Today, we look at the 2011 first issue of Batman: Gates of Gotham by Scott Snyder, Kyle Higgins, Trevor McCarthy and Guy Major (with letters by Jared K. Fletcher,) where the seeds of Snyder's epic Court of Owls storyline started.

This is "Look Back," where every four weeks of a month, I will spotlight a single issue of a comic book that came out in the past and talk about that issue (often in terms of a larger scale, like the series overall, etc.). Each spotlight will be a look at a comic book from a different year that came out the same month X amount of years ago. The first spotlight of the month looks at a book that came out this month ten years ago. The second spotlight looks at a book that came out this month 25 years ago. The third spotlight looks at a book that came out this month 50 years ago. The fourth spotlight looks at a book that came out this month 75 years ago. The occasional fifth week (we look at weeks broadly, so if a month has either five Sundays or five Saturdays, it counts as having a fifth week) looks at books from 20/30/40/60/70/80 years ago.

In many ways, Scott Snyder's time on the main Batman titles (not counting some of the more off-the-beaten path stuff like All Star Batman and Batman: Last Knight on Earth) was about making Gotham City a character of its own in a way that few other writers have even ATTEMPTED in their time on the Batman books. The main message of Snyder's Detective Comics run (now collectively referred to as "The Black Mirror") was Dick Grayson (and Jim Gordon) coming to terms with how much darker Gotham City has gotten over the years. However, there was also a sense of history there that really came to life in Batman: Gates of Gotham, a miniseries Snyder wrote with Kyle Higgins, who would both later launch a Bat-book during the New 52 (Snyder on Batman and Higgins on Nightwing).

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THE LEAD-IN TO THE COURT OF OWLS

Obviously, Snyder and the brilliant Greg Capullo later joined together to introduce the Court of Owls, a secret society that has controlled Gotham City for ages. That same basic concept of the Illuminati having an influence on Gotham City was introduced in Gates of Gotham, which opened in the late 19th Century when a few members of the Gotham elite met with two adventurous young architects who helped redevelop Gotham City.

In modern times, those bridges were blown up at the same time, causing mass mayhem and misery in Gotham and sending Batman into action. At this point in time, there were two Batmen, with Dick Grayson being the Batman of Gotham City while a returned Bruce Wayne handled the international duties of Batman, Inc.

Trevor McCarthy and Guy Major handled the physicality of Dick Grayson as Batman beautifully, as he is obviously much more of an acrobat than Bruce and you can see that fluidity in his movements...

McCarthy had been the regular artist on Nightwing's comic earlier in his career and it looks like he certainly remembered how the hero moved while he was in action.

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THE HISTORY OF GOTHAM IS A DARK ONE

One of the fun wrinkles in the Dick-as-Batman/Gordon relationship is that Dick takes more time to just talk with Gordon about stuff, as while Bruce obviously valued Jim Gordon, he also disappeared on him all of the time, while Dick savored their meetings a bit more. Gordon informed Batman that whoever did these explosions was leaving a warning for the families of Gotham, "the families will fall by the gates of Gotham."

The Gates, by the way, were the names of those young architects. The families involved were the Waynes, the Cobblepots and the Elliots (and later, the Kanes.)

During his Detective Comics run, Snyder consistently highlighted Dick's empathy and that was on clear display when Dick pilots the Batboat through the waters of Gotham as he sees the people who lost their lives in the bridge explosions (he and the other members of the Bat-family saved a lot of people, but when three bridges blow up at once, people are GOING to die. It's unavoidable)...

It's a small moment but it spoke wonders about the way that Dick viewed his role as Batman. No Batman ever took the loss of innocent life gently (not even Jean-Paul Valley), but it had a bit more of a visceral feel to it when it's Dick worrying about it.

Dick is contrasted well against Damian, who is more concerned about the impact that HIS family's bridge was destroyed, as well. Batman had visited the Penguin about the Cobblepot bridge earlier, but everyone involved had forgotten about the Elliots, the rich family that eventually gave us Tommy Elliot, a childhood friend of Bruce Wayne turned the villainous Hush.

The Kane family (where Batwoman is from, but also Bruce Wayne's mother, Martha) gets involved in the story later. As noted, this miniseries is all about the history of Gotham and the darkness that has surrounded the city for well over a hundred years. That ties in well with Snyder's Detective Comics work, but also, of course, the Court of Owls stuff (by both Snyder and Higgins).

At the time, it wasn't clear just how influential this miniseries would be, but it was still a good read at the time either way. Snyder and Higgins did fine work on the Bat-books.

If you folks have any suggestions for June (or any other later months) 2011, 1996, 1971 and 1946 comic books for me to spotlight, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com! Here is the guide, though, for the cover dates of books so that you can make suggestions for books that actually came out in the correct month. Generally speaking, the traditional amount of time between the cover date and the release date of a comic book throughout most of comic history has been two months (it was three months at times, but not during the times we're discussing here). So the comic books will have a cover date that is two months ahead of the actual release date (so October for a book that came out in August). Obviously, it is easier to tell when a book from 10 years ago was released, since there was internet coverage of books back then.

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