I’m interested to hear your thoughts once you’ve finished the arc. (And don’t leave out the Batman Annual that rewrites Mr. Freeze’s backstory!)
Yes, it was. (Hence why I’ve moved the conversation to that thread.) This story is heavily influenced by the original 1970s Thomas Wayne Jr. arc:
As this article indicates, Grant Morrison was already hinting that he might bring the character back into mainstream continuity. And here’s where you’re going to accuse me of being wildly inconsistent, because I wouldn’t have minded MORRISON doing it. Why? Because Morrison and Snyder were doing two very different things in their respective runs:
- Morrison’s run was all about declaring everything in Batman’s history, no matter how absurd or obscure, as canon. He leaned into the ridiculous nature of the character and his universe. By his second issue, he had Batman fighting ninja man-bats in a room full of onomatopoeia-covered pop art, a re-canonization of the twist ending of Son of the Demon, and a flashback to Bruce’s Aunt Agatha from a forgotten 1955 Batman issue. A long-lost brother would feel no more out of place in Morrison’s version than Bat-Mite did.
- Snyder’s run starts off feeling very much like Batman: The Animated Series meets Se7en. His previous work on Detective Comics had echoed Year One not only in story, but in style and tone. The vibe from the start was dark, gritty, and downright gruesome. It’s all too self-serious for such a silly concept as Thomas Wayne Junior. On top of that, Snyder was writing a reboot of the universe. It’s like the polar opposite of Morrison’s “everything counts” approach, since (at least in theory) nothing counts anymore unless Snyder says so. So why oh why did he decide that one of the most ridiculous bits of Bronze Age canon needed to be in this streamlined, new-reader-friendly universe?! Leave that nonsense to Grant.