This June, Batman got down on one knee and popped the question to Catwoman, but we never got her answer. Since then, DC’s flagship Batman series has been teasing readers with the uncertainty, and today, we finally know the answer.
At San Diego Comic-Con, series writer Tom King promised we’d find out in Batman #32 — even as he described the the globe-trotting, emotional and violent new story that will begin in Batman #33. Batman #32 doesn’t hit shelves until tomorrow, but if you’ve really got to know right now, USA Today has the early reveal.
[Warning: The following contains spoilers for Batman #32.]
The reason we haven’t heard Selina Kyle’s answer to Bruce’s proposal is that he’s spent the last eight issues telling her the story of a rivalry between the Joker and the Riddler that grew into a massive, deadly gang war between all of Gotham’s super-powered criminals. At the end of this “War of Jokes and Riddles,” Batman did … something. Something he considered to be so morally reprehensible that he wants Selina to know about it before she decides whether she can marry him.
USA Today didn’t reveal what he did, but it did show us how Selina reacted:
For now, Selina’s answer is just between the two of them, but social news of that magnitude is going to hit the winder superhero community sooner or later — not to mention the rest of Batman’s family.
“Some people are going to think, ‘Oh, my gosh, he’s gone insane, we need to fix him,’” King told USA Today. “And others will go, ‘He’s gone sane. We finally have a Batman we’ve been looking for.’
“Most superheroes, you make them happy and you end conflict — you give Spider-Man a wife and where do you go from there? But Batman’s the opposite: You give him happiness and you create conflict, because he’s fundamentally a sad character.”
What new conflict are we going to be looking at in Batman #33’s new story arc, A Dream of Me?
“In his mind he’s entered someplace he’s never gone,” King said of A Dream of Me at San Diego Comic-Con this summer, “and now he’s going to go off on a mission that’s completely illegal … He’s doing it on his own because he hit that emotional breaking point, or happy point, [so] that he has to move on with this.”
That mission will shock his colleagues in the Justice League, as well as his children, adopted and otherwise. Has he gone crazy, or is he finally healing?
“And because this is comics,” King joked at Comic-Con, “the way they try to determine that is to punch him in the face.”