Detective Comics issue #995 by Peter J. Tomasi

Batman thought that the most haunting call he's gotten tonight was when Commissioner Gordon asked him to check a crime scene where uncannily accurate copycat versions of his parents' corpses were left inside a water tank for display. However, it got worse when a close associate, Dr. Leslie Thompkins, called him while she's under attack by a creature that seemed to be using her as bait to draw him out. Shit hit the fan when she got shot by the Joker's laughing gas. Desperate, Batman calls Alfred so his trusted butler can get the antidote ready by the time he reaches the Wayne Mansion to save the woman who had saved his life as a child long ago. And that's where we pick up for the second issue.

There isn't much that happens to this issue as far as action is concerned. And by action, I meant the usual fodder of Batman kicking ass. We got plenty of that from last issue. However, what makes this installment a compelling one nevertheless was how it tackled Bruce Wayne's relationship with the good doctor herself. While using the trope in which a soon-to-expire character started frantically monologuing as she fights to stay conscious and alive, Leslie tries to reassure the scared little boy she knew so well that's concealed by that mask he wore as the Dark Knight. 

I also thought it was pretty creepy seeing her with 'Joker face' the entire time, wheezing with laughter, all while delivering dramatic statements about how proud she was of Bruce and not just because of his work as Batman. It's downright cruelly ironic in a sense that the woman who became a second mother to Bruce wore the face of his arch-nemesis, the Clown Prince of Crime. I couldn't think of anything more sadly fatal than that. It's like being traumatized all over again.

There was also a beautiful sequence later on that was drawn as a two-paged spread in the issue in which Bruce tries to revive Leslie, and we get fragments of shared memories between them going as far back as his childhood, when Leslie tried to help him mend what could have stayed broken inside the young Bruce forever but didn't, because she came to his life.  This kind of earnest emotional aspect to Tomasi's writing is very familiar to me. It was the reason his 40-issue run for Batman and Robin made me such a huge, raging, bawl-my-eyes-out fan.

Of course, since this is Batman we're talking about here, he hasn't even caught his breath and properly grieve Leslie's passing before Alfred is getting stabbed in another scene after he answered the door to what he believed was supposed to be Commissioner Gordon. But no...it was...Zorro? Because, fuck you, Bruce, that's why. As any Bat-fan knows, the Waynes went to see THE MARK OF ZORRO on the night the parents were gunned down. In and out of comics, Zorro or his archetype did inspire the creation of Batman.

I think the issue's end is the best yet for this arc, which isn't really saying anything. Fueled by grief and rage after losing Leslie and almost losing Alfred, Batman goes to Arkham Asylum to meet his old friends and rehash the past: "I want you all to think this place as like a carnival of funhouse tonight, except the only monster in here with you IS ME."

RECOMMENDED: 8/10