Tuesday, October 13, 2026

Drat, I thought I maybe had more of this one: from 2010, Batman Confidential #40, "Ghosts" Story and art by Sam Kieth.
On a chilly-looking night in Gotham, Batman is with Gordon at a crime scene, strangely covered with the scent of sulphur: it's an ingredient in gunpowder, but there was more of it than could be accounted for there. As murders continue among the homeless, Gordon asks Batman to contact a social worker, Callie Dean, to see if she had heard anything from her clients. But, Callie seems to be going through her own thing, as she was having dreams of her mother, and how she lost hear, to a scent of sulphur. (Callie Dean very much resembles Julie from the Maxx, but there might be more to her to be revealed later.)
The murderer reveals itself to Batman pretty quickly, though: some kind of sulphurous wisp, with teeth. It recognizes Batman, having seen him as a small boy, and is seemingly confused by the concept of "murder." (It seems to understand, "murder" would be when a life was taken too early; but didn't appear to have connected that to its own actions.) Batman is later attacked by the ghost, bitten badly and blacking out, but help was coming...
I'm 40% sure I've pulled another issue of Kieth's four-parter, but I'll have to keep digging for the rest. I was also momentarily stricken; why was this in Batman Confidential and not Legends of the Dark Knight? Legends is a better name, and I know it's returned since then. Oddly, I probably have the rest of Confidential after Kieth's run; I was getting them cheap from Hastings, and we saw the last issue some time back.
Posted by googum at 5:00 AM
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3 comments:

Mr. Morbid said...

Hmmm. I might have to go find this one to read it because it looks pretty good. My only minor complaint is the art. While I expect a certain Sam Keith-ness to his art style, it really seems like he’s gone off the rails as far as how distorted his style is in this. And I get it, it’s supposed to accentuate the tone of the story, but personally I’d have preferred he’d have reined it in here, especially with a character line Batman. He just looks painfully & overly-distorted for my liking here, and I know he can draw a really good Batman because he’s done it plenty of times before, but this particular iteration just wasn’t for me. Good story though

It definitely fit the tone of the LODK series than the Batman Confidential stuff, or even a Batman: Black & White.

Which then makes me wonder what exactly was the purpose of the Batman Confidential series after the first couple of issues, let alone in general? Because they could’ve just as easily kept LODK just relaunched it as a new number one. If you remember they did the same thing with JLA Classified & Superman as well.

10:51 AM
H said...

I feel like Batman books were more likely to go for a new title than just a new #1, at least at that point. Legends was the last of the late 80’s/early 90’s individual arc books standing in the 2000’s.

8:42 PM
Mr. Morbid said...

It definitely feels that way yeah

10:37 AM

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