Batman #19 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

After "Night of the Owls" and "Death of the Family," we seem to get a break with this next arc, given the fact that Clayface isn't usually the type of villain who gets himself a named story.  The story itself starts with a bang, with Bruce Wayne not only holding up a bank and taking a hostage, but shooting Commissioner Gordon in the chest and allowing him to see his Batman costume under his opened shirt.  Questions, we have them.

First, you've got the first part of that sequence to reconcile, namely the robbery and the hostage.  Snyder goes to great pains to underscore that it's genetically Bruce committing these crimes, leaving the reader to assume that he's either under some form of mind control or has been replaced by a clone.  Clayface seems the obvious answer, but Snyder complicates matters by making it seem possible that Batman's suffering a side effect of the toxin to which he was exposed while fighting the Reaper a few days earlier.

But, given that we know Bruce Wayne's name is eventually going to be cleared for the robbery and hostage, it's the second part of that sequence that gets really interesting.  When Snyder reveals that it was, in fact, Clayface who committed the crimes as Bruce, he portrays Clayface as motivated by a desire to take down Batman, going after Bruce presumably due to his link to Batman via Batman, Inc.  But, it seems pretty clear that Clayface now knows that Bruce is Batman.  Moreover, it seems hard to believe that Commissioner Gordon also doesn't know that Bruce is Batman.  Even when Bruce is inevitably cleared for Clayface's crimes, he's going to have to explain why Clayface had him wearing the Batsuit under his street clothes.  Moreover, even if he does adequately explain it, it seems likely that Commissioner Gordon is going remember the association.  As Tim Drake said in the DCU, once you go into the endeavor knowing that Bruce Wayne is Batman, it's pretty easy to see the evidence in front of you.

Snyder also makes reference to Bruce and Commissioner Gordon's association during the "zero year," teasing his upcoming homage to "Batman:  Year One."  By having Gordon refer to it by name, it implies that it's some sort of event that people in Gotham remember (and not a literary term describing an origin story).  He certainly piqued my interest.

I'll admit that I rolled my eyes over the first few pages, knowing that Bruce is never going to be held accountable for the crimes depicted there.  I even had a moment, when Damian appeared during the fight with the Reaper, where I wondered if we weren't in some sort of shifting multiverse, seeing different versions of Bruce's life.  But, Snyder does manage to bring it all together in the end, setting up a pretty decent Clayface tale.  After spending his entire run on this title on sweeping arcs that haven't really delivered, it's nice to see him return to a more focused story.