Since DC announced that the upcoming Justice League #75 would kill off all but one member of the team’s current roster, fans have been drawn into a frenzy of speculation over who will live, who will die, and who will step up to fill the void left by the fallen heroes. Although there is a slim chance that Batman will emerge as the sole survivor of the League’s battle with the multiversal Dark Army, he’s spent many years preparing for the possibility of his death by training several successors to take on his mantle. Not only that but Batman’s heroic actions have also inspired many others to launch personal campaigns against crime in Gotham City, including Timothy “Jace” Fox, the son of his long-time ally Lucious Fox.
While Batman never intended for Jace to become a member of the Bat-Family, Jace proved that he was more than worthy of joining it when he stepped in to fill in for a then-missing Batman during the Fear State crossover event. During his time under the cowl, Jace established himself as a very different kind of Batman, and his more merciful and transparent approach to fighting crime makes him an ideal candidate to fill in for the original Dark Knight if he does meet his demise in Justice League #75
Initially introduced as the black sheep of the Fox family in Batman #101 (by James Tynion IV, Guillem March, Tomeu Morey, and Clayton Cowles), Timothy returned to Gotham City shortly before the Magistrate, a ruthless private-security firm secretly in league with Scarecrow, seized control of Gotham City and transformed it into a totalitarian police state. Despite his checkered past with the law, Jace refused to stand by while the Magistrate’s Peacekeeper enforcers terrorized the citizens of Gotham and donned a spare Batman suit that he’d accidentally discovered while working at Wayne Enterprises. With the “real” Batman presumed dead following an encounter with Peacekeeper 01, Jace’s Batman quickly became a symbol of hope to the oppressed people of Gotham, battling criminals while also undermining the Magistrate’s tyrannical rule.
From the beginning, Jace refused to conform to Batman’s established identity as a gruff and detached loner and instead went out of his way to engage with the people of Gotham. To Jace, being Batman was about saving lives, not punishing those who broke the law, and he went out of his way to treat the citizens he protected with compassion and encourage the criminals he brought to justice to change their ways, while also establishing a more open and trusting relationship with the Gotham City Police Department. At a time when the citizens of Gotham were living in constant fear of the Magistrate’s brutal policies, Jace’s choice to be a Batman who actively served the public made his incarnation of the Dark Knight a much more relatable figure than Bruce Wayne’s had ever been, and the support that Jace managed to gain among the people ultimately played a major role in the Magistrate’s eventual defeat.
After the Magistrate’s regime was overthrown, Jace stepped down as Batman and allowed Bruce Wayne to resume his original position as Gotham city’s protector, choosing instead to become the Batman of New York City following his family’s decision to relocate there. Faced with the impending challenge of building a new career within a new city, Jace finds himself in a position very similar to the one that Bruce found himself in Batman: Year One (by Frank Miller, David Mazzucchelli, Todd Klein, and Richmond Lewis), and this provides DC with a unique opportunity to tell a story that highlights Jace’s unique ability to be a “Batman of the people”. Jace’s greatest strength as Batman was his ability to connect with the people of Gotham in a way that Bruce never could, and that difference could help him break out of Bruce’s shadow and truly establish himself as an unconventional but equally-effective Dark Knight.
With Batman likely to meet his demise in Justice League #75, it will fall onto one of the Bat-Family to step up and assume his role as the protector of Gotham City. While Jace may be an unorthodox successor to Batman’s legacy, he’s proven himself to be more than worthy of the cowl.
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