Chapter 1 - Batman: One Endless Night

A six part mini-series

Art from Court of Owls Saga for Reference

This opening chapter serves as the definitive Batman story of the SnyderVerse comic continuation.

A brutal, intimate, single night descent through Gotham City where Batman is no longer the hunter… but the hunted.

The story unfolds over the course of one relentless night, inspired structurally by One Dark Knight, stripping away time jumps and globe trotting spectacle in favor of sustained pressure. Gotham is locked in chaos: a citywide blackout, suffocating heat, and a criminal underworld that senses blood in the water. Every alley, rooftop, and backstreet becomes hostile territory. Batman is moving, constantly, because stopping means dying.

From the opening pages, it’s clear this is not a mystery to be solved but a manhunt. And the one leading it is Deathstroke.

Deathstroke isn’t here for chaos or ideology. He’s here to win. He knows Bruce Wayne. He knows Batman’s patterns, his injuries, his age, and his limits.

For perhaps the first time in his career, Batman is physically outmatched and forced to flee, improvise, and survive rather than dominate. Their conflict stretches across Gotham in a running war of attrition, each encounter leaving Batman more battered and more desperate.

As Batman moves through the city, the story becomes a tour of his past.

Gotham itself acts as a memory palace as every district begins triggering ghosts.

Arkham Asylum looms large, whether visited physically or psychologically, representing decades of failure, repetition, and unresolved trauma. The mythos built over 80 years closes in on him. Enemies, allies, mistakes, and scars that never healed.

Among those shadows are Joker and Harley Quinn, once again loose in the city.

Their presence isn’t just spectacle as it reopens the deepest wound in Bruce’s life… the death of Robin. That tragedy, previously hinted at in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and twisted further by Joker in Zack Snyder's Justice League, is subtly confronted here. The vandalized Robin suit in the Batcave begins to gain more context. It’s a wound that still dictates Batman’s choices, rage, and isolation.

This is also the story that finally introduces Catwoman into the SnyderVerse. Through flashbacks and present day encounters, we learn she was Bruce Wayne’s closest brush with a real relationship—one that collapsed under the weight of who they both were. Their history is messy, unresolved, and painfully human. Selina is no savior, no soft escape but she represents the life Bruce might have had—and the one he chose to abandon.

Threaded through the chaos is a larger DC mythology at work. The Riddler appears not as a gimmick villain, but as a crucial connective piece to the broader Justice League saga.

Information tied to the Anti-Life Equation is decoded, weaponized, and desperately sought… It is the true prize of the night. Batman either possesses it or is racing to stop it from falling into the wrong hands. That knowledge turns Gotham into a battlefield and Batman into the most valuable target on the board.

Everything converges in the final act.

Batman, exhausted and injured, finally faces Deathstroke in a decisive confrontation… and loses.

Not because he lacks will or intelligence, but because time, damage, and humanity have caught up with him. Deathstroke proves faster, sharper, and merciless.

Then the balance shifts.

Batgirl enters the fight.

This is not an origin story. This Batgirl is seasoned, lethal, and fully formed, a warrior who has survived years in Gotham’s shadows. Her speed and precision neutralize Deathstroke’s greatest advantage and turn defeat into survival. She doesn’t replace Batman as much as she reinforces the idea that his legacy has already begun to extend beyond him.

The chapter ends not with triumph, but with continuation.

Batman survives the night… but Gotham has made it clear he cannot carry this war alone anymore. The city is changing. The threats are escalating. And the age of solitary heroes is coming to an end.

This is not just a Batman story.

It’s the foundation of a larger endgame told through scars, memory, and one endless night in Gotham.