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his life around. "There’s only one person in the world that can decide what I’m going to do" Grayson says without irony to a still-dejected Wayne.

The reporter then interviews a frail Barbara Gordon, who was the attending nurse at Wayne’s deathbed, and Pennyworth hears the tale of Wayne’s final moments: Bitter, intense, defeated, this Bruce Wayne returns to his ancestral home of Wayne Manor where he lives out his days friendless and alone. He’s chased away his friends; he’s isolated himself. Until we witness, on his deathbed, Wayne’s final thoughts. They play out before us... the death of his parents, from his point of view: The thief with the gun has it pointed at Dr. Wayne; the guy with the base ball bat has got Martha’s pearls in one hand and the raised bat in the other. "C’mon, lady, give it up. How much is it worth?" She tries to wriggle away as the other guy says, "Oh, a man’s life, I suppose," and shoots them both. We understand that the "Bat... man..." Wayne calls for as he dies is not the superhero we know but a warning to the man who killed his mother that he is coming to the afterlife for his vengeance he was denied on this earth. The reporter, who we see clearly now, runs his hand through his hair to straighten an errant curl that’s fallen across his brow. He straightens his glasses and puts it all into perspective for us. "He had everything, Wayne did, except the one thing he could buy... peace." "He’s at peace, now, Mr. Pennyworth," says the nurse. "Call me Clark," says the reporter, and the reader will hopefully enjoy this payoff so much that they’ll want to see us do the story of baby Kal-El raised by Alfred Pennyworth.... Sounds cool, huh? Well, I wrote this up and Charlie did up his sketches and we showed it to Mike Carlin (or maybe Bob Schreck, I forget), and you know what he said? "Yeah, thanks; we’re not looking to fill up on any more Batman Elseworlds right now. Always best to ask before investing so much time and work." So, you see? There’s really nowhere else to go with something like this. You can’t do it as a Moon Knight story, say, since it’s so heavily invested in the Bat-family… and even the play on words of the title isn’t going to work with any other grim-avenger-of-the-night character you can come up with on your own. So all that work goes nowhere, and for nothing. Which is the real reason that no other non-Marvel publisher isn’t going to have to "survive the mountain that’s about to fall on them" because that Mighty Marvel Mountain of Manuscripts isn’t going to fall. A really well- +++++

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