Reading Comics #116 "Scott Snyder and Batman and the Joker"

I'll admit that I haven't been reading Scott Snyder's Batman as faithfully as other fans.  I check in every now and again, but the last time I did seriously was with "Night of the Owls," which is now two major crossover arcs and in fact years ago.

But maybe I'm inching closer to it.  I've had a somewhat closer look at the "Death of the Family" arc recently, and I think I'm starting see Snyder's vision of the Dark Knight take shape.

I see influences of past standout stories such as "Hush" and even "Batman R.I.P." hiding just below the surface.  If you remember, "Night of the Owls" ended up with the question of whether or not the lead villain was in fact Bruce Wayne's heretofore unknown lost brother, Thomas Wayne, Jr.  If you remember how "Hush" eventually solved the riddle of Hush's existence, or perhaps simply how Paul Dini later explored it, you may recall the story of Tommy Elliot, who was essentially Bruce Wayne's mirror opposite.  In "R.I.P.," Grant Morrison teased Doctor Hurt's true identity to be Thomas Wayne himself.

Snyder's possible master arc may be bigger than all those combined.

Remember in Tim Burton's Batman when the Joker rebuffs efforts to tangle his and Batman's origins in a tidy "I made you, you made me" bow?  Well, I'm saying maybe, just maybe, that's Scott Snyder's ultimate idea, too.  But in a different way.  In a potentially incredibly awesome way.

Comics tell some of the same stories over and over again.  That's why origin stories are so common.  Some stories are iconic, speak so intrinsically to the character they feature that they're a way of ensuring the future of said character, because it's as much that story as the character that will help develop an iconic status that not just current but future readers will appreciate.  That's how we got Achilles, King Arthur, Robin Hood, Zorro, Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, any of those characters who have survived a number of iterations and have become ingrained in the culture as a result.

Sometimes the story changes.  I'm saying here that perhaps Snyder has one of the biggest revisions ever in mind.  I'm saying, I'm suggesting, that perhaps the end of "Death of the Family" is only the beginning.

I'm saying, what if the Joker is Thomas Wayne, Jr.?

That is, what if the Joker and Batman are brothers?  Can you imagine the story potential in that???  A lot of fans would be upset by such a development.  There's a vocal subset of fans who exist to be upset, of course.  I don't particularly care about them personally.  Sometimes they cause necessary change, but that doesn't mean they're right.  To my, they're necessarily wrong.  They hate something simply because nothing will ever please them.

Anyway, what if that's Snyder's long-term plan?  To my mind, such an idea would instantly catapult him to the very status some fans have given him all along, but he's only scratched at since he first started writing Batman in the pages of Detective Comics.  Very much like a Geoff Johns, he's always been interested in continuity, things he can possibly add or reinterpret.  If he pulls such a trigger, that would be his legacy, no question.  It would be the biggest Joker story ever.  And that's a character who has a number of stories that challenge for the title already.

Just imagine...