The Domino Killer: A speculation thread about the Batman & Robin comic series

[incredibledave]

Hey Guys

If you havn't been reading the comic series Batman & Robin, chances are you're going to get nothing out of this, so I'm just going to assume that you have.

The Batman & Robin series started with a series of murders with a calling card, a Domino left in the hand of the victim, and as the series has progressed more and more victims and dominoes have appeared. The challenge of this series has been to piece together the clues and work out who is the culprit (among other mysteries, like the mystery of what happened with Bruce's body [already solved] and who is Oberon Sexton).

This series is written by Grant Morrison and is a continuation of his previous run on Batman, so its possible that clues to this mystery could be located in that series as well.

So, after much rereading and thinking, I think I've worked out who the killer is, if you want to be completely surprised when reading it stop reading now.






The Domino Killer is Talia
At the end of Batman R.I.P it appears that Bruce had died in a helicopter explosion, and Talia (having a bizarre relationship with Bruce) vows revenge against all responsible. Latter in that issue it shows Jezebel Jet, a member of the Black Glove (the organization who was working against Bruce in R.I.P), being attacked by a swarm of Man-Bats (Talia made her own army of Man-Bats at the start of Grant Morrison's run). From the we can assume that Talia knows the Black Glove was responsible for Bruce's death and that Jezebel was a member.

In Batman&Robin#10, Oberon Sexton tells Dick that he has been tracking the Domino Killer murders, and that the victims were all over the globe and were all members of the Black Glove.

Later in that same issue, Talia activates some kind of trigger which puts Damian under her command and uses him to attack Dick. The clue that Talia is capable of controlling Damian to some degree is important for figuring out the rest of the mystery.

The first appearance of dominoes we see in the story is the chest of dominoes which the drug traffickers though was full of cash. Talia is an international crime lord and could have easily arranged to have those guys set up.

The second appearance is the domino in Toads hand. Toad was captured by Batman and Robin and sent to the police in B&R#1. In issue 2, where his partners in crime tried to break him out, there is a scene where Dick and Damian are separated and after Dick catches up to him we see Damian wailing on a thug just outside Toad's cell. They go into find toad dead with a domino, there are few people who could of placed the Domino there, and a mind controlled Damian is a suspect.

The third appearance is in B&R#5, where the Red Hood busts into a meeting of crimelords who are discussing El Petinente (a new character) and his plans to use a dangerous new drug to addict Gotham. Red Hood tries to murder them, with Batman and Robin arriving to stop him, after Red Hood leaves and Dick investigates a finds a dead underling of El Petinente with a domino in his hand. This is the biggest clue, assuming that the killer is placing a domino instead of the domino belong to the victim, there are few people in that room which lowers our number of suspects. Damian is among them (along with Dick, Red Hood, Scarlet, Penguin, and some other thugs). Also, later in that arc, there is a panel which shows brief glimpses of El Petinente, who looks a lot like Dr. Simon Hurt, the leader of the Black Glove.

The forth time we see dominoes is in B&R#7, when Dick goes to interrogate the Pearly King (a crime lord) and he very subtly tells him the location of a Lazurus Pit (magic pit used to bring people back to life) by placing out dominoes on the table. I believe that Talia either knew where the Lazurus Pit was or created it (she is the daughter of Ras Al Gul, whose entire shtick was staying alive forever using the Lazurus Pits) and paid off Pearly to tell Dick the location of the Pit. After all, Talia wants Bruce alive as well.

So thats my theory, Talia has been trying to seek revenge against the Black Glove members for Bruce's death, which included Hurt/Petinente's underlings of his new drug cartel and used a mind controlled Damian for a few of the killings. If anyone else has been reading the series I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on this or your own theories as to who the killer is.