Batman never dies.

That’s not to say he will live forever. Comparatively speaking, “never dying” is a far more intense proposition. Cheating death, dodging the reaper, time and again–that takes something special. 

One of the many things Grant Morrison’s Batman run is “about” is this idea–that Batman never dies. It’s there in the opening pages of Batman #676 (June 2008), and it’s there in the closing pages of Batman Incorporated #13 (September 2013). 

There’s plenty of ways to “read” that idea, from the beautiful to the profane. Batman never dies because that spirit of justice in the dark can never be allowed to die. Kill a Batman and another rises to take his place. The concept is too powerful. 

Or “Batman” is just an aging container of IP that can never stop but must always somehow stand still. Should this Batman really die, he would take whole corporations with him, revenue, jobs–he’s his own economy. Batman never dies because he can’t; his movies, comic books, video games, TV shows, bath towels and action figures are too lucrative. 

Interpret it as you will; it remains true regardless. Batman never dies. 

I have really fond memories of Grant Morrison’s Batman run, but I lost the thread around the start of Batman, Incorporated. Those early to middle days of the sprawling storyline were heady with speculation and chatter, which felt like part of the point; like Lost, a TV show where the stories that sprang up around it became part of its reason to exist, Morrison’s Batman tale invited deep examination. He had staked a claim on a powerful central idea–all Batman stories are true–and that made it seem as though anything was possible. 

This weekend, I finally caught up with the end of the story, eight years too late, and that concept continues to shine on–in those pages, anything is possible. It all happened. Everything is true.  

(Of course, the only reason everything can be true for Batman is that none of it is true; it’s all stories. This is an imaginary tale…but then again, aren’t they all?) 

Morrison has been exploring the “meta” surrounding comics for decades, since back when he himself peered out from the pages of his Animal Man run. The speculation about his Batman stories–experienced mostly by me online, although I’m sure there were heady conversations that sprung up at plenty of comic shops and convention bar scenes–it all drew inspiration from Morrison’s work but became its own network of references and possibilities, built up around the books, dependant upon them to exist but not to grow. 

It became another way for everything to be true, although Morrison wasn’t so coy as to suggest that every possible theory from a small army of brilliant annotators and speculators was theoretically possible. He put stakes in the ground throughout his saga; beats and ideas from the earliest issues impossibly gained fresh relevance five or six years after their introduction. There’s a plot in the middle of it all, and although it’s rarely a straight line, you can recognize it. 

But it’s not always easy. Later-era Morrison superbooks have this puzzling habit of…missing plot chunks? I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s like every scene that feels like it should explain something starts right after the explanation happened. Answers to unasked questions surface as asides in scenes ostensibly about something else. Villains monologue but only to eloquently overstate their commitment to Morrison’s overarching ideas. 

It’s a feature, not a bug. It’s a form of misdirection, for one thing; it’s amazing the creative twists he can get up to when you’re distracted by a tactical bit of story business. 

It’s also a clever way for Morrison to have his cake and eat it too, which is ultimately the point. While everything may have happened to Batman, only some of it matters.

As a writer, he makes those choices with every panel; as readers, we do too. Within the story itself, Batman has to face this challenge throughout Morrison’s run–almost as though Morrison is the metavillain behind it all, pulling these old tales out of back issue bins and shoving them into Batman’s face. Almost every plot twist, story arc, or new character demands that Batman reach back through his infinite library of case files and uncover some unexpected connection. 

Everything has happened to Batman, and he never dies. But he decides what matters, and he chooses to live. Every time. That’s the animating force of Batman as a superhero and a person, and it’s what brings us back to the character, time and again. He is in a constant state of preparation and reaction, but through it all, he has a center–helping others and protecting his chosen family. This may have started for him with a hole in things, and maybe that hole will always gape in his deepest self. Ultimately, in Morrison’s run, he learns he’s at his best when he’s not focused on that hole in himself but on how he can help others. 

Batman never dies, but we do. We’re dying now, and we will die someday. For us, it’s even more important to choose what matters. That’s our straitjacket, and that’s our open door.