Alfred Pennyworth dies at the hands of Bane in Tom King's latest monstrosity

As if it weren't enough King penned one of the worst DC miniseries to come down the pike since Identity Crisis and Blackest Night, now, in the 77th issue of the current Batman volume, which features an alternate universe version of Bruce Wayne's dad Thomas, King writes that the supervillain Bane murders butler and leading Batman ally Alfred Pennyworth, as this Polygon article reveals:

And, to make a long story short, Damian’s fight with his alternate universe grandpa doesn’t go as well as he’d hoped. Thomas Wayne captures Robin and takes him to Wayne Manor. Then, in some of the final pages of the issue, the villains force Damian to watch as Bane snaps Alfred’s neck, all while the Batfamily’s loyal surrogate father figure begs the villain to at least not do it in front of his youngest surrogate child.

As Thomas makes clear on the page following Alfred’s demise, Damian will now take his place as the hostage preventing the rest of the Batfamily from saving Gotham.

This may not be the first time Alfred ever faced death before. The last time I know of was in Detective #328 from 1964, seemingly killed by a falling boulder, and he was later brought out of that limbo to coincide with the 1966-68 TV show. Now, however, it looks like the notorious editorial mandate-makers decided to make Alfred the victim of murder instead, and you could wonder if it's because they wanted to make everything cheap as possible on their way to collapse as a publisher. That is, eliminate civilian co-stars and narrow the cast of characters down even more, making everything ever more insular. As if you needed another reason not to read King's writings, and avoid DC in general.

It's vital to boycott DC because of embarrassments like this, but the chances remain pretty firm that DC will continue nepotist employment of King till the day they shut their doors.