I always found the Batman to be highly annoying. I know, I know, all superheroes are annoying. They're self-righteous. They're smug. And, if you dare to disagree with them, well, ultimately they are bigger than you are. Nobody ever wins an argument with a superhero.
But, the Batman was something else. Most superheroes got their powers because they were aliens from distant planets, or were exposed to radioactivity in one form or another, or had physical mutation for undisclosed reasons, or special talismans. But, the Batman, he trained physically and mentally to develop his fighting powers. That's just obnoxious. I mean, anybody who was fanatically dedicated could do it, but how many of us do? And, why rub our faces in our inadequacy?
I was 15 years old when I decided to kill the Batman.
I knew the odds were against me. After all, if the Joker, the Riddler, the Penguin and all of the other supervillains he'd faced couldn't kill him, couldn't even figure out what his secret identity was, what could I do? I'm not physically fit, I'm not brave, and, as it turned out, I grew up to become an accountant. My ability to kill a superhero seemed limited by my genetics, psychology and life choices.
I did develop a fanatical devotion to my...cause might be too strong a term. Let's call it obsessive hobby. And, as it happens, fate gave me the tools I needed to achieve my childhood dream.
The bank I worked at, Vundo's International Loans Emporium (VILE), bought one of the first Dimensional Portal Corporate EditionTMs. I guess my bosses thought it might help them to predict trends in the market...to better serve our customers. When that didn't pan out, they let senior bank officials use it at parties. One Arbor Day, something in another universe caught my eye.
The Batman. Only, it wasn't the Batman. It wasn't the living embodiment of every humiliation ordinary people endure. It was the Batman as a comic book character.
All of the epic battles between the Batman and the forces of evil that I had read about in newspapers, people in this other universe had only read about in comic books! The villains, the heroes, the love interests, the innocent victims, they weren't real people at all - they were the copyrighted property of a company called DC Comics!
Well. I started working a lot of late hours at the bank after I discovered that.
The Dimensional PortalTM was only supposed to be used for viewing other universes, but I had once helped somebody in the company's IT deparTMent work out a little misunderstanding with the IRS about taxes on offshore bank accounts and she owed me a favour, so I asked her to hack the Dimensional PortalTM so that I could actually make things happen in the other universe. The best she could do was give me the ability to interact with the computer systems of the other universe, but, as it happens, that was enough for my purposes.
I started working my way into the computers of the financial sector of the other world. There seemed to be a weakness in the housing market, so I cooked some books to make it appear that the mortgage market floated on a sea of bad loans. This led to a retrenchment in the housing market, foreclosures galore and, ultimately, the insolvency of America's central financial institutions.
You know how it is. One thing leads to another, and, before you know it, the economy of the world collapses.
Taking DC Comics with it! If I couldn't kill Batman in the flesh, I figured I would just have to settle for killing him in the comics. Imagine my surprise when, after DC Comics went bankrupt and all of its comics lines were discontinued, the Batman disappeared from our universe! All of the DC superheroes disappeared from our universe with him, of course, but the only thing that I cared about was that the Batman no longer lived! I had succeeded!
Much has been made of the fact that I am responsible for the disappearance of the superheroes on our planet. I would like to point out, though, that all of the supervillains are gone, as well. My actions have brought crime on this planet, if not to a halt, at least back down to human dimensions. But, do I get credit for being the greatest crimefighter our world has ever known?
Not that it matters to me. I killed the Batman. Life is good.
Extract from testimony at Eddie Feldspoon's sentencing hearing. Since there are no statutes governing interuniversal murder, Feldspoon was tried for and found guilty of unauthorized interuniversal traffic, tampering with proprietary Dimensional PortalTM technology and contravention of the Wiggam Absurd Transuniverse Paradox Creation Statute of 2067. He was sentenced to life in the prison of his birth universe with no chance of viewing any others.