An hour can feel eternal when you’re eleven. In June 1989, we waited at least that long outside the movie theater — maybe two or three hours even — but I don’t remember the wait being unbearable. Time stood still as I lost myself in the glossy images of the promotional catalog we got with our sneak-preview tickets.

“Bat-Mania” hadn’t hit yet, but I could see it coming. The catalog showcased an avalanche of Batman merchandise: action figures, vehicles, and playsets for kids; watches, jackets, and lycra biking shorts for grown-ups. There were even lithographs signed by Bob Kane going for a couple hundred bucks each.

I had been a fan of Batman ever since I could remember, and thanks to the 1966 TV show, my Batman had always been Adam West, whether in live-action, the Superfriends cartoon, or Scooby-Doo crossovers. He was always the same — blue cape, gray tights, Robin at his side, always quick to exclaim “Holy (blank), Batman!”

I had no idea Batman had other incarnations. The 1940s serials, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns — all unknown to me. So, when we finally took our seats and the first notes of Danny Elfman’s epic score filled the theater, I wasn’t prepared. I had never imagined a Gotham where the sun barely shone, a Joker who actually killed people. And this Batman? He was something else entirely — black rubber instead of gray spandex and blue nylon, grim instead of ironic, socially awkward instead of effortlessly suave.

Superheroes rarely grow with us. We see them experience love, loss, and even death only for the next writer in the series to erase it all, as if it never happened. The superhero industry abhors endings. For sales to stay steady, heroes and villains alike must never retire, resistant to aging, change, and mortality.

Sure, Dick Grayson grew up from Robin the Boy Wonder, renamed himself Nightwing, and struck out on his own. But Bruce Wayne? He’s been Batman longer than any monarch ever held a throne, longer than the longest-serving police officer ever walked a beat. His stories shift with the times — more light-hearted or more brutal, a symbol of heroism or a man teetering on the edge of darkness. Yet, no matter how much the world changes around him, Bruce Wayne remains encased in amber, still the same Batman who first appeared in Detective Comics #27 on March 30, 1939.

So many fans of the character love Batman for the fact that he doesn’t possess any supernatural powers. He’s no alien, mutant, or magical creature. Like Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood, or Zorro, he overcomes his opponents with training, strategy, and ingenuity, making him more of an aspirational figure than a demigod. 

Yet, if he were truly bound by the same rules as other mortals, wouldn’t he have hung up the cape and cowl after 20 years? Maybe 30? Certainly no more than 50 — which just happened to be how long his comics had been published when I saw him portrayed by Michael Keaton in 1989.

But what if he did retire? What if every time the audience witnessed a new embodiment of Batman, it represented the mantle actually being passed on to a new generation? Anyone could be under that mask, couldn’t they? Would the people of Gotham City even know?

And what would it be like for a person to be next in line to that decades-long legacy, someone who grew up in a world where that same superhero had protected the city in the time of their parents and grandparents? Who would be chosen and how?

This story, Legacy of the Crimson Wraith, is my answer to those questions. 

 — J. Griffin Hughes, 2025