Batman and Robin #37

Issue Details

Synopsis

ROBIN RISES PART 5 -  BLACK HOLE SON At last, Darkseid is face to face with Batman again, after his defeat at Batman's hands. His enemy had come a long way from Earth to Apokolips, if only to die. Batman is unworried, even as Kalibak attempts to attack him from behind. Batman activates a Mother Box just as Kalibak leaps at him, dropping Darkseid's son into the pits among the Lowlies. Grimly, Darkseid crushes the device, warning that Batman will not be able to use it to escape. Striking Darkseid in the jaw, Batman admits that he has no intention of going anywhere yet.   Meanwhile, Batgirl worries that with the Mother Box destroyed, they've no way home. Especially since Cyborg's body is on the fritz thanks to feedback from the Chaos Cannon. Darkseid responds to Batman's attack by hurling him into the Chaos Cannon's fuel chamber, causing Damian's sarcophagus to slip out of it and fall into the void. Determined, Batman leaps after it and catches it just in time, only to have Darkseid come down on him hard from above.   As Batgirl desperately tries to repair Cyborg to get his Boom Tube working, Darkseid tears the wings from Batman's Hellbat suit, discovering the Chaos Shard that he was holding, and noting that only he can hold it and survive. He can see the damage done to Batman's back from his own brief contact with it. He wonders what Batman saw in the shard that led him to risk unimaginable horror at the hands of Darkseid. Despite his failing vitals, Batman rallies, exclaiming that unimaginable horrors are not unknown to him.   At last, the Boom Tube opens, and Darkseid hears its sound, taunting that it must mean that Batman's allies are abandoning him. Broken, Batman dares Darkseid to kill him, which the Apokoliptian God would be happy to do, preparing his Omega Sanction. Instead of trying to dodge it, Batman thrusts the Chaos Shard upward, and it attracts the deadly beams to it, charging it with boundless energy. With the shard so empowered, Batman has what he came for, and unleashes a violent blast of Omega energy at Darkseid, before escaping with the sarcophagus into the Boom Tube, along with his companions.   Soon, they are expelled into the Batcave, where Alfred awaits. As his suit begins to overload from the power of the shard, Batman struggles to open the sarcophagus. The suit is obviously killing him, but he refuses to remove it, tearing the shard from his chest and thrusting it into his son's chest, promising that the Omega Sanction's death would - this time - mean life.   Completely awed, the Batman Family look on as Damian rises from his sarcophagus to, at last, embrace his father. Unfortunately, getting to that point may have cost Batman his own life.