Batman's First Case

[arbre_rieur]

Four pages from BATMAN 4...











He gets trapped in the room, and it's a week before Alfred and the police find him.

Comments

[starwolf_oakley]

Is this a shout-out to Lew Moxon hiring Joe Chill?

[darkknightjrk]

I don't think so--Snyder's said that the Court of Owls will have nothing to do with his parents' death.

[icon_uk]

Thank heavens for that. I'm annoyed enough about Dick;'s parent's death having reater meaning and some secret of the circus. The point of Batman's origin is that it SHOULD be a random crime (Though I could accpt the Lew Moxon bit being tagged on to Batman later as it gave us Thomas in his kick ass Bat costume)

[kenn_el]

I liked the Bruce and Dick scenes quite a lot in this. I've always felt that the randomness of the violence done to the Waynes was integral to Bruce's eventual war on crime, but I did like junior detective Bruce in this.

[aeka]

Did...did Little Bruce just seriously shoot some owls with a bow and arrow? Poor things! :<

[xammax]

Its better then what they do to trespassers now. The Butler shoots them, with a shotgun.

[lieut_kettch]

And Ollie's probably tearing his hair out in exasperation, crying out, "Does he have to be first in EVERYTHING I do?"

[runespoor]

That's what I thought, too!

[shadowpsykie]

and the answer is a resounding YES :D

[star_of_airdrie]

I liked this plot like more than I thought I was going to and I agree with Kenn_El: I like the Bruce and Dick scenes, as well as the scenes with Alfred as well.

(Unless I'm wrong, there was an reference in this issue to a horse (well, animal) tranquilizer, ACE or Acepromazine. If Alfred 'slipped' Bruce "five milligrams", which Dick responded to "5 Milligrams of Ace? That'd bring down a-"... Which, while I wouldn't like to try it, the dosing for horses is 2-4 mg/100 lbs so 5 mg in a horse isn't worth giving (i.e. average race horse about 900 lbs) and even a proportionate dosing would only sedate. Still extra points for getting it close, writers!)

[runespoor]

The art in the flashbacks is amazing.

One week with young Bruce Wayne vanished, shortly after his parents' death and without a demand of ransom? The conspiracy theories must have run fiercely amok.

I like the conversation between Bruce and Dick, too. Though I laugh at Bruce's advise - "never let your emotions guide you on a case". He's never succeeded at that perfectly, he'd have to kill his heart for that. He manages not to get blinded by his emotions on a case, but that's a different beast.

[mrosa]

I'm loving the art so far. It's wonderfully creepy and moody.

[littlepunkryo]

It fits really well with the story Snyder's telling, too.

[espanolbot]

Poor owls. I know that Bruce was still upset about the recent death of his parents, but still. :(

Still, this does make some kind of sense. A kid like Bruce would probably try to find some kind of internal sense to as to why his parents died, as opposed to just some random mugger shooting them just because he panicked or something.

Though it is interesting how many groups apparently WERE attempting to murder the Waynes, but were cut to the punch by Chill.

Off the top of my head, there was,
- Dr Hurt, who wanted revenge for the Waynes locking him in an asylum to try and help cure his mental illness.
- "Mr Whisper", the immortal Satanist from Grant Morrison's first Batman story, Batman: Gothic, who was posing as the head of the boarding school Bruce attended. On top of allowing corporal punishment like birchings, and letting the older students openly bully the younger ones, He turned out to be murdering the students (the orphans no one would miss, mainly) in order to buy himself a few more years of life.
His decision to beat Bruce to the point that he had to be sent home though, was what caused him to get the attention of Bruce's parents. Apparently they were going to have a full investigation launched into the place, with Whisper saying he was going to have to murder them to shut them up, but then Chill happened to the Waynes and Whisper was "murdered" by some gangsters, who had worked out who was behind the series of ritual child murders in Gotham, and whacked him to top the heat that was coming down on them from the cops.
- those gangsters from the last arc of Streets of Gotham, who had bankrupted Martha's father and planned to use her and Dr Thompkins' clinic as a front for their drug business. After they were repeatedly foiled by Martha Kane's smarts and the application of Thomas Wayne's money and kung-fu butler, they declared revenge against them for costing them a boatload of money and revealling a portion of their activities to the general public.

[althechi]

There's also that gang of child pornographers from The Ultimate Evil, who were targeting Martha as she was exposing them.

[espanolbot]

Oh yeah, forgot about them. Probably because I only have the first collected part of the story. XP

Urgh, that story had some stupid people in it. Like one guy loudly talking to Batman about how much money he makes from child prostitution, going into a lot of detail about it, and after Batman leaves to go after his suppliers, the guy is surprised that the girlfriend he'd been insulting and ordering about might suddenly snap after hearing what an unrelenting monster he is.

[damar148]

There's the mercenary general who once was the protege of Thomas Wayne's industrialist father before turning to crime and fleeing from Gotham after a failed attempt to murder Thomas.

[meowshi]

Damian is constantly killing animals, but no one gives him a hard time. Maybe it's because everyone has just written him off...

[silicondream]

Maybe they've heard Bruce's owl-killing story before and figure it just runs in the family.

[jlroberson]

But he eats what he kills. That's what happened to the rest of the Spook.

[jlroberson]

This is genius and is a serious development with Batman's personality as Snyder is treating it. Snyder's best moment so far and bodes well for his run. I complimented him on this on Twitter. His response:

"I wanted to have something that opposed the cave. Being locked up high, in the owl's lair, vs. the deep darkness of the cave."