BATMAN RIP: Who is Black Glove?

2008 is one big year for DC.

Final Crisis is going to beset fans with whatever its has in store. Evil will apparently triumph over good and several storylines, origins, characters will be revamped or scrapped from continuity.

Not even Superman can save the day this time.

However with this approaching there is one major plot point that has many people wondering, it's a little thing called the death of Batman.

Not a physical death, but a literal one.

Scottish writer Grant Morrison has taken the main role for writing Final Crisis, but is also working on a story by the name of Batman R.I.P.

This summer the Batman the world has known for the last 69 years will cease to exist, with Bruce Wayne no longer dawning the cape and cowl.

Apparently something so tragic is planned for everyone's favourite non-super-powered-super-hero that he will give up his life's work.

Nightwing, the Red Hood (Jason Todd), Tim Drake and even Hush are pipped to replace Wayne and take up the mantle of Batman.

A new villain, Black Glove, is behind one of the most elaborate schemes to destroy Batman. He/she knows who Batman is, what drove Bruce Wayne to be Batman and everyone of his dark secrets.

The rumour mill has been in overdrive and message boards have been set alight with speculation about the identity of Black Glove.

Many have suggested that it is Alfred, others have even said it could possibly be Thomas Wayne (Bruce's supposedly dead father) and some have even said it to be Bruce Wayne himself. These are the very hard-to-imagine scenarios.

However after recent revelations, which may or may not be true, Batman's entire origin maybe a sham and one of the above situations could be highly plausible.

In a recent issue Commissioner Gordon is trying to convince a local newspaper not to publish a story about a dossier that came into a journalist's possession. The dossier was supposedly compiled by a private detective, hired by Martha Wayne's parents to investigate her and her husband's murder.

What it reveals is that Alfred Pennyworth is Bruce's biological father, Thomas Wayne was an alcoholic who got his wife addicted to heroin and it contains several photographs of an orgy involving Martha, Thomas and Alfred a long with the cast of a noir film by the name the Black Glove.

As if this wasn't shocking enough the editor also explains to Gordon that Thomas Wayne may still be alive and that the murder of his wife was part of a convoluted plan to get rid of her and fake his own death.

So, with that, the idea of Thomas or Alfred being the Black Glove may not be so hard to imagine after all. Given that off course the dossier is true and not a ruse.

The other suggestion is Bruce Wayne and that he has developed an evil split persona, named the Black Glove and is trying to sabotage himself.

There is no other character out there more pshycologically tortured than Bruce Wayne. Maybe, as Aaron Eckhart puts in the recent Dark Knight Trailer, he's lived long enough to see himself become the villain.

Or perhaps Alfred is acting under orders from Bruce's new evil persona ? Who knows.

At the climax of the latest issue however, Batman was drugged and fighting for his life in the Batcave. Just as the villains were about to storm his lair and before he passed out, the dark knight asked the Batcomputer to analyse everything it knew about The Black Glove. Its result concluded that the Black Glove was Zur-En-Arrh.

Zur-En-Arrh has only been mentioned in Batman # 113 way back in 1958. In that issue Batman is brought to Zur-En-Arrh by the planet's resident Batman to help him fight evil robots. The interesting thing is that Batman found he had "Superman-like" powers whilst he was on Zur-En-Arrh.

Zur-En-Arrh has appeared throughout Morrison's run as graffiti and hallucinations.

Well considering that Final Crisis and the Batman RIP arcs are supposed to interlink, it could mean anything and I'm not going to speculate to much on it....but there will be a definite link between Batman#113, Bruce Wayne's fate and whatever Final Crisis has in store for the DC Universe.

Feasibly the Batman from, Zur-En-Arrh is acting as Simon Hurt?

So your Monday questions of the day are: What are you looking forward to Final Crisis? What do you think will happen to Bruce Wayne? And what's your theory about the idenity of Black Glove?