After losing his fortune in Joker War, Detective Comics #1034 has Batman upgrading and building a new Batcave, but there’s a big twist to it.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers from Detective Comics #1034, by Mariko Tamaki, Dan Mora, Jordie Bellaire and Aditya Bidikar, on sale now.
Following the end of Joker War, Bruce Wayne lost his fortune, as well as all of his major assets. As Future State showed, he’ll need to adapt in order to survive. However, he’s taken it in stride and has committed himself to become a better Batman.
Now, as Detective Comics #1034 reveals, a major part of this rebuild involves a new Batcave with a twist, literally.
Without the mansion, Bruce doesn’t have his subterranean lair anymore so he’s now taken to Gotham’s underground to create access points. His new home is at the heart of the city in Infinite Frontier, so from below this townhouse, he believes he can get to his destinations without being caught. This evokes memories of when Bane dug from the ground up to get to Bruce’s weaponry at the Wayne Enterprise offices in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Returns.
This “DIY cave” consists of many micro-caves with his home as the central hub, ideal for zipping around all over the city. After all, without his garage and assault vehicles, he has no choice but to diversify and improvise, so it’s understandable he’d go this route. Admittedly, he’s never worked or dug like this before, so it’s also a decent amount of training. There’s never been any maintenance on these tunnels, so he really should have called some of the Bat-family over to help. To compound his construction woes, things like proper surveillance and Wi-Fi aren’t available.
That aside, it’s 26 feet below the surface and covers six blocks, plus there’s room in the circuit for vehicles once he expands his arsenal. And while it’s a far cry from a cave where he could have stored so many monuments, this really shows Bruce what he took for granted. But seeing as he toiled so hard to literally dig this out, we can see him working even harder to protect it. Navigating underground will also come in handy when Mayor Nakano starts his anti-mask legislation.
Ironically, Bruce’s tunnels might be bathed in blood sooner rather than later. Neil, one of Nakano’s inner circle, just killed Sarah Worth, someone who belongs to a family that made their money in communications.
He appeared unhappy Nakano was focusing on comms and messaging rather than striking back at anarchists in the new Joker gang, the Party Crashers, and it looks like he took Sarah out in revenge. The final page has him with bloody hands in the tunnels, which could bring unwanted attention to the Dark Knight’s new passageways and ultimately, scupper Bruce’s plans before they take off.
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