Batman Beyond #50 just struck a major blow against old man Bruce Wayne, and it could change his role with the Bat-Family forever.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Batman Beyond #50, by Dan Jurgens, Sean Chen, Sean Parsons, Chris Sotomayor and Travis Lanham, on sale now.
With Batman Beyond #50 ending the current run for the character, one of the future hero’s first cartoon villains, Inque, comes back for one last fight. She’s desperate to find a stabilization cube from Bruce Wayne’s lair in order to save her body from decaying. However, she impersonated Batman Beyond as part of this, which puts the future Dark Knight and Wonder Woman from Justice League Beyond on the case.
While Diana focuses on her bigger goal — recruiting Terry McGinnis– this issue also changes Bruce Wayne’s life forever as he suffered yet another heart attack.
In the pilot for Batman Beyond, Bruce had a heart attack in battle, which is why he had to retire. It caused him to even pull a gun on an enemy and since then, he’s been careful about his health as he mentored Terry to become the new Dark Knight. And when Inque attacks him and Matt (Terry’s brother) in this issue, Bruce suffers cardiac arrest again. But this time, it’s not something he can easily walk away from.
As Diana and Terry battle Inque, Bruce is in surgery, fighting for his life as the operation to implant an artificial heart isn’t going according to plan. In fact, Bruce comes quite close to dying, with the aged hero even seeming like he’s about to flatline. Thankfully, he doesn’t, and he’s well on the path to recovery by the time Terry and Diana put Inque away. While this gives the Beyond team a big sigh of relief, everyone knows that Bruce has to take it easy. Luckily, he has an older Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon, plus upstarts such as Matt McGinnis’ Robin and Elainna Grayson’s Batwoman to help keep the Batman legacy alive.
Still, Bruce may need to take a a less hands-on approach going forward. While Terry’s off with Diana to explore Justice League membership and shape a new future, it’s a good time for Bruce to hand the reins off. After years of putting himself through the wringer, Bruce shouldn’t risk his life anymore becausehis heart could be vulnerable to the kind of situations that the Bat-Family usually finds themselves in. Bruce’s artificial heart could even be corrupted, hacked and shut down by enemies who know to target the machine inside him.