starring Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale
**Spoiler Alert**
You may not know this, but way back in the day, Batman and Wolverine were partners. In fact, they were both working on becoming the best superhero magicians in the business—with the help of trusty old Alfred of course.
Now keep in mind that in this story, Batman isn’t a billionaire nor has he had all the time in the world to train in using gadgets, and so must learn rope tricks one at a time. Of course, he doesn’t get everything right the first time around, and during one fateful performance, his knotty failure has a disastrous consequence. Batman’s rope maneuvers on the lovely assistant (who was about to descend into a tank of water) are skilled enough to look impressive, but are not good enough to allow her to escape. Unfortunately, the lovely assistant is Wolverine’s girlfriend.
Now, as we all know, Wolverine has an anger problem: he not only stops working with Batman, but swears a lifelong grudge against him. Even Alfred is astounded by Batman’s poor attention to detail and so decides to work with Wolverine and help his magic act instead.
So Wolverine, working under another super-hero alias, tries to build his magic act separately from Batman. However, even though Wolverine may have some innate magical powers, Batman is still the more disciplined and skilled—though not the more likable. Still, with Alfred at his side, perfecting special gadgets, Wolverine continues to ascend, even acquiring the help of the then-amateur Black Widow.
Meanwhile, Batman figures out a super special trick, which seems to make him appear in two places at once. Wolverine becomes obsessed with this trick and sends Black Widow to investigate and seduce the truth out of Batman. He even tries to track down the source of this power, which leads him to the incomparable glam rock legend David Bowie, who’s penchant for pyrotechnics apparently extends beyond his concerts.
David Bowie, and his assistant Gollum who does strange things with cats, show wolverine a special machine which Batman may have at one point used to make his magic act even cooler. Although it looks skeevily like Magneto’s instant-mutant device, Wolverine is so greedy that he takes the machine without knowing what it will do.
Confound it all! The machine triggers his regeneration powers, such that Wolverine can use his mutant ability to effectively kill himself onstage every night but end up alive on the other side. Alfred finds this grotesque and in fact so does Black Widow, and they both leave him. Although Wolverine’s repetition of this really twisted magic act clearly has to do with his self-hatred, there is no Professor X around to shrink him out of it.
Meanwhile, Batman is married, and almost happy, but seemingly having an affair with Black Widow, under the guise of his alternate super-hero persona. But when he hears about his old friend’s distress, he attempts to come to Wolverine’s aid and finds Wolverine once again pretending to kill himself. Because Batman is found on the scene of Wolverine’s “suicide,” he’s accused of murder and eventually hanged. However, every good Batman knows that he must not only have a public personality, but a sidekick to act as a replacement Batman if things should go awry.
Thus, Batman’s sidekick, by secretly hiding in the shadows, wins the day over Wolverine exacting his revenge even as Wolverine presumes him dead, and Alfred attempts to explain to the audience how and why with an anecdote on the three-part formula of any superhero endeavor.
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