Story: Of Mice And Men (10 pages)
Writer(s): Alan Grant
Pencils: Scott McDaniel
Inks: Ray McCarthy
Characters:
Bruce Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth, Thomas Wayne (Bruce's father), Martha Wayne (Bruce's mother)
Minor Characters / Guest Appearances:
Harry, Konik (a bully at Bruce's school)
Synopsis:
Alfred has only been working as the Waynes' butler for a few weeks, but he's decided to resign, because he feels like he is there under false pretense, only because he made a promise to his father on his deathbed. Instead he wants to do something he really wants, even though he's not sure yet what that is going to be. Bruce returns home with a black eye, but won't say how he got it. His father sends him to his room without supper. From the window of his room Bruce watches stronger animals kill weaker ones (some fight between bugs, a hunting owl, finally a bat and a moth). Then Alfred sneaks in to bring him some food anyway, and also gives him a pulp magazine featuring Zorro. He also tells Bruce about the Zorro movie. Bruce asks Alfred if the big things will always beat the little things, and Alfred advises him to use his mind, and that people unlike animals can decide between right and wrong. At school Bruce steps in again when another kid is bullied, but this time he lures the bully into a trap he prepared, so that a bucket of molasses falls on him, and the bully is humiliated. At home Bruce tells Alfred about it, and also asks Alfred to stay, and Alfred changes his mind. When Martha Wayne discovers the Zorro magazine (something they forbade Bruce to have, thinking it "corrupts the growing mind") Alfred takes the blame.
Important Continuity Events:
- Alfred decides to stay with the Waynes as their butler, because of his relationship to Bruce who asks him to stay. [p. 10]
Bruce Wayne Character Details:
- At school Bruce protected other kids from bullies. [p. 7]
Alfred Pennyworth Character Details:
- Alfred made a promise to his father on his deathbed to continue the family tradition as a butler. [p. 1]
- At one time he wanted to become an actor, the stage was his "first love" [p. 1]
- Alfred likes to read Zorro adventures. [p. 4]
Trivia:
- Bruce had a robot toy that could be wound up and said "Lost in space!" [p. 5]
Story: Decoys (10 pages)
Writer(s): Howard Chaykin, Tommy Lee Edwards
Pencils: Tommy Lee Edwards
Inks: John Paul Leon
Characters:
Lieutenant James Gordon
Minor Characters / Guest Appearances:
Paul Pendergast, Sergio D'Gioa, Officer Neiland, Officer Rice, Officer Kling
Synopsis:
James Gordon has been in Gotham for a few weeks. He recently has been promoted to lieutenant and assigned to homicide. He is partnered with Lieutenant Paul Pendergast, who's the D.A.'s nephew and got his promotion because of that, even though he's incompetent. Together with several other officers they are assigned to transfer a mob witness, Sergio D'Gioa, from a safe house to the courthouse across town. They use three separate vans with escorts to make following the witness harder, but despite that Gordon and Pendergast, who are with D'Gioa, are shot at and trapped in crossfire from several sources. During the firefight Gordon drags a woman, who seems to be an innocent bystander, with them to the safety of a tobacco store, but it turns out that she is really a professional and also acquainted to D'Gioa, and they planned the escape with a helicopter all along. D'Gioa and the woman both get away, while a dozen cops die in that firefight and yet more a wounded. Gordon also got shot in his right shoulder.
Continuity References:
- Gordon refers to a "snafu in Chicago", details of that are revealed in ??. [p. 1]
- The whole story premise is contradictory to the version of Gordon's early time in Gotham as it is told in Year One, Batman #404 - #407 (e.g. there Gordon already is a lieutenant when he arrives in Gotham, and he's partnered with Detective Flass). [p. 1]
James Gordon Character Details:
- Gordon recently got transfered to Gotham from Chicago because of a not closer described "snafu" [p. 1], but he thinks Gotham is more forgiving than Chicago. [p. 10]
- Gordon gets his promotion to lieutenant soon after arriving in Gotham, that promotion helped him to put the Chicago incident out of his mind. [p. 1]
- Gordon's Chicago background seems to be well known, Pendergast makes cracks about it, and Gordon had to develop a thick skin. [p. 1]
Gotham City Details:
- Arcadian Grove, aka "The Grove", is Gotham's little bohemia. A neighborhood with crowded, narrow streets and lots of nonconformists living there. [p. 3] The intersection of Gilbert and Shelton is there. [p. 4]
Trivia:
- The GCPD then had still a budget for a real motor pool. [p. 5]
- The tobacco store is "L. I. Peretti. Tobacconist. Since 1870." [p. 7]
Story: Oracle -- Year One: Born of Hope (18 pages)
Writer(s): John Ostrander and Kim Yale
Artist(s): Brian Stelfreeze and Karl Story
Characters:
Barbara Gordon / Oracle (in flashback also as Batgirl), James Gordon, Ashley Mavis Powell / Interface
Minor Characters / Guest Appearances:
Bruce Wayne / Batman (also as his alter ego Matches), Joker, Riddler, Sylvia Kandry, Richard Dragon
Synopsis:
This story begins ten weeks and three days after the Joker shot Barbara in The Killing Joke. Barbara is still in the hospital, thinking that she was an idiot to be so careless to open the door without even looking through the peephole or putting the chain on, that she should have known better. She also has nightmares about the incident. The night before she's going to be released Batman visits her, and she is angry at him. She feels humiliated because she didn't have any significance as herself to the Joker, but only as a way to get to Batman. She lashes out at Batman, asking whether the private joke was her, when Batman and the Joker stood together laughing during the Joker's capture, hoping to hurt Batman that way. When she is released there are lots of reporters, watching her struggle to get into the car, but once again she feels only as an extension of someone else, this time of her father. She thinks the reporters wouldn't have bothered if not for her being the commissioner's daughter and thus a symbol. Six months of physical and emotional therapy follow, during which she had to accept that she would never walk again. Then for weeks Barbara just sits in her father's apartment, afraid to go out, afraid of the next day, feeling that she means nothing, that her life is now over, but then she resolves not to be a victim any longer. With a grant of the Wayne Foundation she gets a powerful computer set-up. She discovers her affinity for computer hacking and starts to make some money. The fledgling internet community also provides her with emotional support and acceptance during that time. One day her father, James Gordon, tells her about a case, a woman who launders money with the help of computers, Ashley Mavis Powell, also known as Interface. Gordon is out of his depth because he lacks the computer knowledge. Barbara researches Interface on her own. She gets information on Interface from Sylvia Kandry, a police computer operator out of NYC. Interface uses a low-level metahuman talent to interact directly with computers, she's also a child abuser. Barbara starts to go after Interface, but she doesn't protect her identity sufficiently yet. As Barbara tries to cross a busy street Interface pushes her into the traffic, but Barbara isn't run over. Barbara decides that Interface just made the biggest mistake of her life, because she made Barbara feel like a victim again. Barbara wants to start learning self-defense from a wheelchair, but doesn't want to ask her father or Batman for options. She asks around on-line, and gets contact information from someone named "Matches" one of Batman's alter-egos (which Barbara doesn't know then). She meets with Richard Dragon, who asks her what she wants. First she says she doesn't want to be afraid anymore, to which he replies that fear is useful, then she says that she wants to walk again, he says that's not really what she's seeking, then she says she wants her life back, and to that Richard Dragon says that that is who she were, not who she is now. He asks "Who are you?" and Barbara says "I...I don't know. I don't know if I ever knew..." and he says now she's ready to begin. He teaches her escrima during the next months. The physical and mental discipline hones the questions of her identity until the answer comes to Barbara in a dream. In that dream she's dressed as Batgirl and is at Delphi, asking the Oracle "I've lost so much. I've lost everything I thought I was. Who am I now? How do I go on?" The Oracle replies "You have lost nothing that matters. You have everything you need. Everything before leads up to now and now leads to what shall be." Barbara says she doesn't understand, the Oracle replies that she will when they both remove their masks. The woman who is the Oracle removes her mask (which looks like the later Oracle logo) and it is revealed that she is also Barbara. That makes Barbara realize that the internet could function as a mask as surely as any cowl, and she assumes the identity of Oracle, ready to take on her first task, i.e. dealing with Interface. Three weeks later her preparations are finished. She lures Interface into a logic trap, exploiting that Powell is psi-linked with the computer. Eventually Oracle cuts her loose, but tells her that she planted a post-hypnotic suggestion in Interface's mind and that she could trigger it again anytime, and that she will unless Interface turns herself in. In the end Barbara feels that her life is finally her own, that she is no longer a distaff impersonation of someone else.
Important Continuity Events:
- Barbara Gordon becomes Oracle. [p. 14]
Continuity References:
- The encounter with the Riddler in the flashback took place in ??. [p. 2]
- The Joker shot Barbara Gordon in The Killing Joke. [p. 2]
- The time Joker and Batman stood together laughing, that Barbara mentions, was in The Killing Joke. [p. 3]
- Batman's connection to or knowledge of Richard Dragon refers to previous events in ?? [p. 12]
Bruce Wayne Character Details:
- Batman knows Richard Dragon. [p. 12]
Barbara Gordon Character Details:
- James Gordon is Barbara's adoptive father. [p. 2]
- She's lived in Gotham most of her life. [p. 2]
- She ran one of the largest libraries on the east coast. [p. 2]
- Barbara doesn't remember much after the shot and the initial pain, she's not sure what happened. That hints at the fact that she was found naked and the Joker took pictures of her to torture her father. [p.2]
- Barbara feels it is humiliating and demeaning that she didn't have any intrinsic value for the Joker, but that her life only counted in relation to Batman. She thinks that it was similar in her role as Batgirl, that she was only seen as a weaker version of Batman [p. 3], she feels similar when the reporters cover her release from the hospital, that they're not interested in her as herself, but only because she's James Gordon's daughter. [p. 6]
- Her initial physical therapy after being shot took six months, during which she accepts that she'll never walk again. [p. 6]
- The money for her first computer equipment comes from a Wayne Foundation grant, later Barbara starts to use her hacking skills to make money. [p. 7]
- Barbara doesn't know that Batman uses the alias "Matches" [p. 12]
- Barbara learns escrima from Richard Dragon for several months [p. 13], before that she feels conspicuous and clumsy in her body, no longer loving how it moves as she did before, when she was a gymnast and a dancer. [p. 10]
- Barbara conceives her identity as Oracle first in a dream, where she sees herself as the Delphi Oracle. [p. 14]
James Gordon Character Details:
- James Gordon refused to have police guarding their house like other police commissioners in big cities, because the symbol of an open administration was important to him. [p. 6]
- James Gordon hates computers. [p. 9]
Gotham City Details:
- Barbara meets with Richard Dragon in Robinson Park. Robinson Park has a Centograph. [p. 12]
Trivia:
- Barbara has her Batgirl doll with her in the hospital, although the way it looks here it could be just as well a Batman doll. [p. 1]
- The Joker used a .45 to shoot Barbara but with a doctored bullet, with only half the grains of a normal .45, because the Joker wanted her alive for his scheme. [p. 3]
- We see Barbara with a coffee mug saying "#1 DAD" propably her dad's. [p. 9]
- Both in her dream [p. 14] and in the final panel [p. 18] white birds surround her, like bats often surround Batman in these kinds of scenes.
- Unlike her later wheelchair, here Barbara's wheelchair is still a regular chair throughout, seemingly without gadgets, but with handles for other people pushing her.