The comic in question was the fifth issue of the new Batman: Gotham Knights series, launched in 2000 as part of the Batman line's post-"No Man's Land" status quo. It replaced the canceled Batman: Shadow of the Bat, a third ongoing Batman book that had been launched specifically to give an ongoing home to the character's longtime distinctive writer, Alan Grant.
Gotham Knights seemed similarly created for a particular writer's vision. That writer was Devin Grayson, who had spent the last few years writing various Batman stories, various Titans stories (Arsenal, JLA/Titans, Titans) and at least one story featuring Batman and a Titan (Batman Plus Arsenal #1). What separated her from many of her peers telling Batman stories in the late '90s was, I think, her focus on character work and probing the various relationships between the heroes she wrote.
And Gotham Knights, at least at the outset of the 74-issue series, was the Batman "family" book. Grayson's issues—which comprised about 30 of the earlier issues in the series—almost always featured Batman prominently, but he was usually paired with one of his allies, and Grayson would explore his relationship with those allies during the course of the adventure.
If that wasn't enough to entice readers, the book also featured beautiful covers from Brian Bolland (starting with issue #2) and maybe the strongest back-up feature of any DC book ever: Batman: Black and White strips that, like the 1996 miniseries of that name, featured some of the world's greatest comics creators telling short, self-contained Batman stories in, well, black and white (These back-ups were all collected in Batman: Black and White Vol. 2 and 3, by the way).
Rather than digging through my comics midden for the issue I wanted, I turned to my local library, and borrowed a copy of the 2020 trade paperback collection Batman: Gotham Knights: Transference, which was comprised of the first 12 issues of the series (Grayson wrote the first 11 of these, while the twelfth issue is a fill-in by Jen Van Meter; pencil art was split between Dale Eaglesham, Roger Robinson, Paul Ryan and Coy Turnbull).
Now, when the Justice League defeated The Key at the end of JLA #9, new Green Arrow Connor Hawke having KO-ed him with one of his late father's boxing glove arrows borrowed from the Watchtower's trophy room, they imprisoned his mind in "a perpetually branching fatal maze" and his body in what looks to be a hospital of some kind.
In Gotham Knights, Grayson presumes that it was actually Arkham Asylum and that, I guess, is enough to make him fair game as a Batman villain. The story was entitled "Locked", and it was pencilled by Eaglesham and inked by John Floyd.
Like the rest of the first ten issues that Grayson wrote, the story has an unusual form of narration. Blue boxes with a computer-y font that open with "File Number" and signifiers like "SUBJECT: BATMAN" an "CLASSIFIED". These narration boxes will impart information about the story, as narration boxes so often do, but they also comment directly on aspects of the character who might be their subject, that character's relationship to the Batman and feature tangents in which Grayson can meditate on whatever that issue's particular focus might be.
Essentially, these mysterious files allowed Grayson to both show and tell within the context of her stories, which, for the first year or so, were mainly standalone done-in-ones, unified by the files and building up to the reveal of a classic Batman villain, who would feature in the series' first multi-part story.
I say "mysterious" because it is not at all clear who is writing the files. The obvious suspect, given the title of the book is, of course, Batman, but they always refer to Batman as "Batman" rather than, say, "I", and, additionally, some of the language feels a little...off. For example, in the second issue, featuring new Batgirl Cassandra Cain, the files refer to her as "the female". That same issue refers to Batman at one point as "The Detective," which seems to suggest maybe it's Ra's al Ghul writing them. (I won't spoil it here, in case you want to pick this volume up. I will note it's not exactly a shocking reveal though.)
"Locked" begins in medias res, with the first page's four panels showing dramatic goings-on at Arkham. A turn of the page, and we get a double-page splash. At its center is Batman, battling a quartet of muscular, gray-skinned, bald men, decorated with golden symbols suggesting cogs and key symbols (These are the Key's android henchmen, The Keymen, which Eaglesham draws far differently than artist Oscar Jimenez did in that JLA story).
Standing on the left page and gesturing dramatically is The Key himself, drawn by Eaglesham and company as the same gray-skinned, stringy-haired, red-eyed ghoul that he appeared as in the pages of JLA. He is ranting about keys and escape and the nature of reality, using very big words; he will do so pretty much throughout the issue.
Meanwhile, the case file narration boxes appear across the top of the fist page, referring to The Key as "an unrivaled escape artist, armed with hallucinatory psycho-chemicals as well as drug-enhanced intelligence and senses." We are also told that Martian Manhunter had designed a "doorless fractal time-maze" to imprison The Key's expanded consciousness, "but the Key never stays put for long."
His plot here is that he has somehow—it is never quite explained how—sealed each and every door in Arkham, trapping the staff in whatever room they happened to be in, and keeping them from caring for the inmates. If someone doesn't do something soon, they will start starving.
Batman defeats the Keymen and has grabbed The Key by the leather harness when Batgirl and Azrael arrive on the Arkham rooftop, and, when The Key threatens to do what he did to Arkham to the entire city, Batman starts pounding on him, to the point that Azrael has to pull him off.
"Stop!" he shouts, "You'll kill him!"
Batman tosses Azrael aside and, when Batgirl intervenes, he tries to throw her off the roof top; instead of falling, she grabs a lightning rod, spins around it and kicks Batman, leading to two panels of them fighting. But Batman breaks the fight off, swinging away, so Batman fans would have to wait a bit to see who would win in a Batman vs. Batgirl fight.
It turns out The Key had injected Batman with one of his chemicals, "unlocking" Batman's rage and violence. This is part of a plan to have Batman kill him, which will help him achieve two goals. First, there's the notoriety of fighting Batman and, second, this will allow him to escape life itself.
So Batman runs around Gotham a bit, fighting crime more brutally than ever—at one point, he hurls a drug dealer off a rooftop, but Batgirl is right behind him, and manages to catch the crook mid-fall—before circling back to Arkham to kill The Key.
There, Robin Tim Drake has been called in to watch over the badly injured Key, but the Key paralyzes him, and lectures him about what he's done to Batman, repression, escape, walls, doors and so on (One gets the sense that Robin is only in the story to give The Key someone to talk to for this scenes).
The last person standing in Batman's way is an Arkham doctor, who makes a little speech about how he's devoted himself to preserving precious life, which reminds Batman of his father, and he's able to overcome the influence of The Key's drugs.
In a rather clever ending, Batman tells The Key:
This routine is getting tired, Key. You're an escape artist and you escape.
That's supposed to impress me?
The only person alive who could impress me right now is the person who could actually find a way to contain you.
In the very last panel, we see The Key in a straightjacket and leather straps, various orderlies working around him as he instructs them:
--Don't care what you do for Mr. Zsasz, this simply isn't tight enough!Seeking to impress Batman, he has taken to designing his own imprisonment, one that even he can't escape from.
And how many times do I have to explain-- We can't weld the box shut until I'm in it!
It's a pretty interesting deep dive into the psychology of The Key...at least of Grant Morrison and company's reinvented version of him from JLA, and a compelling exploration of why Batman is the way he is, particularly his devotion to never taking a human life, and how his parents—particularly his doctor father—influenced him.
In general, I'm a fan of Eaglesham's work. He has a highly detailed style well suited to superhero comics. Revisiting this story, though, I'm struck by a few things, like his body-builder version of Batman, complete with bulging veins visible through his costume, and his similarly muscular, more Barbie-doll version of Batgirl, which is in such sharp contrast to how Damion Scott was drawing her in her own title at the time. (Eaglesham, by the way, draws short Batman ears, making him something of an outlier for that point in time; me, as a fan of Norm Breyfogle and Kelley Jones, I say the longer the ears the better).
Though now 25 years old, I think the story aged rather well, and reads perfectly fine today as an interesting, evergreen, standalone Batman comic. Like the rest of Grayson's run on the title, I'd recommend it. If you've never read any of her Gotham Knights, do check out that Transference trade.
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