Batman #28 Reveals Untold Catwoman Encounter

SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Batman #28, by Tom King and Mikel Janin, on sale now.

At its core, the “War of Jokes and Riddles” storyline in Rebirth's Batman has been all about antithesis -- whether it’s the organic opposition of jokes and riddles, or the thematic motifs of bats and cats, it’s an arc full of things meeting their equal-but-opposite reactions.

So, with that in mind, it was really only a matter of time before the DC Universe’s best hired guns would collide into one another in Gotham. Like an unstoppable force barreling headlong into an immovable object, Deathstroke and Deadshot, have decidedly come to blows for the first time in Rebirth Batman’s newly minted early continuity.

But bragging rights aren’t the most important takeaway on the table as the confusingly named snipers duke it out from gargoyle to gargoyle -- it turns out that the bad blood between Floyd Lawton and Slade Wilson may have had a bigger hand in the genesis of Batman as we know him today than anyone would have expected....And they definitely weren’t the only ones to make an impression in those early days.

Bang Bang

An important thing to remember about the “War of Jokes and Riddles” is that it’s happening almost entirely in flashback. Sure, it’s an extended flashback, but the characters we’re seeing in the story are not actually the same versions of the characters as we know them in the present tense. As occasionally confusing as this might be, it’s actually a huge asset to the overall reconstruction of continuity and history that Rebirth has been working towards.

Consider yourself lucky if you don’t remember the truncated, nonsense timeline Batman found himself working within after the New 52 relaunch. Four Robins in less than a decade? Yikes.

So, continuity wise, the “War of Jokes and Riddles” is doing some real legwork in decompressing events that were seeded out through both the New 52 and the pre-New 52 continuity, like Snyder and Capullo’s “Zero Year” plot, giving us time to spend some time in Batman’s earliest days as a crime fighter.

This, of course, poses a bit of a problem when you bring people like Deadshot and Deathstroke into the mix. Men who, for all intents and purposes, were some of the most skilled mercenaries in the world long before Bruce Wayne vowed to spend his life warring on criminals. In this, his first meeting with them, Batman is decidedly outclassed in just about every way a person can be -- worse yet, both Wilson and Lawton were more interested in killing each other than they were going after Batman himself, a damned be any innocents who happen to get in their way.

Tom King specifically dates the conflict by allowing Bruce a line about being “a year away from kicking a tree” -- a callout to an iconic panel in Miller and Mazzucchelli’s Batman: Year One.

The point being: this is not a Batman who is prepared to deal with the likes of Deathstroke and Deadshot independently, much less simultaneously.

The human cost of Deadshot and Deathstroke’s grudge match is something we learn Bruce still wrestles with, to this day. All told, over a hundred innocent people were caught in the crossfire as Batman tried and failed to bring them both in.

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Meow

Of course, Lawton, Wilson, Joker and Riddler weren’t the only objects of Batman’s fixation during those early days -- and Batman himself wasn’t the only costumed character just getting a real start.

With the war in full swing, there weren’t many villains in Gotham who hadn’t found themselves on one side or the other (or, unsurprisingly, dead) with only one real exception to the rule -- Catwoman, presented here in her classic purple costume.

It’s a surprising and pointed visual callback that serves to up the ante of the “War of Jokes and Riddles” running subplot -- the present day marriage proposal from Bruce to Selina.

Prior to the war’s kick off, King partnered with his Sheriff of Babylon collaborator Mitch Gerads on a two-part “Rooftops” storyline which teased at the off-again-on-again romance between the Bat and the Cat. Through the use of a remix of vintage and modern continuity cuts, the pair crafted a story that felt more like half-remembered hearsay than objective history. A glimpse back at the actual as-it-happened flashback to the time before Year One offers a playful confirmation that, regardless as to how they might like to tell the story to one another now, there’s definitely been something going on between the pair for quite some time. (Though it’s not like anyone who’s read through the first year of Rebirth Batman stories could have had much to doubt at this point.)

It’s certainly a testament to Selina’s skill, both as a thief and as a survivalist, that she was clearly able to make her way through the entire war as the only costumed character in Gotham who never had to pick a real side.

This particular encounter also builds upon the recurring diamond motif King’s been weaving through his focus on the Bat-and-Cat dynamic -- Bruce catches Selina mid-heist, but rather than stopping her, he sleeps with her and allows her to abscond with the diamonds she’d stolen.

Of course, there’s no debate to be had regarding Selina’s status as a master burglar, so there’s always the chance that diamonds will be in the mix when she’s involved. That said, the thematic connection to Bruce’s diamond-encrusted marriage proposal is pretty hard to ignore. There’s certainly something behind said, if not about the proposal itself, about the cadence Bruce and Selina’s relationship tends to take. After all, is a foundation of half-truths and stolen gems really something that can support a marriage?

We’ll just have to wait another few months to find out.