Detective Comics #40

Issue Details

Synopsis

ANARKY, CONCLUSION While Batman carries a wounded Harvey Bullock over his shoulder, he has Alfred Pennyworth hack into an Anarky mask to pull the Mad Hatter's tech from it. Outside the Blue House, the Hatter himself has been surrounded by masked people, who accuse him of murdering the children who had stayed there. Batman believes that the real Anarky is controlling the others using the Hatter's technology, and looking out the window, he swears he won't let Anarky kill the Hatter, no matter his crimes. He leaves Bullock with a communicator and asks Alfred to get the detective an extraction.   While Batman battles with Anarky and the thugs outside, Alfred discovers that the signal is coming from within the Blue House. Fortunately, Bullock is there to hear his warning, and offers his help in finding the source while Batman is occupied. Weak from his gunshot wound, Harvey follows Alfred's direction to a dead end, and turns just in time to stop an Anarky thug from trying to take him down. He tackles his assailant through the wall that had stopped his progress.   Batman, meanwhile, evades the other thugs by using a device to emit a cloud of smoke, hiding him from view. He then turns his attention to Anarky himself, assuring him that he knows all about him. He knows who he is.   Worriedly, Alfred begs Harvey to locate the source of the signal and identify its broadcast frequency so he can block it before the tensions between police and the manipulated people wearing Anarky masks get so high that they become violent. Having at least discovered the source - the Hatter's top hat - Harvey isn't sure how to identify the frequency, and Alfred becomes impatient. Needing to do something, he leaves the safety of his car, wearing a makeshift Anarky mask, and shouts out to the crowd that they should abandon violence in favour of living with the freedom they've already gained. He warns that the tools of anarchy are not the same thing as freedom. The police are only doing their jobs; protecting Gotham. Unfortunately, the anarchists cannot be dissuaded, and violence erupts. Rushing back to his car, Alfred reports that he's failed, and he needs the frequency. Unsure of what to do, Harvey examines the hat more closely and spots the tag reading "In this style 10/6", wondering if that might be the key.   Batman unmasks Anarky as councilman Sam Young, who admits that he worked for years within the system to try to put Jeb Lester and the Hatter away, but the system prevented it. Batman challenges that his alternative method of manipulating the peopel of Gotham into an uprising via mind-control is no better. What he has achieved today is not justice. In their battle, a section of the building collapses on them, and they're pinned beneath the debris. Injured, Young explains that he watched Lester hand his sister over to the Hatter. Jervis Tetch used the children of the Blue House to act out his sick fantasies. His sister Alice became a victim of those fantasies, and nobody would help Sam put a stop to it. For the rest of his life, he saw his sister in the face of every child they murdered - and so he makes everyone wear her face in the form of the Anarky mask, so that she'll never be forgotten.   Alfred has no luck with the frequency options Harvey gave him, so Harvey takes a leap of faith, and puts the hat on his own head. Using it, he convinces the converging thugs to remove their masks, freeing them of malicious control. As it turns out, one of their number is a homeless man that Batman had rescued from the Hatter's thugs just days earlier, and he urges the others to help him remove Batman safely from the debris pinning him.   Later, Harvey makes it to the hospital, where Nancy Yip feeds him hospital food, though he doesn't appreciate it. She admits that while she has been stuck on suspension for accidentally shooting Lonnie Machin, her lawyer thinks he may be able to get her badge back. Lonnie, meanwhile, is about to be released from the same hospital, and when he is given back his possessions, among them, he discovers an Anarky mask.   Sam Young, meanwhile, is put in jail, having used the Anarky persona to exact revenge on Lester and the Hatter, while using the magnitude of his revolution to hide the personal nature of his revenge. The Hatter, though, shows no sign of becoming any more sane. In the meantime, Batgirl is attempting to recover the wiped data records for the city. As Bruce and Alfred work on removing the Christmas lights from the roof of Wayne Manor, Alfred worries at what might have happened if Bullock hadn't figured out how to use the hat, and stopped the riot. Bruce comments that what's more worrying is what would have happened if the rioters hadn't been under the control of someone. Alfred hopes that they would have done the right thing. For the time being, though, Gotham still needs a dark knight to ensure that somebody does the right thing.