The Greatest Batman Story Never Told

While readers could look at this as an excuse to reset the status quo - which had by then just gotten too far out of hand - from a narrative standpoint, the pieces just do not fit together quite as cleanly as DC would have us believe. Fans reading the New Gotham era would be left wondering what really happened during that missing year and forever trying to line up the shattered pieces of the story.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that writers never portrayed Commissioner Atkins as corrupt. He was more a politician than a police officer, the opposite of Jim Gordon. A man who could play the game but was more interested in budgets, figures and stats than he was about boots on the ground policing. Atkins was a good man who didn't agree with Batman's ideals or how he went about things.

It was as if Atkins fell upon his sword as a way of bringing the long hinted at conspiracy of corrupt officers down. Like much of this resolution, it's purely fan theory and speculation. Ed Brubaker, Greg Rucka and Michael Lark would return to Gotham Central and tell this story in an ideal world. Only, real life is a lot like Gotham City; anything but ideal.