WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Batman: Curse of the White Knight #2 by Sean Murphy, Matt Hollingsworth and AndWorld Design, on sale now!
Batman has had his home and work space destroyed so often that one might assume he’s trying to fill up a punch card to get a discount on repairing the next wave of destruction. Be it on film, in video games or on the page, we’ve seen Wayne Manor and the Batcave fall in pretty much every incarnation of the World's Greatest Detective. Creative teams seem to revel in taking a swipe at one of the most famous fictional billionaires, and now writer/artist Sean Murphy is joining in on the trend of rendering the Dark Knight homeless with Batman: Curse of the White Knight #2.
The disasters that befall Wayne Manor are often brought upon by one or more members of Batman's colorful rogues' gallery. We've seen the Riddler and Ra's al Ghul lay waste to Bruce Wayne's sanctuary on film. In Batman: Curse of the White Knight #2 the house of Wayne has been taken out by another formidable adversary -- Azrael. Instead of burning down the house or infiltrating the Batcave with brute force, Jean-Paul Valley manages to use Batman's own crime-fighting tools against him.
Along with a small team, the man who kids in the '90s either considered the heir apparent to the cowl or just that weird, blond dude who was Batman for a few months hacks the Batcave's advanced security and takes over the Batmobile and the Batwing, weapons hot and all. The measures put in place to maintain Batman's anonymity are overridden and used against him.
To some readers, it might appear as if Sean Murphy is something of a sadist when it comes to his treatment of Batman, but the reality is that he's asking questions about the methodology of a one-man vigilante war. In Batman: White Knight, readers were made to ponder the moral dilemma a city may face when it comes to costumed heroes doing what is essentially the work of law enforcement. Even the most insane character in DC Comics history points out the fact that not only accepting the idea of Batman, but encouraging it, is detrimental to certain facets of government.
Batman: Curse of the White Knight #2 takes things even further by not only taking away the confidence and emotional support Bruce Wayne begrudgingly relied on in his quest to vanquish crime from Gotham City, but in a single issue we see Batman loss all those wonderful toys. The sick irony is those wonderful toys destroyed each other in the one place where no one was supposed to find them.
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