Batman’s newest villain is the robotic Failsafe in Chip Zdarsky’s Batman #125

Since 2006, DC’s Batman series has been a place for the company’s biggest writers to take their biggest swings — to write The Batman StoryThis is not just another Batman story. And so from Grant Morrison to Scott Snyder to Tom King to James Tynion IV, the cowl has now passed to writer-artist Chip Zdarsky, who kicks off the new era in partnership with artist Jorge Jiménez.

Co-creator Sexual CrimesComics writer like Daredevil, Howard the DuckAnd JugheadZdarsky stated that his six first issues of Batman, an arc entitled “Failsafe,” are only the beginning. And this May, Polygon chatted with Zdarsky via email about all that beginning entails — namely, a mysterious new villain who hails from the abandoned seat of Batman’s power, the Batcave itself.

[Ed. note: This article contains spoilers for Batman #125.]

Failsafe doesn’t appear in this first issue until a classic final-page reveal. The opening scene in the story gives us some clues about their history. It is set in the future and features a silent Alfred noticing a peculiar beep and red light deep in his Batcave. We return to the past and visit the Batcave which is now closed and dusty. There, the beep can again be heard.

A black-and-red obelisk rises from the ground and opens to reveal a robotic humanoid form with a menacingly reflective faceplate, as a computerized voice ominously declares, “Failsafe online.”

In initial announcements of his run, Zdarsky described Failsafe as “Batman’s Doomsday,” referring to the alien monster editorially engineered to kill Superman in Superman’s Demise. That’s… pretty vague, which is reasonable for an announcement. But now that we’ve gotten our first look at Failsafe, it begs the question: What does “Batman’s Doomsday” even mean?

“Hats off to Bane, Batman’s original ‘Doomsday,’ who I love,” Zdarsky answered, referring to a character editorially engineered to maim Bruce Wayne in such a way he could no longer be Batman in Superman’s Demise’s contemporary series, Knightfall. “But what Jorge and I are going for with Failsafe is a cold, unstoppable villain. You need something fast, intense and alien. They have connections to Batman’s past and are very single-minded in their mission: to kill Batman.”

The writer said his previous contribution to Batman’s canon of villains, Cheer — a villain who killed and incapacitated with drugs that put victims in a state of addictive euphoria — “felt like a classic style of Batman villain. Failsafe isn’t that.”

As to why Failsafe is emerging in an empty and unguarded Batcave, that has its roots in events before Zdarsky’s tenure. During James Tynion IV’s Joker War arc, the Joker stole all of Bruce Wayne’s money — and then Catwoman stole it back but, for pretty legitimate reasons, couldn’t give it back. Since then, Batman’s still rich, just not megarich. He’s had to tighten his bat-belt, moving out of Wayne Manor and into a Gotham brownstone and replacing the Batcave with a series of mini caves in Gotham’s utilities tunnels that he dug himself.

Failsafe, on the one hand. Batman #125’s villain coin, money is on the other. A dying Penguin, angry that his own hefty pile of lucre was never able to buy him acceptance by Gotham’s upper crust, promised to to kill every Gothamite who has inherited more than five million dollars, unless they gave the money to charity immediately. The Penguin then made his death so that Batman was implicated as the murderer, in order to also pin his archnemesis to a wall.

According to Zdarsky, it’s not an accident that Batman’s cash flow is central to the issue.

“I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s definitely one of the themes [of the arc]! It’s part of a bigger idea about how Batman can be the best Batman and what that looks like. It’s rebuilding his wealth. His army. Concentrating on Gotham […]It’s nice that Batman has become a lot less rich and older over the years. When you’re a billionaire you can cheat aging more than you or I can. So how essential is money to Batman?”

So what’s the relationship between Failsafe & Penguin? We’ll have to see. But Batman is a guy who famously assembled a “failsafe” for every member of the Justice League in case they went rogue. It’s not a stretch to imagine he’d do it for himself — or that it would be set to trigger after widespread media reports of Batman committing murder.