Talk:Batman/@comment-26816098-20160721232410/@comment-26816098-20160724181530

Man, I still feel that Dick oughta let up. Like, Knightfall would take place in 1993-1994 (the year of the comic's release). In that important story arc, Bane breaks Batman's spirit by pushing him to his physical and mental boundaries, then he breaks his body by snapping his back. The now-paraplegic Batman goes through intense rehabilitation and eventually recovers, more or less, but at the cost of a new love, who is driven insane and has to be shut away in a mental institution. Then he discovers that the guy he chose to replace him during this recovery period, Jean-Paul Valley, is terribly unstable and willing to kill. He ousts him after an intense struggle, and the arc ends with him retiring as Batman and passing on the mantle to a former Robin.

If there's any time for Dick Grayson to give up being Batman, it would be at this point - especially because in the FM, he would be past 50 years old in '93. That doesn't mean he has to completely stop any involvement with the Bat Family, but I just can't picture him getting past this point. It even fits quite well with Batman lore. Best of all, it'd be a fitting conclusion to his character arc in the FM: his tenure as Batman goes from the lighthearted fun of the '60s TV show through to the darkness and despair of Killing Joke, Death in the Family, and Knightfall. All the while he goes from being his own superhero to being his own Batman to accepting that it's time to move on.

I will concede that the Joker could easily be a legacy character, and seeing that there have been so many different incarnations and takes on the character, it'd be easy to do in the FM. As we plan out the different eras of Batman, we can pick and choose when to interject the Clown Prince of Crime and which version he should be.

I'm currently researching things we can use for Bruce Wayne's tenure as Batman. We will talk more soon!