WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Batman #57 by Tom King, Tony S. Daniel, Danny Miki, Tomeu Morey and Clayton Cowles, on sale now.


In the wake of Nightwing's shooting, Batman has tracked his ward's would-be assassin across the globe to a remote region of Russia. The hired killer, as one might expect given the terrain, is none other than The Beast, better known as KGBeast, a perpetual thorn in the Dark Knight's side who has proven to be one of his deadliest foes.

Of course, the showdown in Batman #57 is far from their first, and the outcome has some similarities to fights the pair have engaged in before. In almost every time, Batman has acted uncharacteristically, seemingly breaking his "one rule"and leaving KGBeast for dead... after shooting him with a gun (of sorts).

RELATED: No, Really, KGBeast Is One of Batman's Deadliest Foes - And He Just Proved It Again

This Time

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Tom King and Tony S. Daniel's Batman #57 largely features the two longtime foes duking it out in a frozen wasteland. It's a brutal battle, but ultimately Batman gets the upper hand. With The Beast ready to deliver an otherwise fatal blow to the Dark Knight, Batman makes a decisive and crippling move, firing his grappling gun at close range and hitting The Beast point-blank in the face. The impact snaps his neck.

RELATED: DC Rebirth Gives KGBeast a Whole New Origin… Linked to Darkseid

Now crippled and facing certain death in the cold, The Beast makes Batman an offer. In exchange for saving his life, Beast promises to reveal who hired him to shoot Nightwing. Coldly professing that he's the world's greatest detective, Batman confidently tells The Beast that he'll solve the mystery on his own. He then begins his lengthy journey back home, leaving his enemy to die. But is the Dark Knight so dark that he would mercilessly let this villain -- even one who tried to kill his oldest partner -- simply freeze to death?

Well... yes. And in fact, this isn't the first time Batman has done this very thing to Knyazev. The last time wasn't even all that long ago.

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Scott Snyder and John Romita Jr.'s "My Own Worst Enemy" arc in All-Star Batman featured many of Batman's villains, including The Beast. In the epilogue to that story, in issue #5, The Beast gets the surprise drop on Batman and nearly kills him. Batman responds by plunging both himself and The Beast off a cliff, with no immediate means to break their fall. It's only the intervention of Batman's newest crimefighting partner, The Signal, that manages to save him. The Beast, however, was not so lucky.

RELATED: Batman In All Of His Neck-Breaking Glory

There was no body ever shown, of course, and in pretty much every piece of literary fiction, that historically means the villain will rise again. And he did just that in Red Hood and the Outlaws Annual #2, before turning up in Batman.

First Time

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The deadly history between Bat and Beast goes back even further; about as far back as it can, in fact, to the very first storyline featuring KGBeast in Jim Starlin and Jim Aparo's "Ten Nights of the Beast" arc three decades ago. At the end of that storyline, Batman sealed KGBeast inside a fortified room nestled in the sewers beneath Gotham – with no way out.

There's no mention of any retrieval or rescue within that story, leaving readers to presume Batman left KGBeast to suffer a lingering death by starvation or suffocation. More likely, though, an unsuspecting Gotham utility worker provided an inadvertent rescue the next morning, most likely at the cost of his or her own life... thus making batman de facto implicit in yet another death.

RELATED: Batman: The Origin of KGBeast’s Name is Rooted in Tragedy

Maybe the world's greatest detective deduced from that very first encounter that if KGBeast can survive being locked inside the cesspool of Gotham's sewers, he can survive a broken neck. Or perhaps, knowing that he himself persisted after suffering a broken back, he figured his equally tough enemy could survive a similarly devastating injury.

Batman has yet to comprehend the irony of such a realization, though, considering the likely identity of The Beast's employer, with all signs pointing to Bane, the man who broke The Bat. Or perhaps this is all part of Bane's sinister plan, breaking the Bat in a whole new way.

RELATED: Mark of the KGBeast: The Fall and Rise of A Classic Batman Foe

If Batman has meant to slay the Beast all these times, it means he considers him more dangerous than even the Joker, and will go to any length to put him down. That certainly says a lot.