9. The First Bat Signal
What tends to happen when the power goes out in a major city? Looting. And that's what happens in Gotham. Looters smash their way into a store and fill their boots while a terrified mother and daughter look on helplessly as their livelihood is being taken. Then the perspective shifts to the little girl being cradled by her mother. Outside the frame of her mother's body, she sees a flash of black cape, a mugger going down, part of a cowl is that a bat mask? and then it's over. The looters are subdued, the store is safe again. It's such an amazing scene that's brilliantly laid out by Capullo (in a single page no less!) where you don't see Batman but you see the effects of Batman from one of the people he's sworn to protect. The coup de grace is when the little girl draws a crude bat symbol on a torch and shines it on a wall the first Bat Signal!