I CALLED IT.

Yes, Comicgasm readers, I called it months ago. When Batman comes back from his time-hopping adventures in Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne, I figured that they weren’t going to let Dick Grayson go back to the Nightwing identity that easily. No, I said. A lot of readers have already warmed up to Dick Grayson as Batman, so he was going to stay on as The Dark Knight.

Okay, so I never really wrote my little theory on this blog, and I was hoping for a Batman Beyond kind of dynamic – Dick running around as Batman while Bruce coaches him and feeds him information from the Batcave. I never expected that Grant Morrison would throw a curveball and give us Batman Inc. – a series where the newly-returned Bruce Wayne builds a Starbucks-like franchise of Batmen.

I guess everyone who’s been following the saga of Morrison’s Batman figured out that we’d be getting multiple Batmen the moment Batman Inc. was announced, but the story in The New York Post just made it official:

In fact, two might not be enough either, DC publisher Dan DiDio said.

"Bruce Wayne realizes that he can’t just be the grim avenger he was before," DiDio said. "He wants to be more aggressive in his reach, and realizes the change that Batman as a symbol can effect around the world."

In the new title, "Batman Inc.," Wayne does what any billionaire would: build a Starbucks-style franchise of Dark Knights.

"Without giving too much away here, we wanted to show how Batman can have a global influence," he said.

You know what? I don’t mind having more than one Batman running around the world. That’s cool. That’s a new idea that hasn’t been explored in canon before. I’m just glad they’re keeping Damian “I’m a badass motherfucker” Wayne as Robin.

Now that the Nightwing costume is going to be empty for at least another year, can we have Cassandra Cain as a female Nightwing please? (Fuck Chris Kent as Nightwing, really – the Nightwing identity belongs to the Bat-verse)

What do you think?

[via Cocoy]