pre-dawn thoughts of EEEEEEE

[buggery]

So I was looking over my icon set, with thoughts towards making room for new icons, and got to thinking about this one. (Picture me pointing at the icon.)

The Wall of Sidekick Doom. (TM Te, I think?) It's such a very, very Bruce thing to do. His life is a monumemt to the people he's lost, and he likes to surround himself with reminders of that fact. (His parents, of course, but all the mementoes of them are up in the house proper, their memory unsullied by the things the Batman has to do. But the others...) Whether his former partners died or retired, Batman lost them just the same. All of the people who worked closely with him, if we look at the Bruce/Batman at the beginning of Batman Beyond.

Which brings me to...

Alfred.

We've never seen a suggestion to this effect in canon (or I haven't, though with a canon as vast as the DCU's I could always be mistaken), but somehow I wouldn't be surprised if, after Alfred eventually passes, Bruce installs a new case in the Cave with one of Alfred's butler-tuxes in it. Maybe a silver platter, too.

Alfred knowing Bruce the way he does, of course, he may have provisions in his will to pre-empt just that sort of Battishness. "Really, Master Bruce, I should think a modest portrait to be hung in the Manor would be much more decorous..."

People who were reading around the time of the "Death of Superman" arc (I can't remember exactly where it fell in regard to Gotham titles' issue numbers, aside from a vague recollection of Tim sporting a black armband in some of the early Robin issues) -- did we get to see at any point whether Bruce had one of Big Blue's costumes in the Cave? Something for him to brood in front of and/or obsess over a la the scrap of cape in (JL's) "Hereafter"...?

And now dawn has come: grey, foggy, Gothammy.

Comments

[laurab1.livejournal.com]

Re "Death of Superman" arc fitting into Batverse, that arc and "Knightfall" ran at about the same time. I think Bruce must have broken his back either during "Funeral for a Friend" (2nd part of the arc, available as a TP as "World Without A Superman") or "Return of Superman".

The only thing that Bruce seems to have to brood over is A PIECE OF KRYPTONITE (Lex's ring?), that Clark gave him so he could be stopped if necessary (see also "The Trust", at the end of Alex Ross' "Mythology"). There are various bits of Batfamily angst in "World Without A Superman". I'll deal you the crack on scans_daily.

[buggery.livejournal.com]

Clearly, somebody needs to write a story (or storyline, a la GK #43) which includes a flashback to Bruce down in the Cave's bowels, obsessing over *something* of Clark's when he was dead.

Thanks for linking the Batman and Superman chronologies for that period, and the reminder about the kryptonite (I love that Alex Ross story).

I'll deal you the crack on scans_daily.

You're my hero.

[some-stars.livejournal.com]

awwwwwww alfred. a modest portrait. SNIFFLE.

*loves alfred*

and you just KNOW that batman would keep the entire JLA in little glass boxes if he could get away with it...

[buggery.livejournal.com]

I love Alfred. I'd want him to be my mother if my own wasn't so cool.

Didn't ABW Bruce keep the rest of the Lords in little glass boxes at the end of the ep? Or was that just in the fanfic? Heh. This is the problem with not actually seeing the show myself...

[hradzka.livejournal.com]

Your assignment is to write a genfic involving Alfred sitting for his portrait.

My work is done here...

[buggery.livejournal.com]

::snort::

Hm. Maybe. I don't know what there would be to have happen, in a story like that. Two people sitting in silence for hours on end is not the stuff of great drama.

Maybe YOU should write it.

[hradzka.livejournal.com]

Arg. But I have so many *other* things to write.

[badficwriter.livejournal.com]

Gak. This is the problem of reading only fanon, but I've gotten the impression Alfred doesn't really approve of the Batman thing?

If this were so, surely he would be actively annoyed at an impression of post-humous approval of the Batcave, rather than the grudging aid he currently gives.

He might, like, haunt Bruce. In a butler-ly fashion of 'this is not appropriate, Master Bruce!' :)