Detective Comics #598

Issue Details

Synopsis

BLIND JUSTICE PART 1 In the middle of the night, Bruce Wayne wakes up after having a nightmare about the night that his parents died, but in the dream, Batman was holding the gun. Alone in his room, Bruce notices the Bat-Signal in the sky and goes to meet Commissioner Gordon. Together, they head to the morgue where Gordon shows Batman what was left of a body they foundas only a mass of skin and muscles without any shape because all the bones in the body had been crushed. Gordon takes Batman to the place where they found the body and they realize that there was a hole in a wall, but there weren't bricks or rubble around, which led Batman to the obvious answer that someone crushed the wall in the same way as the bones of the victim were crushed. After that, Batman returns home, tries to sleep for a while but the nightmare continues and he decides to work on the mystery down in the Batcave.  That day, a woman named Jeannie Bowen arrives at Gotham City, looking for his long lost brother. She is staying in a modest hotel and the next day, she goes to the last place her brother was seen: Wayne Enterprises. She waits for the personnel manager, but after a while she asks help from Riordan, the director of research at WayneTech, who tells her that her brother never worked in Wayne Enterprises, tearing all her hopes apart.   That night, Batman goes to pier 38, to stop a drug dealing racket. The vigilante patiently waits until the criminals complete their transaction, but before they could do it, they are attacked by a big man, wearing a white hood and some artifacts on his wrists. The man crushed the cargo ships were the drugs were being transported and then, he attacks the criminals, until the timely intervention of Batman. They fight and Batman manages to hurt the man that calls himself Bonecrusher, who tries to escape with his open wound bleeding profusely. Batman tracks Bonecrusher to the rooftop of a warehouse, where he tries to take the man to the police, but Bonecrusher jumps to the high voltage lines and kills himself, preventing any further recognition. When Gordon and the police arrive at the scene, Batman explains that because of the headache he was feeling before Bonecrusher appears, the man was using some ultrasonic gadgets that allowed him to pulverize solid objects by using different frequencies of sound called ultrasound and infrasound, and thus making him the responsible from last night's murder.   Elsewhere in Gotham, a homeless man tells his friends about a dream he had where he fought against Batman on the docks and he was a big man.  Some days later, Jeannie Bowen looks for help in a private corporation that contacted her to Bruce Wayne. Bruce can relate to Jeannie's story as they both are orphans with no one else in the world and decides to help her. Bruce takes her on a tour through Wayne Enterprises and after a while, they meet with an old man in a wheelchair called Kenneth Harbinger. Bruce explains him that Jeannie is looking for her brother and they show Kenneth a picture of the lost man, which Kenneth actually remembers as a young intern who used to work at WayneTech but disappeared six months ago. Riordan, the man who told Jeannie that her brother never worked in WayneTech, learns about their discovery and he report the news to someone and demands a plan of action.   Jeannie is so happy of making progress that she invites Bruce to the opera that night. As they are driving to the opera, Bruce notices the Bat-Signal and apologizes with Jeannie, leaves her on the road and goes to meet with Gordon, because the Bonecrusher was spotted again.   At that moment, the homeless man is attacked by thieves and before they could hurt him further, his friends rescue him and take him to a soup kitchen to recover.   The S.W.A.T. Team that had surrounded Bonecrusher are attacked with a high pitch noise sound created by Bonecrusher. Batman arrives at the scene and confronts Bonecrusher. At the same time, the homeless man starts replicating Bonecrusher's movements and actions at the soup kitchen. Batman uses a smoke pellet to distract Bonecrusher until the police surrounds him again. Bonecrusher decides to sacrifice himself instead of turning in and detonates a bomb near the flammable truck behind him. Before dying, his last words were "I am the scheme". At that moment, the police arrive at the soup kitchen and controls the homeless man, placing him under arrest. One of the officers who arrested him uses the radio to tell Gordon about the situation and also tells them about the man's last words before being subdued were "I am the scheme".   Batman visits the homeless man at prison and at first sight he remembers him as Roy Kane, Jeannie's brother. Apparently the man has lost all the memories he had and Batman requests Gordon to set the man free. The next day, Bruce and Jeannie go to meet with Roy, who was left with one of the best doctors in Gotham. Jeannie is happy to be reunited with her brother, despite the fact that he doesn't remember her. The doctor explains Bruce that there is some sort of biochip on Roy's head, similar to the technology that WayneTech has been developing. As a way of repaying them for all their troubles, Bruce offers Roy and Jeannie to stay at Wayne Manor. During their stay, Bruce asks Roy to remember anything about WayneTech, but the only thing that Roy remembers is the word "Sunday". At night, Bruce investigates the WayneTech files in the Batcave, looking for the word Sunday, but the only thing close to it is a project file named "Sabbath". Bruce tries to enter the file, but is somehow prevented from doing it, and at WayneTech, Riordan calls to the same person as he did earlier and informs him about Bruce's latest action.  On a quiet day at Wayne Manor, Jeannie and Roy are talking about their future, when suddenly Roy starts to shake violently and the security alarm is triggered. Alfred informs Bruce that there is a breach on their security and that someone is already inside the house. Roy starts posing in a weird way in front of a wall and with an explosion that tears the wall down, Bonecrusher comes inside the house in the same pose as Roy is. Bronecrusher realizes that Roy is intercepting his transmissions and thus, he replicates every movement that Bonecrusher does and that it must be why Bruce discovered about the Sabbath project. Bonecrusher attacks Roy and knocks him down, before focusing his attention in Bruce. However, Alfred strike from behind with a tranquilizer dart and Bonecrusher falls down, allowing Bruce to approach him and try to reveal the man behind the hood, but before Bruce could do it, the body explodes. When Roy recovers, he remembers something from WayneTech and the word Sabbath; it is an acronym for "surgically augmented biochip-bearing assault troops"; or in other words, remote-controlled killers.   That night, Batman infiltrates into WayneTech, where an illegal operation was taking place. Batman takes out all the thugs and infiltrates into Kenneth Harbinger's office, where he finds the body of the old man, hanging from the cables of his laboratory and his assistant, crying alone for the death of his mentor. Batman checks the computer and searches the files for the Sabbath project and what he finds leaves him speechless. Kenneth Harbinger is the mastermind behind the Bonecrusher. The scientist found a way to use the bodies of other people by placing his mind into the hosts' bodies, which made him happy for being able to feel the sensation of walking and the youth again. For the Bonecrusher project, he recruited eight men with great physical features. He also lied to Bruce about Roy because he was one of his earliest experiments and he got rid of him when Roy started to ask too many questions. In the end, Kenneth was being blackmailed by Riordan and he decided to take his experiments to the next level and transferred his mind and conscience to a different body permanently.   The following days, WayneTech's laboratory for Sabbath Project is dismantled under Bruce Wayne's orders and when he tries to tell Riordan that he is out of the enterprise and that he would report him to the authorities, Riordan show Bruce the documents of the Sabbath Project, supposedly authorizing all the activities in it. Bruce tells Riordan that he isn't scared of him or his forgeries, and Riordan tells Bruce that he also has secret information about him. He tells Bruce that they have been following him for the last fifteen years and that they hold possession of his ultimate secret. Despite the threat Bruce tells him that he is going to carry on with the plan and expose him to the authorities, and Riordan makes his move.   When Bruce arrives at Wayne Manor, he finds that there are Federal Agents, questioning Alfred and his guests. Bruce thinks he knows why they're there, but he is completely surprised when they arrest him under the charges of being a secret spy for the communist party. TRIBUTE: PEOPLE OF NOT PAY HOMAGE TO BATMAN A series of pin-ups and messages from different people around the comic book industry regarding Batman's 50th Anniversary.