Batman #713 - The Final Batman Comic Before The New 52 Reboot

In many ways, Batman #713 is very similar to Batman #703, written only 10 months prior. It's a one-shot story and it's written by the same guest writer, Fabian Nicieza. Before the New 52, Nicieza was the long-time writer of Robin and then later the writer of Red Robin's latter half. Obviously, that makes him highly qualified to write Tim Drake's character, having written the character for an extended period... except Tim Drake appears in a single page in the issue with no dialogue.


So why Nicieza? And what is the "final" Batman story about? An unseen narrator begins telling the story of Bruce Wayne, but rather quickly steers into a completely different story, that of Dick Grayson and how he became Nightwing and later, Batman. There's actually an overarching story being told alongside DIck Grayson's story, very similar to the Batman: The Animated Series episode, "Old Wounds", with a very similar conclusion; I'm pretty sure Nicieza owes Paul Dini some sort of royalties now.


A major part of the latter half of the story is depicting how Damian has grown up and continues to learn since first appearing in the "Batman and Son" story. Grant Morrison took very special care with Damian Wayne in order to make sure he was not rejected by fans the way Jason Todd was. Although Damian still has a mixed reception, no one has outright negative views on him, and Nicieza clearly did his research on Damian before writing an entire book narrated by him, something Peter Tomasi did not for his previous and current runs on Batman and Robin.


The comic is short and not nearly as long as the finale to "The Skeleton Key" in Detective Comics, but it's still a fitting (abrupt) end to the pre-New 52 universe. The main reason Nicieza wrote on the "final" Batman is because Tony Daniel was re-assigned to be the writer for Detective Comics and probably spent all his time brainstorming the big giant shock of the last page of issue #1.


I really wish a final story starring Bruce Wayne had been the subject instead, especially since his planned ongoing solo title, Batman: The Dark Knight, was delayed to hell and beyond to the point of inducing groans in the idea of keeping David Finch for the New 52 relaunch, while Batman Incorporated unceremoniously had its final 2 issues cut for later use in an oversized one-shot comic that will bridge the events of Batman, Inc.and Leviathan Strikes, despite the old universe no longer being canon.


Batman #713 is relatively easy to find since few people paid any attention to the final comics before the relaunch, even now, 3 months later.