Warning: Contains spoilers for Batman: The Knight #2
The latest issue of Batman: The Knight reveals that before Bruce Wayne became the Caped Crusader, he moonlighted as a criminal for a brief time. Bruce Wayne has been known to be one of the greatest crimefighters and detectives in the history of fiction. With his keen deduction skills, he can track down criminals and his greatest adversaries to stop horrible things in Gotham before they happen. But in this new DC Comics origin story for Bruce's transition to Batman, Chip Zdarsky and Carmine di Giandomenico take a bold step and look at how the Dark Knight realizes that the best way to beat a criminal is to think like one.
Taking place after the death of his parents but before he first put on the cowl, Batman: The Knight #2 follows Wayne on an exodus to Paris as he tries to figure out what he can do to stop the growing crime threat in Gotham. He knows that he wants to do something about it, but he's not entirely sure if he knows how. He even ends up abandoning Alfred to go to Paris on his soul-searching journey, leaving without telling him where he is going. This story is truly aiming to tell the story of Bruce Wayne in-between the boy and the man, and it ends up going in a pretty unexpected direction when a Catwoman-esque burglar enters the fray.
One night in Paris, Bruce encounters a cat burglar named Gray Shadow. While she manages to escape him with ease, she piques his interest and makes him want to learn how he can move like she does. After a tense meeting between them at a cafe, Shadow takes him on as a student, jokingly mentioning, "If you end up as good as I suspect you will be...perhaps you will capture all of my competition." She teaches him everything she knows about moving through the shadows to evade capture and be more efficient. As Bruce begins his attempt to jump across rooftops, he begins to question to himself if he can undergo what he must do to capture criminals: "To do what I WANT to do, won't I--won't I HAVE to be a criminal?" This is a serious dilemma that the young hero must grapple with. He needs to decide whether he can break his moral code to better his skills or abandon his goal altogether.
Luckily for Batman fans, Bruce still has his moral code inside him, and he'll likely retract from criminal activity as the series goes on. During his first real heist where he and Gray Shadow steal a jewelry box worth $4 million, he gets shot in the leg by the police. While she's patching him up, Bruce Wayne's inner morality begins to shine through as he says, "I didn't even want it. The opposite in fact. I wanted nothing to do with it. But...but like this idea I have...I had to see it through, no matter what...even if it killed me." It's clear that this will not be a part of Bruce's life forever as he makes the transition to becoming Batman, but it's interesting to see that while he continues to learn at the hands of Gray Shadow, there are still bits of what make him an honorable hero lurking in his mind trying to help him along the right path.
It's going to be interesting to see Gray Shadow's influence on Bruce as he continues his journey in Paris. Her view on life has already set up how Batman sees Catwoman in the future when he admits to himself, "Growing up with limitless money, I always found it hard to imagine the lengths people go to get it [...] wherever this road takes me, cat burglars of the wealthy will be low on my list." Seeing how a turn to criminal life for Bruce Wayne will shape him into the Batman people know and love will make for a great story, and this DC Comics origin story is sure to keep comic and Batman fans coming back for more.