SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Batman #51, by Tom King, Lee Weeks, Elizabeth Breitweiser and Clayton Cowles, on sale now.


Much to the dismay of countless Bat-Cat shippers, Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle sadly didn’t tie the knot in the milestone 50th issue of Batman. There’s no rest for the heartbroken, though, because it’s back to reality for Bruce in Batman #51, sans cape and cowl, when he’s selected for jury duty in the case of Gotham v Mr. Freeze.

“Three women are dead,” the defense attorney explains to Bruce and his fellow jurors, while also noting that none of the evidence connects the three victims or even suggests they were murdered. Instead, the evidence points to the victims all dying from random blood clots; natural causes.

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However, when Commissioner Gordon takes the stand, we learn things weren’t so cut and dried from the World’s Greatest Detective’s perspective.

Upon his own independent investigation, Batman discovered a temperature drop in the brain stems of each victim, which Gordon and the GCPD were then able to verify. Naturally, this put Mr. Freeze in the Dark Knight’s crosshairs. From the defense’s standpoint, though, Batman’s involvement represented little more than an unlicensed third party tampering with the evidence of a major crime.

Nevertheless, Freeze is eventually given the chance to explain his side of the story for the jury.

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Freeze admits that he did, in fact, confess to killing the three women, but to say his confession was made under duress would be an understatement.

“He was a different man that night,” Freeze said, referring to his encounter with Batman the night he was taken in. “On the roof, he didn’t care that I hadn’t done it. That those women had nothing to do with me. He just kept hitting me. Until I… I had to say yes. Or Batman was going to kill me.”

In most instances, Freeze’s words would likely give a jury at least some semblance of doubt regarding his guilt, but given the cold-hearted criminal’s reputation, none of them has any reason to believe him. Well… almost none of them.

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“Anybody at all thinking not guilty?” the lead juror asks. “Thinking Freeze gets off?”

Then, much to the rest of the jury’s surprise, none other than Bruce Wayne raises his hand, signaling that he believes Mr. Freeze is actually innocent.

It remains to be seen what led Bruce to this decision. However, considering we see Dick Grayson sporting the cape and cowl while Bruce is sequestered for the trial, it’s certainly within the realm of possibilities that, perhaps Freeze’s statement about Batman acting uncharacteristically brutal towards him is because it wasn’t him or Dick in the batsuit that night.

If that’s the case, though, who else is masquerading as the Caped Crusader?