This article contains spoilers for Detective Comics #1035.

Batman faces Gotham City’s next nightmare threat – the walking dead. It seems Gotham City just can’t get a break. If a city gets the hero it deserves, then it is frankly quite telling that Gotham’s hero is a brooding vigilante who dresses up as a bat and struggles to deal with his past trauma. But the residents of Gotham are getting tired of Batman, not least because they realized the Dark Knight appears to be locked in a cycle of escalation with his various foes.

There was a time when even Batman’s most ambitious enemies just imagined causing trouble in a district of Gotham. That time is long since gone, and nowadays the entire city finds itself subjected to chaos with alarming frequency. There are certain nights in Gotham that Batman and Commissioner Gordon refer to as “Black Roosters,” an expression lifted from Chicken Little. These are nights that seem bleak even by Gotham’s standards, when madmen and criminals seem to have brought Gotham to the brink of collapse and ordinary civilians are close to losing hope. These Black Roosters are becoming worse, with first Bane and then the Joker coming close to taking over the entire city. It is no wonder Gothamites have elected their latest mayor on an anti-Batman ticket.

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Detective Comics #1035, by Mariko Tamaki and Dan Mora, sees Batman confronted with Gotham’s latest mystery. Sarah Worth, a young woman who was born into one of Gotham’s wealthiest families, goes missing; it doesn’t take Batman long to trace her, but tragically all he finds is her corpse. And then, in a shocking twist, the issue ends with Bruce Wayne learning what was dead has not stayed dead as Sarah’s reanimated body shambles down the street towards him. That’s right, it looks as though Gotham is now going to have to deal with zombies.

Detective Comics #1035 is one of the strongest Batman stories in quite a while. This is largely because, rather than focus on action sequences, Tamaki uses it to emphasize Batman’s skill as a detective. This is a mystery story first and foremost, albeit one that seems to be taking a horrific supernatural turn. Compounding problems, Batman has been stripped of his fortune, losing what the Justice League movie described as his one superpower. He is reduced simply to his prodigious intellect, which fortunately is proving to be far greater a weapon than anything Lucius Fox could have built for him.

It is unclear how Sarah’s corpse has been transformed into a zombie, but this is Gotham City – which means she is most likely simply the first of many. Gotham really has enough to deal with already, but it looks as though it’s about to face a zombie crisis as well. As good as Batman may be, he is no expert when it comes to the supernatural, which means this time he may well be out of his depth.

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Thomas Bacon
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Tom Bacon is one of Screen Rant’s staff writers, as well as a Peer Mentor for new writers and a member of the Care Team, offering support and a listening ear to members of the Comics group. A lifelong fan of major franchises including Star Wars, Doctor Who, and Marvel, Tom is delighted his childhood is back – and this time it’s cool. You can find him on Twitter @TomABacon.

A graduate of Edge Hill University, Tom remains strongly connected with his alma mater as a volunteer chaplain. He’s heavily involved with his local church, and anyone who checks him out on Twitter will swiftly learn he’s into British politics too.

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