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?

[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! :<

[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.

[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.

[meowshi]

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

[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."