Batman Legends of the Dark Knight # 34 Blades Part 3

 By Mark Rodriguez

Batman is obsessed with finding the mysterious serial killer Mr. Lime, while a new hero named The Cavalier wins the heart of Gotham. A new thief appears in the city and Batman discovers that it's the Cavalier himself, though he has his reasons. With Batman out of action after crashing in his Bat Gyro, what will happen now?

The Cavalier and Ellen watch the news as the reporter talks about him being revealed to be the jewel thief. Ellen tells him that he shouldn't have ruined his life over her, but he says what's done is done. 

Ellen reveals she had killed her husband sometime before they met. He was always abusive and during one of his beatings, she ran to grab a knife. Her husband, not thinking she'd ever fight back, charged towards her, accidentally impaling himself onto the knife. This is where Salt came in and witnessed the event. He helped Ellen dispose of the body and corroborated her story with the police. However she wasn't counting on him keeping the bloody knife with her fingerprints on it and blackmailing her with it. With her funds now gone and Salt continuing to blackmail her, this is what drove Ellen to jump off the roof the night the Cavalier saved her.

The Cavalier threatened him but Salt's lawyer already had the order to turn in the knife to the police if anything were to ever happen to him. This is why the Cavalier was forced to commit these robberies, to earn that knife back. Now this made him a wanted criminal.

The Cavalier suits up and heads out. Ellen asks why he continues to help her without asking anything of her. The Cavalier loves her but he won't tell her until this entire mess is over. 

Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne is in bad shape due to all the activity that's happened to him recently. Alfred tells him he needs to rest and that he has made himself ill. Bruce tries to rest but the mysterious identity of Mr. Lime continues to plague him. Usually the villains he goes after has faces, like the Joker, the Riddler or even Hugo Strange, but this time, the bad guy is a complete mystery.

It's kinda rare to see some of the bigger Bat-Villains in these stories. I don't know if Hugo Strange counts given it was this very series that brought him back into the limelight

Bruce also thinks how he felt betrayed, thinking the Cavalier was a good guy but turning out to be a villain. He does remember when he crashed in the Bat Gyro, the Cavalier let him go. He said he could have sliced him and made sure he'd never come after him, if he was a murderer. Bruce suddenly realizes he knows who Mr. Lime is. 

In Oakvale, one of the wealthiest parts of town, a man is loading his gun when Batman suddenly shows up. The man is named Dewhurst, and Batman says he has overplayed his hand. Batman admits had he stopped sooner, even he wouldn't have been able to figure out his pattern. He realized all these long distance murders were more about him being able to elude capture than focusing on the murders himself. The only time he didn't was when he killed his own parents to inherit their money. The rest of the killings and the persona of Mr. Lime were to draw attention away from him since he would be the obvious suspect. 

Dewhurst is impressed but is still calm and collected as he loads his gun. Batman is still a good distance away from him, and while he's acting in his usual scary and threatening way, he is still severely hurt and can barely move. 

Batman charges, trying to fight past the pain as his vision begins to blur. Dewhurst is scared and fumbles, dropping his box of shells. Batman tackles him down as he tries to shoot him. Batman looks down at him, surprised he was expecting someone more grandiose, but at least this is over and he can finally get some rest. 

The Cavalier arrives at Rudolph Salt's place and drops off the jewels he stole. Salt taunts him over him making the news and his secret being out. The Cavalier doesn't care and wants the knife. Salt produces the murder weapon and asks what will stop him from killing him once he gets the evidence. The Cavalier says Salt does have his bodyguard and he's a gentleman that honors his agreements. Salt says he might see him again, he is still a witness to Ellen's crime and he could still call on her again.

The Cavalier says Salt shouldn't have revealed his future plans. The time for being a gentleman has passed and he kills both Salt and his bodyguard. He enjoyed the thrill of killing them.

Batman is glad to see Lime behind bars, so he can finally drop his obsession and recover. Gordon says that The Cavalier requests a meeting.

Batman and The Cavalier meet up and Bats tells him since he only committed petty robbery and hasn't killed anyone, he can return the jewels and let this be. The Cavalier says it's not so simple, he has committed murders and once they're reported, Batman will come after him. The Cavalier tosses a sword to Batman and says it's best they settle this now. He says he helped a person he cared about but that led to robbery and murder, and worse of all, he actually found it to be thrilling. He wants fate to decide what will become of him and see if he's as good as he says he is. Batman asks if this is a fight to the death and he says anything can happen in the heat of battle. The sword fight is on.

Batman and the Cavalier fight it out. Batman is still sick and exhausted and the swordsman is better than he was expecting. As they fight, Batman has issues with the wet and slippery roof they're on. Batman falls through the roof. 

Gordon and the police force are now waiting outside. A woman slips by them and enters the building. 

Inside the building, Batman is now even more injured with broken ribs and a sprained ankle. He tells the Cavalier that he's finished and he won. Ellen rushes in to stop him from killing Batman, and he tells her he never intended to. The Cavalier says he was hoping Batman would have finished him off to end his story on a high note but now he has to do it himself. He pulls out a gun and empties the chamber, telling Batman that every man has the potential for evil, even him. Ellen says she can confess to the police, but he says it won't excuse him for killing Salt. She says she loves him, but by now the words come too late. The Cavalier throws his sword into the ceiling and tells her to keep feeling that love in her heart and maybe they can be lovers in the next life.

The Cavalier opens the door to exit the building facing off against the police squad. He runs towards them with his unloaded gun and the police open fire on him. The Cavalier is dead. Batman watches from the rooftops as his words echo through his mind, every man has the potential for evil, even him. 

My thoughts-

Wow, there's a lot to say about this one. I didn't like how Mr. Lime turned out to be a random nobody. Or at least, that's what I thought until I checked back to part 1 of this story. It's easy to forget since part 2 dealt more with Cavalier being a jewel thief and whatnot but I didn't notice that Dewhurst's parents were one of the first victims and they were killed in their own bed. Even Batman commented that the killer got up close for that particular murder as later murders became more of a long-distance sniper type thing. I had forgotten he had made an appearance in part 1. Of course, Batman has a hell of a memory, but it's cool the way he figured it out when he was sick in bed with nothing but his thoughts which probably gave him more time to sort things out in his head than obsessing over them in the Batcave. 

Ellen's backstory was quite tragic, dealing with darker themes like domestic abuse. This is what always remind me that the comics go into darker areas than what's usually seen in cartoons. Salt is a horrible scumbag for taking advantage of all this. I do have to laugh though, what good is his bodyguard if he couldn't even protect him from a guy with a sword? 

The Cavalier was an interesting character. He was an actor hoping to fight a few crimes here and there and win over the public so that whenever he would reveal himself, he'd land top roles in movies. I guess he took method acting too far and literally became his character and an obsessed thrill seeker. I mean his biggest problem was his thrill seeking. His stint as a crimefighter lasted longer than expected because he loved the thrill of it all. Even though he was forced to commit crimes for Salt, the way he was able to commit them so flawlessly and dodging the police also became a thrill for him. When he finally saw he needed to kill Salt to keep Ellen safe, he also found a thrill in committing murder. This is when he finally figured that he went too far without going back and was hoping to go out on the ultimate thrill, a battle to the death with the Batman. Too bad he didn't get the memo that Batman doesn't kill and would have found some way to disarm him or whatever had he not been so exhausted.

As for Batman, he really ran himself ragged this time around. This is the literal case of 'I will not rest until I catch so-and-so' to the point of making himself sick. Just the fact that he could barely move when facing Dewhurst and had to force himself to move through the pain made him a more interesting character than the always perfect Batman we're used to nowadays. This is one of the reasons I feel Batman works best in a world without the other DC heroes because you can't have him topple gods with the Justice League in their comics and then have problems with regular thugs in a back alley in his own series. 

I am confused on the final message though. While yes, anyone has the potential to fall into some sort of situation that leads them to commit evil things, I'm not sure why those words rang with Batman to the point that it's how the story ended. Like I know in Batman's overall story, he's always afraid of losing control and just killing the Joker or whoever, but that didn't happen in this story. Maybe if in this particular story, since he was so obsessed with finding Mr. Lime, he had to contain himself from just snapping Dewhurst's neck since he killed a lot of innocent old people just to cover up how he killed his own parents. The fact that Bruce lost his parents to crime at a young age and here's a guy that willingly killed his own, maybe he'd have some sort of internal struggle to not give in to darker thoughts. That would have made Cavalier's words ring truer. 

The only other random thought I have was being surprised 'suicide by cop' was thing even back in 92. I guess it was, but hey, I was a kid back then so I wouldn't have been interested in 'the news' at the time of such events. I was probably too busy watching The Simpsons, given they were new back then. Or hell, since Batman Returns was around the corner, a lot of my focus was on that.

I know this is supposed to be played seriously, but it just looks like the guy is dancing.....

Overall a good story. I enjoyed the concepts of Batman being so focused on this one case since it really hits home for him to the point where the rest of the city was going to hell. It got to the point where Gordon realized they shouldn't be so reliant on Batman, that he helps because he wants to but he's not on the payroll and has no real obligation to do so. The Cavalier was a cool character, though his obsession did him in, or rather, he chose to go out before it could get worse. The other characters were ok with the scenes they had, Salt being a good scumbag and all. The mystery of Mr. Lime was what captivated me, where I had to go back to issue 1 to find the clues. I seriously thought Dewhurst was some random person they pulled out nowhere until I re-read the first issue.