Warning! Spoilers ahead for Crime Syndicate #2
In the latest issue of DC's Crime Syndicate, Earth-3's dark version of Batman, the Owlman, just hacked into the ring of that world's Green Lantern, the Emerald Knight. This comes as giant squid-like creatures called Starro descend on the planet's "heroes" to forcibly recruit Earth-3's metahumans to aide in their fight against an unknown enemy.
During the invasion, Owlman uses his god-given deductive skills to try and pinpoint an effective strategy against them and soon realizes they attacked everywhere except the area where the Emerald Knight resides. Finding this somewhat suspicious, Owlman focuses his efforts on discovering why they are actively avoiding the Emerald Knight and use that against them.
Much like his counterparts including Bruce Wayne of Prime Earth, Earth-3's Owlman seems to suffer from extreme paranoia. This unfortunate state is particularly exacerbated by the arrival of metahumans, which Owlman remedies via thorough contingency plans. Luckily for him (and all of Earth-3), another Emerald Knight came to Earth-3 long before the current "hero," giving this dark version of Batman ample time to come up with a way to keep the next and all future ring-wearing Emerald Knights in check.
Incredibly, Owlman's plan involves actually hacking into the Emerald Knight's ring and using it as some sort of alien walky-talky to converse with the wearer. But in this case, his purpose is to download the data within the ring to ascertain whether previous Emerald Knights have faced such creatures and, if they have, know their weaknesses. And, of course, Owlman successfully identifies a weakness based on the data he receives and whips up a plan before the end of Crime Syndicate #2 written by Andy Schmidt with art by Bryan Hitch.
On Prime Earth, one of Batman's contingency plans against Green Lantern includes a combination of Lex Luthor's cyborgs and Scarecrow's Fear Toxin. First, Batman would weaken his will by making the cyborgs appear as though they were real humans who died because of Green Lantern, in an effort to convince him he failed to protect them. Next, Batman would administer the toxin to break Green Lantern's will entirely by convincing him that he isn't worthy of his power. Meanwhile, another plan involves hypnotizing Green Lantern while he's asleep into believing he's blind. And this isn't even including the times he's stolen Green Lantern's ring.
While intricate, the contingency plans of Prime Earth's Batman pale in comparison to the one his dark counterpart devises on Earth-3. It's absolutely incredible that such a powerful artifact could ever be hacked because doing so implies that the hacker is essentially able to hack willpower. Additionally, this basically means that Batman's counterpart can infiltrate one of the most powerful weapons in the known universe. That's impressive. What would even be more impressive, however, is if he could actually activate the Power Ring on his own and harness the power of the Green Lantern. There are still four more issues in the series for readers to find out what Owlman does with the power of Emerald Knight's ring.