Compared to how Ridley written Jace, despite it being said in text that he’s not trying to prove anything, Jace as Batman is frequently written to be a guy who wants his Batman to be more like a activist, to send a message to police, people, and criminals that he isn’t interested in stopping just crimes but also breaking institutional problems around it.
Yep, and that’s even more of a reason why Jace should create his own identity.
I imagine if Ridley had his way he would have had Jace have his own identity in the overall Bat family. But DC at the time were doing the “5G” thing and wanted a Black Batman.
I like both characterizations but I prefer to have a hero like Luke Fox.
They should probably do another Batwing book. It’s not like they’re shy about doing Bat-books. 
Briefly on that: I saw on the CBR forums the other day that someone had counted up the Bat-books in the August solicitations, and there were 38 Bat-tiles and 21 titles for everyone else. I’ll go with what they said because I don’t care enough to count them myself, but that is high even for Batman. 64% is really up there, usually the high mark is in the mid-to-upper 40s, I believe.
But yeah, Luke is still Batwing for the most part, I believe. So they could try out a mini or something, see if it does well, and if does, do another series. And have the two brother’s different approaches be want differentiates the two books.
While I do hate the concept of two Batmen, I highly doubt we will see Jace Fox stop being Batman because of the recent addition of the future state characters to see editorial and writer backstep on the character any time soon.
My best guess is after I am Batman series ends either in Issue 18 or 25 that Jace Fox will continue his time as Batman in a relaunch of the Batman and the outsider title. John Ridley has a pretty good perspective on what the outsiders were all about in other history of the dc universe, and Jace is under the tutelage of Katana to provide a interesting dynamic we hadn’t seen from either character.
A new BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS is something I never thought about.
I suppose they could try that out too in a mini and see how it does.
A few thoughts on the “Future State” characters: of the three, I feel that Yara Flor works the best. And what I mean is in relation to Wonder Woman, to Diana.
Since Yara’s character is Wonder Girl, everything is seamless to me with her. Like marketing-wise, there is no confusion. This is Wonder Woman, and this is Wonder Girl. Simple.
Jon is really tricky to me since they’re calling him Superman. If they had given him another name, then sure, he and his father can easily coexist. This is Superman, and this is… whatever name that they could have come up with for Jon.
Calling them both Superman is like, “Okay, how does this work? Which one is really Superman?”
And I think that’s where we’re in agreement on with Jace and the two Batman’s… Batmen.
Which one is really Batman? Obviously it’s Bruce. So yeah, how long are they going to do this two of them thing?
Going back to your relaunch of the OUTSIDERS idea, this is something I can see too. It would be a bit of a demotion for Jace, going from a solo to a team book, but I could see it.
I’ll of course just go with relaunching Jace into his own solo series. Maybe call it SECOND SON?
You could maybe even relaunch him as the Vigilante.
VIGILANTE: SOUTHLAND was pretty cool, I thought.
The VIGILANTE: SOUTHLAND Vigilante, Donny Fairchild, is in California. The Adrian Chase Vigilante was in New York though, of course. And Jace is already there, so hey…
And I’m kidding about relaunching him as another Vigilante, but relaunching him as something other than a Batman is definitely the way to go, I think.
Otherwise, they’ll be two characters going by Batman. One is the real one, and the other one is “the Black one.” That’s simply unsustainable long term, I think.
If they had gone through with 5G and aged out and phased out Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, and continued to publish them in prestige Black Label series (which was the plan, I believe), then that would be one thing.
But since 5G didn’t happen, you gotta do something different.
And like with everyone else, the inertia of sales will determine what happens with Jace.
I AM BATMAN #1 did about 62,000, according to Comichron. (The ICV2 numbers are behind a paywall, so I’m not sure what those are, but I imagine they’re similar.)
I AM BATMAN #1 did do better than I AM BATMAN #0; that did about 49,000, I think.
62,000 is not good for a #1 of a Bat-book, I don’t believe. But it is good for a solo book with a Black lead character. And traditionally solo books with Black lead characters have never sold well. Not Black Panther, none of them. Ta-Nehisi Coates’ BLACK PANTHER #1 did do 300,000, but that was an anomaly.
At 9 issues in I’m guessing I AM BATMAN is probably in the low 30s/high 20s range. But that’s just a guess; it’s hard to find public DC numbers since DC is no longer with Diamond.
Either way, 24 issues is probably how long this series will run. And of course I could be wrong, but just as a guess.
So another year and a half of me whining about his costume. Oh boy!
But yeah, once the series is over then the fun begins insofar as to what happens next. Please be a relaunch into something other than Batman.
