a playing card that a soldier was to see before carrying out a programmed task in the service of his former captors. In essence, the trigger awakens a persona that is not the victim's proper self. This came to play in Twin Peaks in two ways: One, when the Audrey Horne character (in a plot that is unrelated to mind control) wears a Queen of Diamonds costume, matching the playing card that served as the trigger in Manchurian Candidate. Many of us who were trying to solve the TV show's mystery at the time used the appearance of the Queen of Diamonds as an indication that someone might be under someone else's control, a hypothesis that turned out to be correct: It was ultimately revealed that Laura Palmer's killer was a man (her father) who was not acting under his own free will, but under the control of an "inhabiting spirit" named BOB.

As RIP moved to its final stages, the connections to Twin Peaks became thematically and visually overwhelming. It is not an overstatement to suggest that the penultimate issue of RIP, numbered Batman #680, is a kind of remake of the Twin Peaks series finale. It will be useful to summarize that episode, which was directed by David Lynch himself.


After Agent Cooper, the hero of the series, had identified the killer of Laura Palmer, he (and the show) lost purpose until a new villain surfaced. This was Windom Earle, a former FBI agent who had a bloody history with Cooper, a brilliant though evil man who had recently escaped from an insane asylum. Earle, it turns out, was aware of the same paranormal forces centered in the vicinity of Twin Peaks, and believed that he could tap their power for his own use. In his words, to "reorder the Earth itself to his liking". In order to defeat Cooper, Earle abducted Cooper's lover (played by a then-unknown Heather Graham) and took her through an interdimensional portal into a place called the Black Lodge. Cooper follows Earle into the Lodge and has to endure a number of strange interactions before facing three enemies: both Earle and also Cooper's own doppleganger, an evil version of himself who resembles Cooper exactly, except for having glassy eyes. Finally, the true power of the Lodge was the inexplicable and otherworldly BOB, who defeats Window Earle almost trivially before setting Cooper's doppleganger on a chase to bring down the hero. When the doppleganger catches Cooper, it results in Cooper's unconscious body appearing in the woods where he had entered the Lodge. When Cooper regains consciousness, it is soon revealed that while he presents a facade of normality, he has become the new host of BOB, therefore releasing that evil into the world again. And that moment ended the series.


Contrast this with the events of Batman #680, which was the fifh of RIP's six issues: Batman's abducted girlfriend, Jezebel Jet, was held as bait in Arkham Asylum, which the Black Glove had seized and turned into a trap for Batman. When the hero stormed into Arkham, he had to face a number of ordinary (and easily beatable) henchmen before coming face to face with the Joker, who is in every rendition of the Batman story, the hero's nemesis and methodological double (the Joker himself saying to Batman in this issue that they have "a yin/yang thing"). When Batman gets past the Joker, he sees Jezebel in a deathtrap, and in rescuing her, necessarily exposes himself to a toxin (earlier seen in Batman #663, but based on one that has been part of the Joker's repertoire since his very first story). As the issue ends, Batman (now unmasked) collapses, grinning and laughing like the Joker under the effects of the toxin which has killed every previous victim. Doctor Hurt stands triumphant over the scene, which also reveals that Jezebel is delighted by Batman's defeat -- she had been working against him from the beginning.


The similarities are numerous. Even before the fateful events of the finale, Cooper receives a warning from an otherworldly giant who has helped him before. Before heading to his confrontation in Arkham, Batman receives a warning from an otherworldly sprite (Bat-Mite, taken from decades-older comics) who has been helping him. Both heroes head into a tableau of danger and madness to face their evil double and an even more dangerous enemy (Doctor Hurt, the story slowly reveals, is actually The Devil). Both heroes are trying to rescue their girlfriends, who are being used by the villains as bait. Both heroes end up defeated, turned to the enemy's worldview (Cooper by being possessed by BOB; Batman through the Joker's toxin).

Even the set design matches -- closely. Compare Cooper facing off against his Evil Double in the Black Lodge with the shot of Batman finally coming face to face with the Joker. (Clicking on the images in this post will enlarge them.) Morrison (and his artist Tony Daniel) borrow the red, pleated curtains of the Black Lodge (which Lynch, apparently inspired by theatres, has used in other films) and a floor with a gaudy two-tone angular pattern (zigzags in the Black Lodge; a red-and-black checkerboard in Arkham Asylum, which the Black Glove has redecorated extensively). 


And the final blow is eerily similar. Batman, unmasked, has to break through glass to rescue Jezebel. In so doing, he apparently cuts his forehead. The last shot we see of him, he is grinning, out of his mind, seeing things for the moment through the Joker's eyes. Once outside the Black Lodge, Cooper smashes his own forehead into a bathroom mirror, then laughs evilly (BOB can be seen in the mirror as his reflection). The two scenes match even to the double trickle of blood over the eyebrow!

Of course, there is a key distinction. This is the absolute last moment in the story of Twin Peaks. (An ending crafted in response to the creators' knowledge that the network was cancelling the show.) But this was the second-to-last issue of RIP. And by no means the last issue of Batman. Cooper is never seen again. But Batman follows these events by inflicting a string of reversals on the Black Glove. It turns out that he was prepared for this event in many ways; he had an antidote to the Joker toxin already in his bloodstream, so it only stunned him. Even as he fell, he was sending a radio signal that would soon thereafter lock his enemies in. When he awoke in a buried coffin minutes later, he was able to free himself and win a striking victory over Doctor Hurt and the Black Glove. Agent Cooper, you were good, but you were no Batman.


When I first encountered the blue rose and "third man", I found interviews with Grant Morrison online, ones that preceded Morrison's work on Batman and wherein he praised David Lynch. (See here and here.) Since then, carrying on his work in the series Batman and Robin, Morrison has openly cited Lynch as an inspiration for the yearlong story, a follow-on to RIP, which is now in progress. And in terms of mood, the Lynchian feel has definitely shown up as Batman has faced such oddities as The Circus of the Strange.


To have had Twin Peaks reflected in Morrison's run has been for me greatly enjoyed. I took the mystery of Twin Peaks as a personal challenge to solve back in 1990, and I did so also with the mystery of the Black Glove's identity early in 2008. I enjoyed both stories thoroughly on multiple grounds, for their own mysteries and senses of mood. It was all the sweeter to have had one of the stories so deeply reflect the other.