Tomorrow has come today in the DC Universe as the company-wide crossover Future State kicks off across all titles this month, and one question lingering on the minds of many a Batman fan is “who are The Magistrate,” the new overseers of Gotham’s military dictatorship? Tangling with Gotham’s remaining at-large vigilantes in The Next Batman #1, The Magistrate’s soldiers and their identities by and large remain a mystery, but a few clues do indicate a certain methodology behind the madness. While The Outsiders and the new Arkham Knight’s band of “reformed” villains known as The Vagabonds do battle for the fate of Gotham’s streets, let’s take a look at what we know about this iron-clad enemy.
The Magistrate seems to have been invited into Gotham City by Mayor Christopher Nakano following his election to Gotham’s highest office on a platform of putting an end to “masks”, as both anti-criminal and anti-vigilantism. This band of mercenaries has evolved into an entity with complete authority over Gotham’s streets, their reach extends quite far into the bureaucratic make-up of Gotham, including Arkham Asylum, where Jonathan Crane was given authority as a senior psychologist. With Bruce Wayne now presumed dead and his home occupied by The Arkham Knight, Astrid Arkham, and the Vagabonds (or The Arkham Knights), this band of militaristic fascists now possess Judge Dredd-esque control over law-enforcement activities. But how do they operate?
The most recent issues of the Future State crossover portrays quite a few details regarding their methodology and activities following their taking control of the city. First, their pursuit of The Signal in the most recent issue of The Next Batman demonstrates that their jurisdiction only extends as far as the city limits of Gotham, but that their pursuit of criminals and vigilantes within this area is akin to a fully decked-out army operation, complete with air support. Likewise, the presence of The League of Assassin’s Kaliber within their ranks, as well as the Scarecrow, Dr. Jonathan Crane, shows that at the very least they are willing to use former villains and “reformed” criminals in an effort to bolster their ranks, perhaps revealing a more insidious motivation behind their draconian measures. The very fact that Crane was allowed to resume his previous profession as a psychiatrist so quickly, despite his many violent and terrible crimes, might also reveal a larger scheme geared towards cowing the people of Gotham into stunned obeisance rather than genuine benevolence behind their activities.
What is known about their organization is that the city is divided up into at least 11 sectors which are heavily patrolled at all times by military-style parades of troops and tanks by The Magistrate’s forces. The governors of these sectors, referred to as “Peacekeepers”, are tasked with apprehending the remaining masked, enhanced, or metahuman individuals under their jurisdiction, and report back to a masked individual known as “Peacekeeper-01”. Each member of this organization is a highly-trained killer, with elite military training. The entire system by which they keep the city under guard is highly reminiscent of the scenario poised in the 2015 videogame Batman: Arkham Knight, in which the titular Arkham Knight, really a version of Jason Todd (known as the Red Hood in the current DC Universe) used a similar strategy to assist Scarecrow in his bid to destroy Batman and take over Gotham City. The only difference, of course, is that these are troops sanction by the government, and thus with the backing of police officers, whom they nominally supplement, but in reality have supplanted.
While their efforts to keep Gotham City under the boot heel of their authoritarian rule may have hit a few speedbumps, is there any way the vigilantes of Gotham City can come back to rid themselves of this fascist menace? Readers will find out in upcoming issues of Future State, coming soon.