The Return of Bruce Wayne in April!

[Silvercrest]

JacksonArcher wrote:

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I wonder who stayed dead longer, Batman or Superman...

Heh... the "Return of Superman" arc was published over about six months, but if you watch the timeline while reading it, it appears that less than two weeks pass between his funeral and his reappearance on the docks in Metropolis.

"How can we miss you if you never leave?!"

Although I'm not sure how much time passed between his death and his funeral.

[Admiral_Young]

Bruce was never dead though...it's been made clear several times that he was lost in time after being shot by Darkseid's Omega Sanction in the finale of Final Crisis. Superman actually has died and was gone maybe six or seven months? I can't remember the exact length of time before he was brought back but it was a significant period of time.

I was watching the documentary on Superman/Doomsday and Jennette Khan says something to the affect that it was a week or so after his death that they had his funeral. I could be wrong on this but I'm pretty sure that is what she says.

[Christopher]

Admiral_Young wrote:

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Bruce was never dead though...it's been made clear several times that he was lost in time after being shot by Darkseid's Omega Sanction in the finale of Final Crisis. Superman actually has died and was gone maybe six or seven months?

Superman didn't actually die, he was just in a very deep coma that was mistaken for death and was artificially prolonged when he was entombed and deprived of the healing power of yellow sunlight.

[Allyn Gibson]

Christopher wrote:

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Superman didn't actually die, he was just in a very deep coma that was mistaken for death and was artificially prolonged when he was entombed and deprived of the healing power of yellow sunlight.

Actually, the Kryptonian regeneration chamber he was placed in hastened his revival. Yes, Superman would have revived eventually if exposed to sunlight, but it wouldn't have been concentrated as it was in the regen chamber.

Connor was placed in the same chamber after Infinite Crisis, and it took him a thousand years to regenerate, because his cells aren't fully Kryptonian. (See Legion of Three Worlds.)

Also, Blackest Night makes it clear that, yes, Superman was dead. Not a coma.

[Christopher]

^If he would've revived eventually on his own when exposed to sunlight, then he didn't die, regardless of later retcons. If you can recover from it through your own natural healing processes, then by definition it isn't death. Except maybe in the most technical, clinical sense, as in a case where a human's heart stops for, like, 20 seconds and then restarts on its own.

[coolghoul]

Allyn Gibson wrote:

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To be fair, that's true. For what the book is, it works.

I'm having a difficult time wrapping my mind around the idea that Steph is old enough to be in college. It's only two or three months ago, DCU time, that she and Tim were still in high school, and Tim's only about sixteen.

It's not inconceivable that Steph is college aged. I'm just having a hard time buying that.

Again, I have a specific vision of Steph, and Batgirl isn't it. So long as the book entertains me, I'm in. I do like the character, and I have since way back when. It's nice to see her getting some respect.

To be fair, I didn't make that comment about Batgirl, Torg did. I think the quote button sometimes goofs up - I've had occasions where text is mysteriously absent when I click the quote button to reply.

I myself haven't read recent Batgirl as yet - I have read some of the early issues of Batgirl (Cassandra Cain) and quite liked the character. I am told that bad things happened after. I was surprised that I warmed up to Cassandra Cain. I can be a little bit of a purist - when I came to know about somebody other than Babs Gordon being in the Batfamily (I have very rarely read about Kathy Kane), I was opposed to it on principle. Dick as Batman doesn't really qualify tho' - If anybody has the right, he does.

Similarly I never quite liked reading about Conner Kent (the new Superboy) - and also hated Superboy being limited to the evil earth-prime version. Oh well...

[Allyn Gibson]

I would liken it more to a car battery's death.

Superman was a living solar battery. He expended all of his stored reserves defeating Doomsday. Powerless, he died.

The regen chamber jumpstarted Superman by exposing his cells to solar radiation.

How long would it have taken if he hadn't been placed in the regen chamber? No idea. We may find out, since there's been a death on New Krypton. Or it's possible that the idea that Kryptonians will regenerate if exposed to yellow solar radiation will go away as a post-Infinite Crisis thing.

And I'm not seeing the "retcon," Christopher. The regen chamber was from the original Return of Superman storyline. What it did was explained in that storyline. It didn't magically appear in a later story. Maybe Nekron's statement that he prevented permadeaths in Blackest Night #5 counts as a retcon, but it doesn't retroactively rewrite the past. You could argue that it's a retcon in the sense that it's a continuity implant, but by that argument a whole lot of stories count as retcons, like your own Ex Machina or The Buried Age, and I don't think anyone, least of all you, would ascribe the term "retcon" to describe them.

[Admiral_Young]

Allyn Gibson already made the point I was going to make...

[Christopher]

Allyn Gibson wrote:

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I would liken it more to a car battery's death.

Superman was a living solar battery. He expended all of his stored reserves defeating Doomsday. Powerless, he died.

The regen chamber jumpstarted Superman by exposing his cells to solar radiation.

But with a battery, that's a strictly metaphorical death, since it wasn't alive to begin with. What we're talking about here is the literal death of a biological organism, which is what Kal-El is.

How long would it have taken if he hadn't been placed in the regen chamber? No idea.

Beside the point. If he could've recovered on his own at all, then he wasn't dead, by any meaningful definition of biological death. Death isn't a matter of degree. It's binary. Either you're dead or you're not.

And I'm not seeing the "retcon," Christopher. The regen chamber was from the original Return of Superman storyline.

I'm not talking about the regen chamber. You said yourself that it only helped the recovery he would've made anyway. What I'm saying is, the way it was defined at the time the story was written, Superman wasn't really dead, just believed dead. If Blackest Night is now claiming that he actually did die, that's a retcon.

[Allyn Gibson]

At this point, Christopher, we're arguing definitions. You don't agree with my definition. I don't agree with yours. Because I don't agree with yours, I don't view Blackest Night as any sort of retcon. Because you don't agree with mine, Blackest Night is absolutely a retcon. In this instance, we'll have no meaningful meeting of the minds, so I see no reason to pursue a conversation with you about Superman's death.

[Christopher]

All I can say is, if your definition of "death" encompasses conditions from which one can recover without miraculous intervention, then you're in for a world of disappointment, or else are going to spend a lot of money on unnecessary funerals.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ That reminds me, how the hell is the DC Universe going to recover from Blackest Night? I'm assuming here that it will not be possible for Black Lanterns to become normal, living beings again (Since they are, in the most literal sense of the word, dead).

[Broccoli]

Christopher wrote:

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^If he would've revived eventually on his own when exposed to sunlight, then he didn't die, regardless of later retcons. If you can recover from it through your own natural healing processes, then by definition it isn't death. Except maybe in the most technical, clinical sense, as in a case where a human's heart stops for, like, 20 seconds and then restarts on its own.

For all intents, Superman was dead. Very dead. It was made explicitly clear in the Death/Funeral/Return storyarc that he was dead. Later DC even used the fact that he was dead as a partial explanation on how other heroes were able to come back from the dead (it was something like his returning opened the door from the other side or some such).

I don't know if this was retconed, but as far as I am concerned and the original tale gave us, Superman was dead.

[Mr Light]

There's also the fact that in Adv Supe #500 Papa Kent saw his son's soul in the afterlife being taken away. Hey, wouldn't it be cool if that creepy death figure guy taking away Clark turned out to be Nekron?!?!

[Christopher]

Torg wrote:

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For all intents, Superman was dead. Very dead. It was made explicitly clear in the Death/Funeral/Return storyarc that he was dead.

I'm sorry, but if that story also established that he would have regenerated on his own so long as he got sunlight, then that's just not compatible with saying he was dead. If the intent of the story was that he was decidedly dead, then the story should not have claimed he would eventually recover on his own, because anything you can recover from is, by definition, not death.

So it sounds like the original story was trying to have it both ways, and I don't buy that. It's sloppy writing. And actions speak louder than words. No matter how many times the story said he was dead, if the same story also established that he was capable of recovering on his own, then he wasn't truly dead. And if he was truly dead, then he shouldn't have been capable of recovering on his own. It's as simple as that. The very definition of mortality is that it is not spontaneously reversible.