Back to Grant Morrison one more time with one of the few occasions on this list where Batman's usual aversion to murder is not only actually addressed, but is part of why this became an iconic moment in the character's history. The plot of Final Crisis is fairly difficult to explain succinctly or even non-succinctly but the crux of it is that cosmic villain Darkseid is on the cusp of undoing all of existence, by cracking something called the "Anti-Life Equation" which proves life is meaningless and causes the universe to start tearing itself apart. If he can't be stopped, everything will be destroyed. Including Darkseid. He's a bit of a glass-half-empty fellow. By the end of the miniseries most of DC's heaviest hitters have already gone down, with Superman sent to deal with a larger threat throughout the multiverse and Wonder Woman fallen prey to Darkseid's Equation. That leaves it up to Batman to save existence, which he does using the one thing he hoped never to use: a gun. A space gun with bullets that travel through time, true, but a gun nonetheless. The double-page splash of him firing the cosmic bullet into Darkseid's head, undoing all of the damage he'd done to the universe and fixing everyone, is powerful because it's outside of the character's moral code. And because he then gets sent back in time for some reason.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
