Warning! Spoilers ahead for Future State: Dark Detective #2 from Mariko Tamaki and Dan Mora

The latest issue of DC Comics' Future State: Dark Detective has revealed the "death" of Bruce Wayne and Batman. Gotham City has been overtaken by an oppressive regime known as the Magistrate which is dedicated to maintaining order by hunting down any and all masks and vigilantes. Of course, this means that the Dark Knight was public enemy number one, and Bruce Wayne was believed to have been shot and killed in a dark alley, just like his parents. However, Batman is nothing if not resilient, and he managed to survive while the rest of the world still thinks he's dead. Now, in this latest issue, it's revealed how Bruce Wayne managed fake his death and convince his would-be killer that they had succeeded.

Future State: Dark Detective #2, from writer Mariko Tamaki with art by Dan Mora, sees Bruce Wayne recounting his "death" by the Magistrate, which motivated him to keep Bruce Wayne and his Batman persona dead going forward, becoming the new Dark Detective instead. Bruce still has no idea how the Magistrate knew that Bruce Wayne was Batman, but he's determined to find answers and take down their organization from within, all while avoiding their advanced surveillance technology to stay off their radar as much as possible.

Related: Dark Detective Is The Ghost Of Batman In DC Future State

As Bruce remembers it, he was attacked one night in an alley by none other than Peacekeeper-01, the Magistrate's head operative. Bruce was shot several times, but he managed to stay up and run away, diving off a dock and into the Gotham harbor. While Peacekeeper-01 was right behind him, the former Batman managed to find a dead body floating in the water above him.

Not only did the corpse cause Peacekeeper-01 to believe he has succeeded in killing Bruce, but a faulty electro grenade Bruce had thrown behind the agent went off and caused enough of a distraction for him to escape to find an underground surgeon to heal his wounds. Now, the Dark Detective is born, having none of the resources that Batman did. No allies, no money, no advanced weapons or tech. It's just Bruce Wayne and his war on the Magistrate.

Interestingly enough, the Dark Detective does comment that the bullet that "killed" him is the one he can always feel when he kneels on his left knee. For longtime Batman fans, this is a pretty cool reference, as it's the same injury inflicted upon Batman just before he decided to go into retirement in the Batman Beyond animated series, which was why he needed a cane. In any case, fate was extremely kind during the "murder" of Bruce Wayne and Batman, providing exactly what was needed for the man to live on as the Dark Detective and embark on a new, more dangerous crusade to take back Gotham once and for all from the Magistrate as DC's Future State continues.

More: DC Future State: The Real Reason Gotham City Falls Apart