You misspelled ‘Commissioner’ on the poll.

Who the hell is Harper Row?

Stephanie Brown

Stephanie Brown. DC will bring her back just to kill her. That’s how they roll. Grr.

Titus

They could always play it that the Joker kills Batgirl, as happened before with Babs, in a way that leaves her, Stephanie or Cassie alive but unable to continue in the role.

Let’s see… They’ve already killed off Jason Todd once and went through a bunch of retcons just to get him back, can’t kill off Red Robin since he belongs to another writer who has him as the star of his book right now, I seriously doubt DC would ever let Dick Grayson die in a street level story like this (not to say they’ll never kill him off, it’ll just happen in a story with cosmic level threats so they can pull something like they did with Bruce to get him back), after the controversy of bringing Barbara back to full health and the charges of misogyny leveled at them since the reboot they’d never be dumb enough to kill her off, Harley Quinn is not really part of the Bat family and she’s got to many cosplay fans, Catwoman falls under the same rule Nightwing does, and nobody knows nor gives a fuck about Harper Row.

This leaves only two likely options, Alfred and Gordon. Gordon is a tenuous “Family” member at best, meanwhile Alfred I’d say is definitely part of the Family and has started to become a bit of an Aunt May character, one the writers aren’t sure what to do with and plus he’s really old – killing him resonates with the reader because he is important and has been in the books enough that we’ve formed a bond with him the way Bruce has, but it’s not that huge a loss to the books since there’s not much to do with him anyways. Killing him off at the hands of the Joker allows him to fill the void left when Jason Todd came back, plus you can have those touching scenes in the years to come when Bruce and the gang wistfully remember some of the brighter moments they had with ol’Alfy.

Look for DC to pull an Amazing Spider-man #400 in the coming months – knowing Scott Snyder, he could pull it off with the same grace and respect DeMatteis did for Aunt May.

And Stephanie Brown isn’t even on the list, you putzes! We get it, you’re miffed they did away with her book, but you’re not being witty, you just come off as snarky. There’s a difference.

I’m pretty sure that you’re the one who’s mastered ‘snarky’, Anonymous.

Well, I’d be very surprised if it were anyone with their own comic. Is Tim still even acquainted with Batman? They can’t seem to make up their mind about him from month to month.

I figured it’d be Tim. Why are there so many Robins running around?

I echo Michael P…. who the hell is Harper Row?

I voted for Damian, since I figure nobody likes him, and that they don’t feel the need to appease Grant Morrison since he’s not doing superhero comics any more.

To Ken Raining and Michael P.,
Harper Row is a new character introduced in Snyder’s Batman run, during the Court of Owls story. Batman #12 was devoted to her story, a heartfelt tale of her and her brother drawn by Becky Cloonan. Snyder has said on Twitter that she will return after Death of the Family.

It will be the Commissioner because DC hates me.

I hate to say this, but Tim Drake.

If it were up to me, it would be Red Hood, just to troll the readership.

Robin, He is the heart of the Morrison era now that has ended it makes sense to see him go. Other wise The joker gets batter to death by jason

I don’t understand why we’re all pretending that we don’t know it’s going to be Batman Jones.

Anything Synder does that throws a wrench into that hack Morrison’s works will be excellent.

That reminds me, I really need to get around to grinding that axe.

I’ve read Batman 13 and 14, and while this might be spoilery, I think it’s vague enough it won’t give anything away but…

What’s Snyder gonna do when he’s out of Morrison stories to rewrite?

Boom, I went there!

Seriously, though, I’m starting to agree with our friend T. The more and more victims the Joker racks up, the more and more absurd the stories get, and Batman starts looking like a dink for not choosing a more permanent solution to the Joker problem.

It’ either be someone no-one cares about

or someone who will be back after a year or two…no significant established character remains dead

I’m starting to agree with T and Travis as well. It’s getting to the point where every writer feels like they need to have Joker kill even more people than before, because otherwise he’s boring or something. So you end up with Batman 13 and 14 where Joker has already killed somewhere in the range of 75 people. At this point, even if Batman or Robin or someone didn’t kill him, some random citizen would pull a Jack Ruby when they Joker is arrested. This is a guy that has escaped from custody numerous times and every time he does dozens, if not hundreds, of people die. There would be riots in the streets at this point. I used to think these complaints were a little too nit-picky, but it’s getting to the point where I can’t keep suspending my disbelief on the matter.

What would be truly interesting is if someone wrote a good story where Joker just went back to robbing banks or something. Write an interesting Joker story where he doesn’t kill anyone. I have to think it can be done. I’d like to see that.