The Greatest Batman Story Never Told
2. One Year Later
One Year Later was a label that appeared on all DC titles the month after the last issue of Infinite Crisis shipped. It would denote the time gap and act as a physical representation of DC's promise to tell the story of that missing year and its effects in the future.
Writer James Robinson would relaunch the Batman titles with a story called Face to Face, which would run in both Detective Comics and Batman.
Within a matter of pages, Robinson introduced fans to a Gotham that had shifted significantly since the events of Infinite Crisis. While the story primarily focuses on Harvey Dent, a reformed Two-Face who Bruce had charged with protecting Gotham in his absence, it quickly dropped several significant bombshells.
The first was that Jim Gordon was back in his role as Commissioner along with Detective Harvey Bullock. Batman encounters Gordon on the roof of the police precinct to discuss the current case and mentions in a couple of lines of throw away dialogue that he and Bullock took down Atkins and his network of corrupt cops.
Fans were left to assume DC would tell the true story of Atkins fall when DC filled in the missing year; The problem was 52 did no such thing.