The last installment of Tim Burton Batman universe makes one of his darkest death scenes even darker. 2024 novel by John Jackson Miller Batman: Resurrection takes place between the events of 1989 Batman and 1992 Batman Returnsrevealing the consequences of the first and introducing the classic Batman comic book characters for Burton Batman timeline. The novel also uses retcons to explain some of the 1989 film’s potentially confusing moments and retroactively add at least one main character to the film.
One of the most fun elements Resurrection is the inclusion of characters previously exclusive to one of the two Burton Batman films. Readers learn that a pre-Catwoman, Selina Kyle, met the Joker during the 1989 period Batman and that the Penguin respected the audacity of the Joker’s mass poisoning of Gotham City (despite the Red Triangle Gang’s irritation with another criminal organization using the clown’s trick). Resurrection it also reveals some fascinating connections between Returns villain Max Shreck and the gangsters of 1989. Batman.
Max Shreck from Batman Returns was scared of dying the same way he did
When Max Shreck meets “the Joker” (actually a Clayface in disguise), he refuses to shake his hand. He recalls stories of how the Joker murdered Gotham mobster Antoine Rotelli with his lethal electric doorbell: “He had heard about what happened to Rotelli; The Joker burned him like a chest. He couldn’t imagine a more terrible way to die.” Of course, readers will certainly remember this Max Shreck ends up dying in an extremely similar way in Batman Returnswith Catwoman electrocuting him using a stun gun and the cables of a generator, reducing Shreck to a horribly charred skeleton, much like Rotelli.
How did Batman Returns’ Max Shreck meet Batman’s Antoine Rotelli?
Max Shreck had ties to Gotham’s criminal underbelly
Resurrection makes Shreck’s death even darker by revealing his connections to Gotham’s mobsters since 1989 Batman. The novel reveals that Max Shreck was influential and feared enough that even Carl Grissom – Gotham’s most powerful crime lord – avoided conflict with him, but Shreck avoided Grissom just the same. Although Max Shreck would work with minor crime bosses such as Antoine Rotelli and Vinnie Ricorso. His dislike of Grissom’s organization was specifically due to his fear of Jack Napier.who Shreck saw as a wild card well before Napier’s transformation into the Joker.
Max Shreck was right to fear Jack Napier, of course, since Napier would murder Carl Grissom, Antoine Rotelli and Vinnie Ricorso after becoming the Joker. If Shreck had been an associate of Grissom at the time Jack Napier became the Joker, he could also have been murdered, as the Joker increased his control over Gotham’s underworld by assassinating the other crime bosses. Even though he survived the Joker’s reign of terror in 1989 BatmanShreck would eventually suffer a similarly horrible fate to Antoine Rotelli, as foreshadowed in Resurrection.
Upcoming DC film releases