Bruce strives to earn her trust, and going against orders sneaks into her cell to show her she can trust him. Madeleine is clearly a very smart cookie, and knows she is being watched. What’s a Bruce to do?īruce wears a wire for the Police, and tries to get Madeleine talking about her group.

Back in the real world, Bruce and former friend Richard come to blows, and Richard looks like he’s going all in on the revenge front too.

By the level of excitement, I would guess there is more to the Nightwalkers that we think, and the Warden seems awfully shifty too. She knows who Bruce is, and he is the only person she will talk to. While in there he sees a young girl in a cell, with whom he strikes up a friendly relationship, or seems to. Yep, to teach young Bruce discipline and an awareness of how lucky he is, the courts decide on several weeks of community service in Arkham. Even the rich need a kick in the pants sometime, and Detective Draccon has just the thing. Bruce bails from a gala when he gets the chance to get involved in a police chase, chasing down another of the Nightwalkers, but in doing so puts himself, the police, and the police in danger. His other friends, Dianne and Harvey Dent seem nice though. A former friend Richard seems to especially annoy him, the classic leech type of friend everyone has had at one time or another. Still an orphan, still hugely wealthy, and still being looked after by Alfred, this Bruce is eighteen years old and trapped by the world he has been born into. Remember her, she’s pretty important as we go along. One of their group, Madeleine, is captured by the Gotham Police though all is not what it seems. The prologue introduces us to a group called the Nightwalkers, some sort of class terrorist group out to target the wealthy.

Marie Lu probably retained a degree of editorial say, but this graphic novel adaptation was written by Stuart Moore, no slouch in the comic book genre himself. I like to think of them as Elseworlds books, these characters do exist but on Earth-66 or Earth-Young Adult.

Bruce did feature in the Selina Kyle book, though all these DC Ink takes are self contained and not connected, so ‘that’ Bruce isn’t ‘this’ Bruce. As these books, all of which range from good to very good, feature primarily female characters, it didn’t hurt to throw a male lead in there too. The higher ups at DC obviously liked it a lot and felt its story of a young Bruce Wayne finding his feet fit perfectly in their Young Adults line of books. Batman: Nightwalker was actually written as a prose novel by Marie Lu, for the DC Icons series of books. The title of this graphic novel may seem familiar to some, and it should. Written by Stuart Moore, Marie Lu | Art by Chris Wildgoose | Published by DC Ink | Format: Paperback, 208pp

Nightwalker batman