WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Batman #107 by James Tynion IV, Jorge Jimenez, Tomeu Morey & Clayton Cowles, on sale now
Batman has plenty of tactics and tools at his disposal in his crusade to protect Gotham City, ranging from massive vehicles to smaller weapons to alternate identities. It's the latter that has sometimes proved the most effective, or unintentionally destructive. And now, the dark Knight has brought his best alter ego back to deal with a new threat to the city.
To try and infiltrate the Unsanity Collective in Batman #107, Bruce Wayne has had to dust off his best undercover identity, Matches Malone.
The Unsanity Collective is one of the threats growing within Gotham City in the aftermath of the "Joker War." Following the destruction of Arkham Asylum during A-Day, the Unsanity Collective came together around the idea that Gotham has fallen apart, and Batman has failed in his mission. Wanting to do away with old conceptions of madness and sanity, the group is led by the mysterious Master Wyze.
Researching his motives and tactics, Oracle has learned he's modified Mad Hatter technology to specifically target and erase traumas from people's memories. Calling it the Mind Machine, Wyze wants to use it to "reboot" Gotham's populace, in hopes of creating a utopia. Although Oracle can at least detect a utopian ideal at the group's core, Batman suspects the Unsanity Collective of being involved in the chaos spreading through the city. To that end, the Caped Crusader has to infiltrate the group, which requires the return of his Matches Malone persona, this time introducing a modern design element to blend in better.
Introduced in Batman #242, by Denny O'Neil, Irv Novick, and Dick Giordano, Matches Malone is one of Batman's most surprisingly effective tools in his war on crime. A cover identity as a smooth operator in the criminal underworld of Gotham, Batman has used Matches repeatedly over the years. The Matches persona has connections all across Gotham City, with much of the villain community having some kind of link to him. It was even being set up in the Post-Crisis DC Universe as a possible trap to constrain most of the city's criminal underworld under the "command" of Matches, only for the events of "War Games" to see chaos spread across Gotham.
Regardless, Matches might be the best way for Batman to infiltrate the new villainous groups -- even if all of his past connections might actually not be as much of a boon for a group that wants to change the future of the city.
With the framing device for recent issues of Batman teasing that Scarecrow somehow gets his hands on the Dark Knight, it's possible Matches isn't a good fit for what the Unsanity Collective is planning. But in an era in which many of the classic Batman elements like Wayne Manor and the Bat-Signal have been forced to the wayside, it's reassuring to see Matches is still a tool in the Caped Crusader's arsenal.
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