Batman Confidential

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Batman Confidential
Cover to Batman Confidential #1, art by Whilce Portacio and Richard Friend.
Publisher	DC Comics
Schedule	Monthly
Format	Ongoing Series
Publication date	2006 - Present
Number of issues	16 (as of April 2008)
Main character(s)	Batman, Alfred Pennyworth, Lucius Fox, Lex Luthor, The Joker
Creative team
Writer(s)	Andy Diggle Michael Green Tony Bedard
Artist(s)	Whilce Portacio Richard Friend Denys Cowan Rags Morales

Batman Confidential is an American monthly comic book series from DC Comics which debuted on December 6, 2006. The series features the superhero Batman's early adventures, the first story arcs taking place just after his first weeks as a crimefighter.

Like Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, Batman Confidential features stories by rotating creative teams and will continue to be set in the early years of Batman’s career. The similarities, however, stop there. Rather than feature early crime-fighting Batman tales, Batman Confidential will feature stories that illustrate key moments in the character’s past such as first meetings, critical decisions, alliances, confrontations and events that would shape him as the character he is today[1]. The stories told may or may not be actual canon, as aspects (such as The Joker's origin story) differ greatly from previous versions.

[edit] Story arcs

[edit] Rules of Engagement (#1-6)

The first story arc by Andy Diggle and Whilce Portacio features Batman, roughly a year after he started fighting crime, in his first encounter with Superman’s nemesis Lex Luthor. While interrogating a murderer he has just apprehended on patrol, Batman spots a laser sight focused on the man's head. Before he can protect him, the murderer is vaporized by a shot that was fired a very long distance from where he and Batman were standing. Batman begins investigating the type of weapon, and discovers the only thing that his company had created as far as energy weapons go could not be simply carried by one man. The next day, Bruce Wayne and Lex Luthor are competing for a military contract concerning a stealth interceptor robot and the O.G.R.E. disaster rescue robot. Afterwards they have a conversation and when they are interrupted by an O.G.R.E. machine who proceeds to attack them. Bruce Wayne is rescued by Alfred Pennyworth who drives him away so that he may change into his Batman costume and return to fight the machine. The O.G.R.E. machine continues to attack Lex Luthor until he escapes into the sewers. Upon realizing that it has lost its quarry, the machine flies away.

At Wayne Enterprises Captain Jim Gordon examines a dead body that had been in the chamber to pilot the O.G.R.E. machine when he had died to a heart attack. He threatens Bruce Wayne with charges if the coroner's report doesn't conclude natural causes for the death. Afterwards, Bruce Wayne learns that the pilot had died just before the O.G.R.E. machine attacked business rival Luthor.

After the coroner exonerates Wayne Enterprises and judges the pilot's death as natural causes, Bruce Wayne steals the cadaver and examines it himself to learn a LexCorp device caused the pilot's death. Batman then discovers the O.G.R.E. machine's whereabouts and attempts to reason with it, however instead the machine attacks him. Unlike the earlier fight where Batman's weapons had been ineffective, this time he uses a remote control to deactivate the machine, feeling guilty as he believes the machine has some imprint of the dead pilot's mind inside it, and vows to bring the pilot back to life using the O.G.R.E. machine's memory if he ever gets the chance.

Important events: Alliance with Lucius Fox, the current CEO of Wayne Enterprises; introduction of the Batwing and how Batman acquired it; and first encounter with Superman's arch enemy Lex Luthor.

[edit] Lovers & Madmen (#7-12)

Taking place during the events of Batman: Year One, Batman recalls all the things that work for being a great crime-fighter. After months of analyzing shipping data, Batman deduces the identity of the man at the top of the drug market in Gotham, a man named Berlanti. After breaking up a shipment and sending the police all the evidence they need to arrest and convict Berlanti, Batman feels on-top of the world (Alfred notes that he is smiling for the first time in costume). Commenting to himself that Gotham seems "quiet" and more peaceful, Batman is confident and happy that his efforts to apply reason and logic to fighting crime have been so successful. As a personal reward, he (as Bruce Wayne) manages to get an art exhibit held over for an extra day so he can visit it. There he meets an art expert working for the museum (assigned to be his private tour guide) by the name of Lorna Shore, and he takes to liking her. Later that night Batman looks into the death of three people and a robbery with no motive. Batman starts looking into the crime world of Gotham City for motive, but is frustrated by nothing but dead-ends. Later, a man named Jack sits depressed at a bar. He meets a blonde cocktail waitress/psychology student named Leeny, and shares his frustrations with her, revealing his boredom with how perfectly he is able to do his "job." Leeny convinces him that if he has a gift for his job, he owes to himself and all those ordinary people without gifts not to walk away from it. After listening to her advice, he decides to seek direction in his life and use his talents. Bruce Wayne and Lorna Shore are seen on a date. Meanwhile, Jack pulls a bank job and still does not feel exhilarated by his "gift". Looking for fun he trips the security systems and the Gotham PD show up. As his hired "goons" and he fight the police, Jack STILL doesn't feel the rush he was hoping for and after killing all the other police officers ask the last one to please shoot him (commenting that suicide isn't approved of by God). However, Batman arrives and begins fighting Jack's companions in the other room. Jack takes back his gun from the police officer and is last seen in the issue observing the Batman in action, thinking that he looks "Ridiculous"^[1], possibly a sign to come of his future obsession with the Dark Knight.

Jack leaves Batman a note attached to a pencil shoved into the officer's chest, thanking him for making his day. Over the next weeks he starts committing crimes with no discernible pattern (other than senseless mayhem and cruelty) in order to draw out Batman, and observes from a distance Batman's frustration with being unable to capture him. It is at this point, after leaning on an up and coming mobster called "Maletsta", that Batman is informed that much of whats left of the underworld is also gunning for the mysterious Jack (it seems his violent crime spree has interfered in more than a few rival criminals' business endeavors). With Alfred busy building a state-of-the-art super-computer, Bruce visits Lorna Shore, who after weeks of being sent flowers as apologies for constantly cancelling their dates, had sent HIM flowers hoping to get his attention after weeks of being ignored. Bruce ends up spending the night with her. He comments to himself that he has never felt as at peace as he does holding her, and it is the first time he's slept through the night since he was 8 years old. Making an excuse not to attend the museum ball with her the next night, he returns to the bat-cave where Alfred has completed the computer, dubbed "Dupin" by the butler. Bruce uses it to calculate the mysterious killer's next probable move. The issue ends with the most probable target revealed to be the very museum ball Lorna is attending.

Jack storms Lorna's museum ball with a bull mask on, hoping to attract the attention of Batman. Upon arrival, Jack quickly escapes, taking Lorna as a hostage, holding a gun to her. While Batman easily disarms Jacks with a batarrang, Jack quickly draws a knife and slashes Lorna across her midsection. Batman rushes to Lorna, who is still alive, while Jack escapes. However, in a fit of rage, Batman flings another batarang at Jack just as he leaves, cutting him on both sides of his jaw, giving Jack a Chelsea grin. Batman then takes Lorna to the hospital, where she rests in critical condition. Upset that he cannot catch Jack, Batman visits Dr. Jonathan Crane (Pre-Scarecrow) who profiles Jack as a criminally insanse schizophrenic. Dr. Crane is looking to renovate the old Arkham Mental Asylum to further his study on the criminally insane and with the terror inspired by Jack's recent crime spree donations are pouring in. Batman asks Crane how he can keep one step ahead of someone like Jack, to which Crane responds: "Oh you silly man in a suit. You can't!" Back at the Batcave, Bruce postulates that Jack will seek medical attention and begins to search for the doctors whom not only could repair his face, but who have a low moral barrier to do so. As he does so, he receives a call from the hospital, which Alfred answers. Lorna will most likely not make it. Enraged, Bruce begins destroying the Batcomputer. Once he calms down, Bruce decides that the old way to fight this evil is with evil. At wit's end, Bruce then makes a mysterious call to 'Maletesta' and informs him that he has found Jack and that Maletesta may do with him as he wishes.

While Batman is watching Lorna through her hospital window, Jack is being taken to an old abandoned chemical plant by Malestesta's men after he was given anesthetic by a doctor to repair the cuts around his mouth he received by Batman. They tie him up to a chair and begin to pummel him with brass knuckles, but Jack, who's been awake this whole time, begins to give them lessons on how to properly torture him. This provokes them to dump him in a chemical vat, but he manages to escape and begins to fight off the goons before falling into a vat with one of them. Batman realizes he's made a mistake thinking he's becoming what he's been fighting for his past year, so he races to stop Jack's murder. Back at the chemical plant, Jack is disappointed to still be alive after the fall, having landed on the goon in an empty vat. The goon tries to shoot Jack, but he dodges without thinking, and the bullet hits a massive container of anti-psychotics above them, which floods the vat just as Batman arrives. Jack thinks back on everything including the bar girl and Batman, wishing to see him again, as he prepares for death by drowning until he finds a way out, leading him outside the factory in the water. Batman sees the chemicals fill the vat, thinking to himself "What have I done?". Jack emerges from the water with green hair, bleached skin, red lips, and his brown suit has become purple. He begins to laugh at the joke the world is playing on him, and becomes hysterical as he notices a "bunny in the moon". And with this, the Joker is born.

Batman, believing Jack to have died in the chemicals, thinks he's seeing a ghost when he catches sight of the Joker outside and chases after him, but loses him in the forest. Later on, he learns that Lorna is still alive but still not responsive. Meanwhile, the Joker then begins his reign of terror. Just as Leeny (the blonde bartender from earlier) discovers that some unknown benefactor has paid her entire medical school tuition, people on the street notice a giant blimp heading towards Gotham's twin towers. Police try to communicate with it, but the blimp (bearing a gigantic smiley face on the front) burst into flames and explodes with many shards of glass falling towards the citizens of Gotham, killing many. The Joker looks on proudly, in his demented eyes he sees them falling dead with big smiles on their faces. However, Joker is upset that Batman doesn't shown up. Bruce is in the hospital with Lorna saying he won't leave her, but Alfred appears and informs him of the carnage ensuing, leaving him his batsuit. Later at a circus, Joker poses as an ordinary clown and causes a riot when he kills a man in front of his own daughter by spraying a strange green chemical in his face (having offered the little girl the choice of whether she wanted to be sprayed by the clown or whether it should be "Daddy"). When Joker sees a report on how Batman hasn't shown up, he becomes upset that he hasn't appeared, even when he rounded up other criminals so he'd have only him to contend with. When one of the captive criminals tell Joker Batman wanted him dead, Joker becomes overjoyed saying he really does care. He then kills the criminal the same way he killed the man at the circus. After Alfred talks to Bruce about how he created this monster, he suits up as Batman and heads toward the Batsignal to meet Gordon, but it's the Joker who is waiting for him. Joker thanks Batman for doing this to him and then comes at him with a knife wanting to kill him.

They plummet to the ground, Joker stabbing Batman along the way. After landing on a rooftop, the Joker shows Batman a large group of bound and tape gagged hostages hanging upside down from a nearby building. He then begins shooting at the ropes holding them to the building, causing them to plummet to the streets, as he offers Batman the two alternatives of going after each victim or attacking the Joker to stop him. Though Batman is sure he should go after the Joker directly, he is unable to make himself act. As he begins to halucinate the "bunny in the moon" the Joker describes to him, Batman realizes the Joker must have somehow drugged him using the knife in order to make Batman as crazy as him. Overcoming the effects, he catches many of the falling hostages, but several of the men and women escape his grasp and are brutally killed upon landing on the pavement below. Following a savage final confrontation on the rooftops, the Joker questions Batman's motivation to save people. Responding that every life is worth saving Batman is shocked as the Joker asks if that includes him and steps backwards off the building's edge. Hesitating only a moment to consider letting him die, Batman leaps after him, saves the Joker's life, and turns him in to the authorities. After the Joker is taken away, Bruce discovers Lorna has woken up and will be ok. However, he determines that he has no room in his life to love her and pushes her to break up with him by pretending to have never visited her and then flaking out again. In the closing moments of the story, Arkham has been completed (thanks to a large donation from Bruce Wayne) and the Joker is seen sitting happily in a cell at Arkham Asylum, yelling out the window to an eavesdropping Batman that their next meeting will be much more exciting.

This story-arc is full of potent dichotomies, highlighting the relationship and antagonism between Batman and the Joker in an imaginative retelling of the latter's origins. Batman had sought to hunt down criminals and clean up Gotham through the judicious application of logic and criminological science. But when he is confronted with the motiveless brutality and cruel genius of Jack, he is unable to find a way to beat him. Ultimately, Batman tries to cross the line he swore he wouldn't and kill Jack (albeit not with his own hands), and it is this very action that sets in motion the creation of the much greater threat of the Joker. Adding to the irony of this retelling is the fact that the Joker (as Jack) was about to kill HIMSELF before he encountered Batman and discovered a new mission for himself.

The portrayal of the Joker in this instance is an especially dark and twisted one. The authors tried and succeeded to bring a more realistic depiction of the horror of real insanity (as opposed to the "funny" Joker that often appears). Key insights are offered into the Joker's warped mind as he talks to himself about wanting to bring all the "sickies" (the normal people) their medicine and make them as happy as he is. Batman's role in creating the Joker serves to highlight the reaction of society and the individual psyche to the dark knight's crusade on crime in Gotham city.

Important events: The beginnings of the Joker; the creation of the Bat Computer; the first meeting between the future Joker and future Harley Quinn.

[edit] See also

• List of Batman comics
• Superman Confidential

[edit] References