About thirty years from now, in the large, tree-filled backyard of a pleasant, suburban home, two eight-year-old black kids are hard at play. Paper masks, carefully cut out and colored, hide their faces. Old, blue bath towels, Velcroed to their shoulders, serve as makeshift capes. Around their waists are toy, plastic utility belts, complete with Batarangs. In fact, it's a clumsily-thrown Batarang that begins our story.

Grandpa is pretty upset when the toy crashes into his half-finished chess game, scattering pieces all over the table. "What the hell," he asks as he begins to pick up the pieces, "are you kids doing?"

"Playing Batman."

This doesn't go over very well. The kids explain, Batman isn't just a character from an entertainment disk. Batman was real, he lived in the late twentieth century. They learned about him in school. One of the boys illustrates, showing Grandpa a very familiar-looking hologram of Batman.

Grandpa chuckles, shaking his head as he indicates the disk. "I'm not arguing about that, boy. I know Batman was real. But he didn't look like this."

"Batman was black."

As Grandpa methodically sets up the chess board, the kids settle in and listen to his revisionist history of Batman.

The story Grandpa tells is familiar in the particulars but the context has changed radically. Young Bruce Wayne, heir to the Wayne family fortune (made through their chain of funeral homes –many relatively wealthy black families made their money by providing expensive services to their community in a Jim Crow society), is forced to grow up quickly when his parents are gunned before his eyes. With single-minded determination, the boy spends the next twenty years forging himself, mind and body, into a perfect instrument of justice. Upon reaching maturity, he fashions himself a costume that gives him the appearance of a giant bat, then sets out on his ongoing mission of justice, striking fear into the hearts of evildoers, even as they strike fear into the hearts of their innocent prey.

Unfortunately, the first summer he appears is also the summer that long-simmering racial tensions in Gotham city boil over into a race riot.

The mayor is displeased that a "black guy in a bat suit" is beating people up at the same time as civil unrest threatens to tear his city apart.

Commissioner Gordon has wildly ambivalent feelings about "the Batman." The evolution of these two men's relationship, from mutual racism and hatred to guarded respect, is at the core of this story.

Grandpa tells the story of a dark knight indeed, detached, unlikable, driven and disinclined to explain his actions. The results of his crusade are always justice for the innocent but the adventure that Grandpa tells is his most important one, the adventure where, on Gotham's darkest night, Batman finds peace for himself by catching his parent's killer, a twisted version of Two-Face, black on one side, white on the other, both sides driven insane by questions of racial identity .

Back in the future, the kids are awed by the story Grandpa told them, a story that resonates with a sense of heroism, and racial pride. As Grandpa completes resetting the chess board, his grandchildren ask him, "Is it really true? Was Batman black?" A thoughtful Grandpa fingers the toy Batarang. "It doesn't matter if it's true, boy." Grandpa throws the Batarang. It flies sixty feet, loops around a tree and returns to Grandpa's casually outstretched hand. "What matters is it could be." He hands the toy back to the flabbergasted children, muttering, "The weight's off on this thing."

The kids press the point, "Grandpa Bruce, were you the Batman?" Grandpa has turned back to the board, he swivels his head around. "A good story needs a moral, how about this: You can be anything you want to be. Never let anybody ever tell you different. Now go play."

Grandpa turns his attention back to the chessboard. He speaks to his opponent, who we haven't got a clear look at before now. It's a strapping, handsome black man with an incongruous S-curl on his forehead. Grandpa is impatient to get back to the game, "What are you waiting on, Clark? It's your move..."

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