Batman (The New 52!) # 10

By Mark Rodriguez

After a year's worth of storytelling (real time, not comic book time), Batman finally has the clues he needs he needs to take down the Court of Owls. The Night of Owls was stopped due to the combined efforts of Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl, Batwing, The Birds of Prey, Red Hood and the Outlaws and even Catwoman. Thanks to a list of name given to him by a dying Lincoln March, Batman heads out to end this nightmare.

"Assault on the Court" begins at the top three floors of the Powers Hotel, which belong to Joseph and Maria Powers, one of the richest and most influential people in the city besides the Waynes. As Maria arrives home, she sees her place as a ransacked mess. As she calls security and hits the elevator, she runs right into Batman. Batman shows her the owl mask he found, and she says it doesn’t belong to her husband. Batman says it’s her mask and the case for Joseph’s mask is empty, and asks where he is. She says her husband is out of the country, and that even though the Bat-Family won for now, they’ll never have the upper hand.

As Batman leaves, Alfred is talking to him from the Batcave and is locking onto Maria’s phone call to Joseph. However the call is in a Dead Zone located in Gotham’s south side. Batman then realizes that it’s the same harbor house he went to as a boy. Determined to put an end to this once and all, Batman busts his way through the old house. However, while he does find the Court of Owls including Joseph Powers, they're all dead, seemingly taking their own lives by drinking poison. Batman feels empty handed.

At Wayne Manor, Bruce still feels that something is missing, even after the Court members are dead. He ponders this will fiddling with the bullets that killed his parents and Alfred tells him to put them away. Bruce suddenly gets a revelation as he looks into the portrait of his parents. Alfred asks where he’s going, and Batman says he’s going after ‘the one he forgot’. 

At the morgue he checks a certain body and instead finds a note saying ‘follow me down the rabbit hole?’. Batman  says he’s right behind him and heads off.

This takes Batman to the creepy and abandoned Willowwood Home for Children. Batman is snared in a net by a man lurking in the shadows, asking him who he is. Batman says he’s not the real Lincoln March, since he was made up by the Court of Owls. The man asks if he’s not Lincoln March, who is he? Batman says he’s a treacherous member of the Court of Owls. He stole money from the accounts of the top members and set up the fake meeting to poison them all.

Even though he was a target for the Talons during the Night of Owls, he took the same serum the Talons use and came back to life later. Batman tells him the rest of the Court will come after him, but March tells him he’ll be hard to kill now. He also tells him they were planning on making a special kind of suit to take down the Batman someday. As he starts to suit up, he asks Batman if he knows who he is. Bats says he was in the Willowwood Home for a while. Batman gathered that from the story March told him at the hospital after the attack. March said he deduced Bruce was Batman when he saw him fight the Talon at Wayne Tower.

March asks if he knows why the Court took him in, and Bats tells him because he was a nobody that could easily be controlled. March says it’s because of who he already was. He then asks what led Batman to the morgue. It was the pin from March’s story from when they first met. The pin that Bruce’s mother was wearing in the portrait, that March explains was given to the mothers of children sent to Willowwood. March says he’s actually Bruce’s brother, Thomas Wayne Jr.

Thomas says he was sent there after an accident, while he was still in his mother’s womb. Bats argues that his parents would never send a child to a place like this, but Thomas says that it was a children’s hospital back then. Thomas blames Bruce for their parent’s death and finishes suiting up. The time has come for their final battle, Owl to Bat.

My Opinions-

This was a very unexpected turn of events. In a sense, Batman never got to the true head of the Court of Owls. Even though he found Joseph Powers dead, and Thomas Wayne Jr is taking the role of the 'Final Boss Battle' here, it seems the Court will live on even after this. I guess it's a bit ironic that with all the manipulation the Court of Owls were orchestrating, they were all part of Thomas Jr's plans, as he played both the Court and Batman. This was random way to end this tale, a random battle with just one of the members of the Court, even if he did betray them.  

Lincoln March is unexpected and whether or not he really was the long lost brother of Bruce Wayne, looking back at previous issues you can see how they do look somewhat alike. 

The weirdest thing of this issue was Bruce Wayne playing around with the bullets that killed his parents, and they look rather polished and shiny. Why dude. Just why. And Alfred mentioned they're stored in a case somewhere. Why would you want to keep the bullets that took down your loved ones, and why would you casually fiddle with them? Little details like this show that Bruce Wayne is as disturbed and cracked as some of the guys he fights. 

The battle with the Owls concludes next issue, and then we'll finally find out who the random girl was that saved Batman's life earlier.