The first issue of Legends of the Dark Knight has revealed a civil war is happening between Gotham’s villains due to its deadliest weapon.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Legends of the Dark Knight #1 by Darick Robertson, Diego Rodriguez, and Simon Bowland, on sale now.
In the Batman mythos, it’s safe to say that no matter how many alliances form, the Caped Crusader’s rogues won’t ever get along. We’ve seen this recently in wars waged by Bane and Joker, with the clown even going as far as killing the former to assert his role as Gotham’s greatest trheat.
There are just too many egos involved, with a lot of backstabbing due to greed; all things that inadvertently help Batman take them down. Now in the digital-first Legends of the Dark Knight #1, a civil war has suddenly been ignited between the villains thanks to Gotham’s deadliest weapon.
Batman is tracking down a mysterious villain wearing a gas mask after finding bodies at the docks in shipping containers. With Jim Gordon’s GCPD officers working the beat from another angle, Bruce discovers a lethal gas is being peddled on the black market and it’s actually much more dangerous than the other gases he’s encountered, even Joker’s laughing gas, as well as Scarecrow’s fear toxin.
The Batman doesn’t know who’s manufacturing or who’s buying, until he beats some goons down and gets intel to head to Gotham’s zoo. There, he finds the seller, a Russian, offering the weapon — a highly-potent sarin gas — to Penguin for a hefty sum, gassing one of his soldiers in a sadistic test run.
In a matter of seconds, he’s puking, his muscles around the lungs are paralyzing and he’s suffocating. His nervous system is being wrecked and as the Russian indicates, he’ll be comatose and dead soon. It’s way worse than cyanide and can even pierce through the skin due to its sheer volatility. In short, it’s death in the blink of an eye, but just when Penguin goes to complete the transaction, Mr. Freeze arrives and starts attacking everyone. Freeze was apparently supposed to be bidding on it in a joint venture but the Penguin betrayed him and tried to get the gas first.
Thankfully, Batman crashes the party and apprehends both, but in the melee, the seller has escaped. The Gas Mask Killer is pretty smart, though, as he’s sent samples to all the rogues to incite more turmoil, with Joker now breaking the code and overall, Gotham’s criminal etiquette.
It’s all about creating supply and demand for this weapon of mass destruction, and the Bat knows it’s going to be tough to stop this kind of chemical warfare, especially since it will take time to generate antidotes. But with some of Gotham’s deadliest villains going after each other, there’s no telling who might get caught in the crossfire.
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