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    Batman

    Character » Batman appears in 23535 issues.

    Bruce Wayne, who witnessed the murder of his billionaire parents as a child, swore to avenge their deaths. He trained extensively to achieve mental and physical perfection, mastering martial arts, detective skills, and criminal psychology. Costumed as a bat to prey on the fears of criminals, and utilizing a high-tech arsenal, he became the legendary Batman.

    The Court of Owls – How DC spoils themselves

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    Battlepig

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    Edited By Battlepig
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    Right, for all those who have not yet read Batman #10, here’s a fair warning. I will not warn you again, so here it is: Everything from here on out is spoiler territory.

    This week sees some of the biggest, shocking moments of the Batman of the New Fifty-Two. Talon turns out to be some sort of mash-up between Hush and an owl and manages to make Thomas and Martha Wayne not the paragons of virtue they were previously believed to be. They’ve now had a handicapped or mentally insane child they’ve dumped at an asylum. Or maybe not. As Scott Snyder has said, they’re not entirely sure if he really is Thomas Wayne Junior or not.

    Anyway, the presumably last Talon and Batman are duking it out. Their big, final climactic battle. How will it end? And here’s where DC has made a mistake. Remember back when they didn’t announce the New Fifty-Two? Suddenly, the solicitations stopped. Nobody knew anything. And even when people inquired, DC didn’t give definitive statements. So for a month or so, the comic book fans were in the dark. Was the lack of solicitations a glitch? Something they oversaw? Or were they really going to reboot everything? Could they reboot everything? Remember that excitement?

    That proves that it’s possible that DC can have something exciting coming up without telling us that it’s coming up. And let’s look at the possible endings of the Court of Owls, without even getting into the slow decline of the story from the possibility of there being a massive conspiracy that has some hidden agenda but also might only exist in Batman’s mind to them being a group of people who have zombies that must be punched in the face. Here’s what we know.

    Neither Batman nor Talon will die.

    This leads me to the conclusion that either Batman will say one of the two sentences that follow: “Go free, Talon. Find your destiny.” Or “Damn you, Talon, you have escaped!” How do I know this? Simple, I’ve had a look at the solicitations. This is what I’ve discovered.

    No Caption Provided

    TALON - Writer James Tynion IV with co-plotter Scott Snyder. Artist: Guillem March.

    Meet Calvin Rose, the only Talon to ever escape the grasp of the Court of Owls. This former assassin of the Court is trying to live a normal life ... but that’s impossible when he’s being hunted by his former masters!

    To have an ongoing comic book, you need a lead character who is alive and somewhat free of baggage. Having Thomas Wayne Jr. no longer be burdened with that name and having done away with the Lincoln March alias would be just that. We’ve all read comic books before. We know how this works, right? So why pitch this book to us? It’s not like we know who Talon is just yet, thus we don’t really care about him up until now. We don’t care about him as a person, we care about the Court of Owls. Their entire point up until now was that we didn’t know who or what they were. So now we’re getting an ongoing book about someone we don’t know who or what he is yet. Now, I’m not against the Talon book existing. It might even be good, even though I can see it being marketed as the Dark Avenger route, where Talon is fighting the good fight, uncovering bits and pieces of his past while being more brutal than Batman and probably a bit more insane.

    Couldn’t they just have announced Talon’s solo-book next week? Would that have hurt them so much?

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    ThanosIsMad

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    #1  Edited By ThanosIsMad

    You know, it's still possible that Calvin Rose is just an off-screen Talon who gets a solo book. As clearly depicted, Lincoln March isn't exactly trying to lead a normal life.

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    Lamenoire

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    #2  Edited By Lamenoire

    Lincoln is the new Owlman.

    Calvin Rose is a Talon who fled the court of owls 5 years ago

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    batshrine

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    #3  Edited By batshrine

    Ya, read some news before you go on assuming. But otherwise, valid concerns!

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    Battlepig

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    #4  Edited By Battlepig

    @ThanosIsMad said:

    You know, it's still possible that Calvin Rose is just an off-screen Talon who gets a solo book. As clearly depicted, Lincoln March isn't exactly trying to lead a normal life.

    That would be rather lame, wouldn't it? "Oh here's yet another Talon" kind of seems very un-Snyder-ish, given the thing he's built around the Court (which has evolved into a generic "I'll punch everyone and their zombies in the face"-finale). So there are bound to be some ties to the characters we've already met, I'd say. Besides, if Batman et al manage to kill off all the Talons, the fact that there's one more running around is just more ridiculous. And, mind you, Snyder is paying attention to ridiculousness. He has made Thomas Wayne the younger brother as opposed to the older brother he was before Flashpoint because it would have been too silly for there to have been an older brother around and Bruce would surely remember that.

    @batshrine said:

    Ya, read some news before you go on assuming. But otherwise, valid concerns!

    It's not the concern itself that plagues me. Or the fact that they're going for a Talon solo-book. The two things that irk me are these:

    1. It's yet another Batman book. Given Batman, Detective Comics, Nightwing, Catwoman, The Red Hood and the Outlaws, Batman: The Dark Knight, Batman and Robin, Batgirl, Batwoman, Batwing, Birds of Prey and now also Talon, this is the twelfth Bat-book in the New Fifty-Two. That equals 23.07 percent of all DC's ongoings. That's a bit too much, I'd say and it's going into the same direction we had before the New Fifty-Two. They're already neglecting more B-Listers in favour of throwing more A-Listers at us.
    2. Couldn't they have waited with announcing Talon until, say, Night of the Owls was over? I mean, really, it's a couple months until then and we managed to still know that there was a DC Comics when they didn't tell us anything back when Flashpoint happened. I liked that, really. It had the grand sense of adventure, of mystery of excitement to it. So why wreck that just to spoil a story? Why not go "Oh, yeah, Voodoo will be axed, but there is a new book replacing it. Which book? Just hang on for a bit, we'll let you know soon."
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    Lamenoire

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    #5  Edited By Lamenoire

    @Battlepig: Calvin Rose escaped 5 years ago. so he isn't one of the Talons the Court can use. he isn't a talon that Batman didn't notice while he was kicking their ass.

    The only thing DC has spoiled is that the Court of Owls will remain a threat. But then again that was pretty obvious : you can't spend 11 issue to develop something to put it in the graveyard and never touch it again.

    And the fact that the Court has worked secretly all this years proves it is a powerfull organisation. So taking it down once and for all would be rather difficult.

    And by the way, Night of the Owls is over (that was in every batbook during May).

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