Scott Snyder has always been a genius at starting an epic story, and this issue is no different. I'm hard pressed to think of a story that covers so much ground and functions on so many levels after just one (admittedly mega-sized) issue. Let's break it down, shall we?
This issue consists of three separate stories.
In the opening sequence, Batman is intrigued when he realizes that someone has been drawing five-foot lines in chalk around Gotham for a little over a year. But, he's disturbed when he realizes through satellite imagery that they form an outline of Batman, with his heart located right where his parents died in Crime Alley. When he visits the scene, he finds a dead ten- or eleven-year-old boy posed like a prop on his knees under an umbrella. As he investigates, Bruce is surprised when a mechanism on the boy's arm activates and fires a revolver at him.
We then move into the second story. Bruce awakens in Arkham Asylum with someone who looks a lot like the Joker claiming that he's his psychiatrist. Dr. Redmund Hudd. (Heh. I only noticed the name in the second reading, I'm embarrassed to admit.) Bruce has been in a delusional state since he (allegedly) murdered his parents, but a new drug that Wayne Enterprises developed has brought him back to reality. ("Heliox" is the new dionesium.) Alfred arrives to explain that Batman existed only in Bruce's deluded head. In an interview room, he explains that Batman's rogues gallery is comprised of members of Arkham's staff and Bruce's skills come from his various therapies. For example, he learned Mandarin at the library under the watchful eye of Thomas Elliott (get it?) and martial arts for Dr. Algol (GET IT?)
Snyder is possibly at his best here, as he makes you believe this story is the subject of the mini-series. We're going to watch Bruce try to prove that Batman was real, like a reverse St. Elsewhere. Alfred eventually shows Bruce that his "Batsuit" is just a shock-therapy cowl attached to a straight jacket. Alfred reaches out his hand, begging Bruce to come home. Bruce takes Alfred's hand and his eyes widen noticeably. He takes the suit and bolts, making his way through Arkham's orderlies and guards as they try to restrain him. On the roof, he demands to know why Alfred lied to him, and Alfred relents. He tells him the truth.
However, Snyder doesn't rush his story. Our only hint about the status quo is that Alfred tells Bruce that nothing exists outside the hospital. Bruce realizes that such destructions means that he failed. He asks Alfred to tell him what happened, but Alfred again beseeches him to just accept that he's Bruce Wayne now. Bruce taps Alfred's face, and Alfred's digital mask fades, revealing a much older self. We learn that, when Bruce took Alfred's hand in the interview room, he felt his pulse and realized that Alfred was older than he was acknowledging. Alfred says that he hadn't yet perfect the device to correct that, because Bruce woke up two years early. He explains Toyman constructed the fake Gotham, with Alfred acting all the parts, his masterpiece. When Bruce asks why Alfred's old and Bruce isn't, Alfred tells him that he won't like the answer. He asks for one last hug from his boy before he tells him the truth, because he knows that Bruce will leave after that. This part wasn't particularly emotional for me in the moment, but reading it a second time -- knowing that Alfred isn't lying about the devastation outside "Arkham" -- it's devastating. After all, Alfred is right -- Bruce leaves after he tells him the truth (off-panel, keeping us guessing). Alfred gets his last hug, and it seems pretty clear that Alfred is going to commit suicide once Bruce leaves, his last grasp at some happiness denied him.
(The only part here that I didn't get was Alfred mentioned an "infection from a bat bite" when he describes the events that led Bruce to becoming Batman, like Joe Chill murdering his parents. What? Is Snyder implying Bruce has Spider-Man-like powers?)
The next moment is the series' iconic moment, with Batman (in the cobbled-together Arkham suit) emerging from the sand into a desert and discovering Joker's head in the lantern. Snyder's Joker is hilarious, and I hope that we see more of him for the rest of the series. (I loved when he pretended not to know that he didn't have a body. Ha!) Batman takes the Joker with him to Coast City, where he confronts a series of Green Lantern-created babies running wild. Apparently Braniac leached Mogo, and Green Lantern rings rained from the sky for anyone to grab. This entire sequence is kind of ridiculous, but it's fun due to the Joker constantly asking what he's missing after Bruce tucked him under his arm to flee the babies. ("Do I hear babies? I love babies!") Bruce is saved when someone emerges from a mid-air door and grabs him. I don't recognize her, but she's with Poison Ivy on patrol in an invisible tank. We first learn of Omega here when the woman tells Bruce that he (Omega) has scouts -- like Bane and Scarecrow -- all over the place. They take Bruce to Gemworld, and it's here where the truth emerges.
Diana is our narrator as we learn about the present. As they walk through Gemworld, she tells Bruce about the status quo: Earth's population has been reduced to the 100,000 or so people living below ground. Before Bruce gets any ideas, Diana tells him that virtually no one is alive on the surface and the people who are alive up there wouldn't follow him. She and the refugees are only safe in Gemworld because it refracts everything, even space-time, so Omega can't detect them.
Snyder and Capullo do a great job making this next sequence chilling. As they arrive at the ruined remains of the Hall of Justice, Diana tells Bruce that it all started with a speech that Lex delivered in which he lamented that everything was falling apart: the Earth is heating, the resources are gone, and the powerful are tightening their grasp. According to Lex, the "powerful" want us all to play nicely so we "win" at the end. Lex decried "goodness" as the oldest lie: be good and stay in the garden rather than eat the apple and learn the truth. Lex encouraged everyone to eat all the apples at once. All Hell then broke loose.
Slowly but surely, everyday people begin to pick off the heroes and the scales start to tip. Bruce encourages the Justice League to throw open the doors to the Halls of Justice, hoping that empowering the people will quell their outrage. Instead, the crowd kills him immediately. (Diana refers to Batman in the third-, not second-, person here, so we know that this Bruce isn't the ur-Bruce, explaining why he's so young.) Luthor thinks that he's won, but, unfortunately for him, they turn on him and the villains, too. (I'm not really sure what Lex thought would happen, since he was one of those elites with a vested interest in everyone playing nicely.) But, it went from bad to worse when someone named Omega rises. He has the Anti-Life Equation, and, even after the remaining heroes and villains band together, he destroys them and takes over the East Coast. Diana then explains to Bruce that this already terrible situation is getting worse, as we learn that Omega has found a way to amplify the Anti-Life Equation where it'll reach even into Gemworld.
Appalled, Bruce encourages Diana to work with him to stop Omega. We learn that he exists because Alfred convinced Diana to bring the machine that Bruce created to replicate himself to the desert. Bruce sees this act as a sign that she has hope, but she tells him that it was a mercy to an old man. Bruce encourages her to fight, and Diana is harsh: she tells him that he died before the fighting even began. It's here where you realize that she's been fighting this fight for twenty-something years: Bruce's optimism has to be grating for her. After all, she reveals that Omega is rumored to be one of Bruce's former disciples. Jason? Tim? Damian? All seem like potential candidates. Bruce asks about Clark, and Diana dismisses rumors that he's alive and sulking in the "Fields of Solitude." Diana saw him fall and, besides, she's scoured the Plains. (If she looked even after seeing Clark fall, maybe Bruce isn't wrong that she has some hope?)
It all leads to the revelation that Diana is leading the remaining population into the Underworld to escape Omega's Anti-Life Equation. (One of the most poignant moments is when she meekly tells him that Hades has promised her to give her a realm with some light.) Bruce is apalled and adamant they do something to save the world. The second moment of this issue (beyond Lex's speech) that rings particularly true to me is here, when Diana tells Bruce that the world up there doesn't want saving and maybe never did. She encourages Bruce to come with them, to help protect the 100,000 good people who need heroes; he could be a new Batman for a new age.
Capullo's Bruce has always been the handsomest, and it's always fun to see that. But, this handsomeness is...weaponized, for lack of a better term, in the next scene. A bruised and battered boy approaches Bruce, who looks like an idealized 1940s college football player with a golden heart that shines through his baby-blue eyes. If our America has a hero, it is someone who looks like Bruce, not Batman. The boy asks Batman if he can see in the dark because he's a bat. Bruce tells him bats navigate by echoes, and the boy informs Bruce that he's not supposed to make echoes down in Gemworld because they bother people. Bruce laughs, and they make one together. It's Bruce as a symbol of hope, but Snyder makes it such a feeble light in such an overwhelming darkness that you understand Diana and her desperate plight all the more. The next morning, she's not surprised when he's gone. I found myself hoping that Bruce is right and that she'd allow herself a shred of hope.
In other words, this issue is a tour de force of world-building. Snyder builds one entirely compelling world -- the Arkham Asylum reality -- only to reveal that it's a front, hiding an entirely different one. But, Snyder is often very good at this sort of thing. It's sticking the landing that I often find is difficult for him, and I find myself hoping against hope that he manages it here, after such an amazing first issue.
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