For most of Joker War, the Dark Knight has been hovering at death’s door. A surprise familiar face returns to bring Batman back into the fight.
WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Batman #98, by James Tynion IV, Jorge Jimenez, Tomeu Morey and Clayton Cowles, on sale now.
True to its name, “Joker War” has brought a fiery conflict to consume Gotham City with the Clown Prince of Crime now the undisputed most powerful figure in the entire city. After seizing control of the Wayne Family fortune and Batman’s vast arsenal of weaponry and vehicles, the Joker and his army plunged Gotham into fiery chaos while the Bat Family was systematically targeted by Joker and Punchline. Among the earliest targets was Batman himself, poisoned by Punchline with a modified strain of Joker toxin causing him to hover at death’s door as he experiences severe hallucinations.
After a nightmarish skirmish against the Joker’s undead army in the Monarch Theater, exacerbated by the poison running through his veins, Bruce Wayne was brought to his personal lowest point. Rescued by Harley Quinn and taken to Poison Ivy’s secret hideout below Robinson Park to recover, Bruce enters one last hallucination as he purges the last bit of Joker toxin from his body. Greeting Bruce in the dream space is his longtime butler and surrogate father figure Alfred Pennyworth, who had recently been murdered by Bane when the villain launched his own bid to seize control of Gotham. The duo’s out-of-body reunion gives Bruce the pep talk he needs to get back in action.
Having witnessed the city he has sworn to protect burning around him, with the Joker inflicting a fresh wave of casualties, Bruce confides to the vision of Alfred that he has failed his city and his mission to defend it as Batman. Alfred literally slaps Bruce out of his lethargic despair, reminding him that Batman was always meant to be something greater and not be preoccupied by all the lives that have been lost over the years but, instead the many lives he has been able to save. As Bruce emerges from the final hallucination, Alfred reminds him that he was never meant to do things alone and Batman emerges from his drug-induced coma just in time for a rematch with Punchline.
Ever since the start of writer James Tynion IV’s run on the series, the Dark Knight has struggled with the death of Alfred, obsessively focusing on his crime fighting crusade more than ever, alienating his closest friends and allies. Emerging from his reunion with Alfred, Bruce is motivated to be a more effective Caped Crusader, putting out a call to action to the rest of the Bat-Family whom he has pushed away for months. Rallying them together, the Bat-Family is now poised to go on the offensive for the first time in “Joker War,” taking back their city one block at a time.
Since his parents’ murders, Bruce Wayne has lived with the singular focus to rid Gotham of crime as Batman. In his grief following Alfred’s murder, the Dark Knight had further isolated himself, leaving himself vulnerable to the Joker as his arch-nemesis plotted and consolidated power from the shadows.
While it was the Clown Prince of Crime and Punchline who drew first blood in “Joker War,” the vision of Alfred has provided Bruce with some parting words of wisdom to reinvigorate his own belief in Batman and grant him the strength to retaliate. Gotham needs the Bat Family more than ever and Alfred has just restored its greatest hero from beyond the grave.
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