Warning! Spoilers for Detective Comics #1089!Batman has had a long and complicated relationship with Gotham City, and the conclusion to his latest adventure has changed it yet again, as Batman once again becomes scary to Gotham’s citizens. Batman and his city will never exist in complete harmony, but he’s still exactly what it always needs.

In Detective Comics #1089 by Ram V, Dan Watters, Guillem March, Christopher Mitten, Luis Guerrero, Tríona Farrell, Steve Wands, and Ariana Maher, Batman uses a machine that’s reshaping Gotham City to make the city’s residents scared of him once again. The villainous Orghams plan to use the Scarecrow to keep the city afraid forever, ensuring their authoritarian control over it. They believe Batman has to kill Crane to save Gotham and stop their "Thalamus Engine," but Batman doesn’t intend to stop it.

Instead, he scares Crane by presenting himself in a terrifying, monstrous new form, showing how Batman has come to with the influence of the demon Barbatos, and Crane's fear of Batman then permeates throughout the entire city.

Batman Saves Gotham - By Making the City Fear Him More than Ever

Page from Detective Comics Annual 2022 #1 by Ram V., Rafael Albuquerque, Christopher Mitten, Hayden Sherman, Lee Loughridge, and Deron Bennett

Introduced in Detective Comics Annual 2022 #1, the Thalamus Engine, otherwise known as the reality engine, was planted in Gotham hundreds of years ago by the Orghams. The engine was designed to keep the city under their control in a cyclical status quo. That original programming was corrupted by the vigilante Aldridge Pearce, who was inspired delayed the Orghams' plans to the present day, meaning that they had to remove Batman to "purge" the engine’s programming and bring Gotham under their control forever.

The engine’s power has already been demonstrated on the page. In Detective Comics #1078 by V, Jason Shawn Alexander, Dave Stewart, and Tom Napolitano, the Orghams hanged Batman to remove his influence, and this "death" in concert with the reality engine made the city literally begin to forget about the Dark Knight without realizing. Similarly, as #1089’s narration notes, most people don’t even notice the change when Batman sends fear throughout the city, but that doesn’t mean it’s not having an effect. The actual mechanics of what happens are less important than how it frames Batman in relation to Gotham as a renewed symbol of fear.

Batman's Sacrifice Comes After a Moment of True Triumph

The Bat-Signal Is Gotham's Ultimate Symbol

What’s fascinating about this moment is how it comes right after a celebration of Batman in the very same issue. With the Orghams’ control of Gotham City slipping, its residents "return to a memory of comfort," creating makeshift Batsignals across the city as the tide turns in Batman’s favor. This celebration of Gotham's vigilante by its people means that Batman isn’t only inflicting fear; he’s sacrificing people’s positive perception of him in order to save them. It’s reminiscent of the ending of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, in which Batman allows his reputation to be smeared to save Gotham in a broader sense.

Like Batman, no individual writer can break this pattern for good, but they can shape readers’ understanding of it.

Batman’s turn towards fear is also interesting on a metatextual level. The very idea of the reality engine is, in part, V - who has been writing this massive Gothem Nocturne arc since 2022 - grappling with the cyclical nature of comic book stories. It’s a machine that literally forces Gotham City to tell the same story over and over again. Like Batman, no individual writer can break this pattern for good, but they can shape readers’ understanding of it. They can make readers hopefully reexamine the ties that bind Batman to his city and tell a thematically rich tale within the framework they’re bound to.

Detective Comics #1089 is available now from DC Comics.