Batman 1 - Batman Read online

  BATMAN

  They don’t know who he really is. They never know where he’ll show up. But the citizens of Gotham City know they have a protector. He’s the Caped Crusader™ with an arsenal of amazing weaponry and a repertoire of incredible acrobatics. He’s the legend they call Batman.

  In the toxic brew of big-city corruption, a bone-white, green-haired, eternally grinning thing is born. His name is The Joker.™ His lust is for all the wealth, power, and revenge he can grab from the world. And in the timeless, violent war between criminal and crimefighter, Batman vs. The Joker will be the ultimate duel . . .

  WARNER BOOKS EDITION

  Copyright © 1989 by DC Comics, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Warner Books, Inc.

  666 Fifth Avenue

  New York, N.Y. 10103

  A Warner Communications Company

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing: June, 1989

  ISBN: 0-446-35487-2

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  This one’s for

  THE MILLION YEAR PICNIC

  and all who toil and buy therein.

  BATMAN

  PROLOGUE

  It was a night like any other in the city—too hot, too humid, too loud. The sound of music mixed with car horns and laughter and the occasional scream. The streets swarmed with life, ten times as busy now that the sun was gone and the scum of the night could crawl from their holes, like roaches who needed the darkness to feed.

  Not that the streets were dark. Some of the streetlights still worked, enough to show the pushers wave to the hookers, the hustlers laughing as some sucker got fleeced at three-card monte, the addicts and alkies huddled in their corners, at peace as long as their stash held out. Brighter still were the tattoo parlors, the peep shows, the broken-down saloons—the unwashed windows swarming with their neon imitations of daylight. And over it all, Luna, the full moon, ancient symbol of madness, rose to show its approval.

  Welcome to Gotham City.

  It was the city at night, full of lost souls and street trash that most places hide in the shadows, sweep in the gutters. But Gotham was too big, too out of control: Here, the hookers and pushers and hustlers and addicts were all on a first-name basis; here, the shadows and the gutters had taken over.

  Here, everybody knew the rules. It was one big, happy family—unless you were from outside.

  A mother, a father, and a twelve-year-old son, little Jimmy, all too well dressed for this kind of neighborhood, walked down the festering street, out-of-towners trying not to look out of place, which marked them even more. They carried playbills in their hands. They’d just been to a show, but had walked the wrong way and left the theater crowd far behind.

  A group of strangers looked them up and down, smiling as they hurried by. A wino staggered in their path. Mother clutched at father’s sleeve.

  “For God’s sake, Harold, can we please just get a taxi?”

  Harold looked back at his wife with an annoyed, even angry expression, the kind of look that would make him king of the household back wherever they came from.

  “I’m trying to get a—” He raised both arms and waved as he shouted, “Taxi!”

  One cab sped by, followed by two more. Nobody wanted to stop in this neighborhood.

  Little Jimmy reached in his back pocket and pulled out a map. He frowned as he started to unfold it.

  “We’re going the wrong way.”

  Behind them, some of the strangers were starting to snicker.

  “Put that away!” the father insisted, trying to keep his voice low, trying not to attract attention. “We’ll look like tourists.”

  He led his family toward a pair of cops leaning against a patrol car outside of an all-night souvlaki stand. The cops were too busy chatting and laughing with a fourteen-year-old hooker to pay them much attention. The hooker glanced around and smiled at little Jimmy. Little Jimmy smiled back.

  His mother yanked him violently away. She glowered at her husband. It looked as if there was going to be a fight.

  “We’ll never get a cab,” Harold admitted. “Let’s cut over to Seventh.”

  Their son stopped as they turned the corner. Little Jimmy pointed behind them.

  “Seventh is that way!”

  “I know where we are!” his father announced as he marched into darkness. On this street—not much more than an alley, really—the lights were gone. His wife and son followed, all three walking quickly around the derelict cars, lit only by the glare of the swollen moon.

  “Hey, mister!” a voice called out of the darkness. “Gimme a dollar?”

  A man sat against one of the wrecks. He was maybe nineteen or twenty, his face pocked with acne scars. His torn T-shirt read “I Love Gotham City.”

  Father hurried his family along, as if none of them had heard.

  “Mister!” the guy who loved Gotham City yelled. “How about it? One dollar?” He lurched to his feet, his voice even louder. “Are you deaf? Do you speak English?”

  The family walked quickly to the far side of the alley. The derelict only stood and watched them, swaying back and forth, pushed by a wind that wasn’t there. The father barely stopped himself from glancing behind, to see if they were safe. He didn’t notice the other figure hiding in the shadows, the one with the gun. The gun that came down quickly, brutally, across the father’s neck.

  Father fell. Mother grabbed little Jimmy. They backed up against a rough brick wall, too scared to make a sound. The guy who loved Gotham City ran across the street to join his friend with the gun, the friend who was already ripping through father’s pockets to see what he could find. Mother made a mewling noise, deep in her throat. The friend paused in his task and pointed the gun straight at little Jimmy.

  “Do the kid a favor, lady,” he said softly and reasonably. “Don’t scream.”

  She swallowed her scream instead. Tears streamed down her face. She held little Jimmy tight against her, as if her son was the only thing that was keeping her sane. Little Jimmy didn’t say anything either, as if all he could think about was the muzzle of a gun.

  The two friends found what they wanted. They chuckled as they ran away.

  Mother stared at her husband, crumpled in the alleyway. He was totally still. She wasn’t even sure if he was breathing.

  She couldn’t help herself anymore.

  She started to scream.

  Welcome to Gotham City.

  The scream echoed up and down the alleyway. It mixed with the music, and the laughter, and the car horns down on the street. It rose up past the derelict cars and worn brick walls to sweep through the towers of the old City Cathedral, once the spiritual center of a great metropolis, now fallen into ruin itself. Stone gargoyles watched from the cathedral towers, monsters carved in the walls of the church—so tradition had it—to keep the evil spirits away. But these gargoyles only watched the evil and listened to the screams.

  Until one of the gargoyles moved.

  Welcome to Gotham City.

  The friends—“I Love Gotham City” and the one with the gun; let’s call them Nick and Eddie, now—ran all the way to a s
afe place, a roof, six stories above the street, to take a look at what they’d found. Nick opened up the wallet and started looking at the cards.

  “All right! American Express.” He tossed the card at Eddie. “Don’t leave home without it, heh?”

  He turned his attention to counting the cash.

  The night wind picked up, blowing gravel across the roof. Eddie looked up. He had heard a noise, like metal clanging against metal.

  He looked over at Nick.

  “Let’s beat it, man. I don’t like it up here.”

  Nick laughed. “What are ya, scared of heights?”

  “I dunno.” Eddie couldn’t help looking around, even though there was nothing out there except the darkness. “After what happened to Johnny Gobs—”

  That made Nick angry. “Look, Johnny Gobs got ripped and walked off a roof, all right? No big loss.”

  But Eddie knew it wasn’t that simple. “No, man. That ain’t what I heard at all.” He stopped for a minute, as if he didn’t want to say what came next. But it had to come out.

  “I heard the bat got him.”

  “The bat?” Nick looked away, as if his friend’s idea wasn’t even worth laughing about. “Gimme a break, will you, Eddie?”

  But Eddie shook his head. “Five stories, straight down. There was no blood in the body.”

  “No shit,” Nick agreed. “It was all over the pavement.” His head whipped around. He stared out into the dark. This time, he had heard the sound.

  He looked back at Eddie.

  “Shut up!” he barked. “Listen to me. There ain’t no bat.”

  All of Eddie was shaking now. “You shouldn’ta turned the gun on that kid, man. You shouldn’ta—”

  “You want your cut of this money or don’t you?” Nick was yelling now. “Now, shut up! Shut up—”

  He stopped when he heard the new sound. It was different this time, and closer, and they both knew what it was—boots crunching on gravel.

  They both turned to look. Eddie made a strangled, gurgling sound. Something darker than the night stood on the edge of the roof. It walked toward them. Maybe it was a man. It spread what should have been its arms slowly, majestically. There was movement below those arms, like a shadow of something that wasn’t there, or a great pair of leathery wings. On its chest there was a yellow oval that seemed to glow with a light of its own. And in the middle of that oval was the deep black emblem of a bat.

  Nick pulled out his gun and dropped to the gravel. He fired twice at the bat emblem, two clean shots. He was too close to miss. The black figure jerked back as they hit, then fell to the roof with a satisfyingly solid sound.

  “I’m gettin’ out of here,” Nick whispered. He turned around to grab the wallet.

  Eddie made a low noise, too scared to scream. Nick looked back. The human bat was standing again, and it was coming for them.

  The money fell out of Nick’s fingers and fluttered away on the night breeze. He had to get out of this place! Nick kept low, half running, half crawling across the roof. There was someone blocking the way, someone standing in front of the fire escape. A human bat.

  No one was going to trap him like this! Nick fired again and again and again, the gun shaking in his hand.

  This time, the bullets didn’t do anything at all. The bat walked forward. Eddie was in its path, huddled on the roof, unable to do anything except piss in his pants. The bat walked around him. As the thing passed, a single black boot caught Eddie in the middle of the chest. It lifted him completely off his feet and sent him flying through the air into a brick chimney. Eddie slumped to the roof, out cold.

  And the bat didn’t even stop. It just kept on walking.

  Nick had to get away. He jumped up, fear moving his legs, and ran past the moving shadow, toward the fire escape and—

  The bat moved its hand, as if it was throwing something. Nick was falling forward. He could no longer use his legs. They were pinned together, wrapped in something, rope or wire. Nick screamed. He had to get away. His arms were still free. He pulled his body along the rooftop, the gravel slicing into his elbows, drawing a dozen tiny streams of blood. Nick couldn’t think about the pain. He could think only about the bat.

  He dragged himself to the edge of the roof. The bat stayed right behind him, never overtaking him but never far away. There was no place for Nick to go. No place he could escape. There was only the ledge, and the bat.

  Nick almost lost it, almost crapped in his pants like that candy-ass Eddie, until he remembered the gun. No one could get him when he had the gun. Both his hands shook as he lifted his piece, so much heavier than it was before. He shot and shot again, but he could no longer open his eyes to aim.

  Click. The hammer hit an empty chamber.

  Click. Click. Click.

  Something came from inside Nick, a hopeless sound. The sound of somebody who was about to die.

  He felt two hands grab his shirt and lift him from the roof.

  “Don’t kill me,” Nick whispered. “Don’t kill me.”

  Nick opened his eyes. The bat stood on the edge of the roof, and he held Nick out beyond the edge, over nothing.

  The bat opened his mouth. His voice was a rasp, like a file biting into steel.

  “You’re trespassing, rat-breath.”

  Nick looked down—six stories down, at the tiny, tiny cars so far below. He looked up into the bat’s face, but where the thing’s eyes should have been were two mirrors, twin reflections of Nick’s fear.

  Nick tried to ignore the pounding in his ears, the feeling of his legs kicking out at nothing but air. What did it matter? He was going to die anyway. He’d tell off the bat before he went.

  “Trespassing?” He tried to laugh, but it came out as more of a cough. “You don’t own the night.”

  The bat smiled.

  “Tell your friends. Tell all your friends.” The smile widened to show teeth. “I am the night.”

  Nick screamed as he felt the bat’s grip on him shift. He was spun around and thrown roughly on the tar-and-gravel rooftop. He still managed to look up, to see the bat step off the building’s edge, six stories up, off into nothing but air.

  What was going on? Nick couldn’t help himself. He had to see where the bat had gone. He crawled to the ledge and looked over, six stories down.

  There was no one there. The bat had disappeared.

  That’s when Nick really started to scream.

  Welcome to Gotham City, punk.

  A new Gotham City.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Commissioner Gordon looked out over the crowd. The large hall at the Gotham City Democrats Club was packed. The huge victory banner said it all:

  CONGRATULATIONS!

  A NEW GOTHAM CITY!

  HARVEY DENT—DISTRICT ATTORNEY

  At least the banner described Gordon’s dreams. A new Gotham City? Gordon hoped, somehow, that Dent could make a difference. But he had seen others like Dent before him—bright, idealistic, full of fervor to reform that beast they called Gotham City.

  Most of the time, the beast got the reformer, not the other way around. There were too many people here, too many ins and outs, too many temptations, too much politics. Gordon’s own hands weren’t as clean as he wished they could be. But he was still here, a survivor, and with luck he could still do some good.

  He turned his head to look up and down the head table. It seemed that every reform-minded dignitary in the whole city was here; Brown, Estevez, O’Neil, Cleveland. At least, all the reformers were supposed to be here. Gordon noted that the chair two down from the speaker, the one reserved for Bruce Wayne, was vacant. Gordon was a little surprised by that. Wayne had worked as hard as anybody here to get Dent elected.

  For all that the newspapers went on about “millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne,” he was actually very dependable, very committed. If they could get a few more millionaire playboys with Wayne’s resources working for Gotham, they could turn the city around in no time. Wayne must have had a good reason fo
r staying away. Maybe, Gordon thought as he looked regretfully down at the gray remains on his plate, he couldn’t face up to any more meals of rubber roast beef.

  Gordon looked up again, his old politician’s face graced with the hint of a smile. He had learned, through years of public service, to keep as pleasant an expression on his face as possible, no matter what they were having for dinner. Besides, there might be a reason to smile after all.

  Dent had won in a landslide over the incumbent, a fellow whom the voters finally realized had been living in the pocket of the mob for the past twenty years. Maybe the vote meant that Gordon and the city had enough people behind them this time to make a difference. Maybe truth and justice would triumph for a change, and some of the real criminals would end up behind bars.

  Maybe this, maybe that. Gordon sighed as he glanced to his left. There were few things certain in this world, but one of them was that he would always have to attend these political dinners, and, at every one of them, his honor, the mayor, would make a speech.

  Mayor Borg stood, proud as an overstuffed peacock, as if Dent’s election was somehow all his doing. Gordon knew that the mayor was only supposed to introduce Dent, a job that, in Borg’s hands, could take a good twenty minutes.

  The crowd quieted as Borg started to speak. Gordon only half listened. Heaven knew, Borg sounded as if he never even listened to himself. The mayor went on about “our fair city” and “this great flower of the east.” He thanked his constituents, most of them, seemingly, by name. Only then did Borg start something that could lead to an introduction. Gordon finally decided to give the mayor his full attention.

  Borg took a deep breath, a gesture that should have been dramatic but instead hinted at a life of too many cigarettes. “Across this nation,” he spoke again, “the words ‘Gotham City’ are synonymous with crime. Our streets are overrun, and our police officials have been helpless. As mayor, I promised you that I would root out the source of corruption at the root!” He paused for another breath, raising a pudgy forefinger skyward. “Boss Carl Grissom! Our new district attorney, Harvey Dent, will carry out on that promise. I promise!”