[EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a political thriller starring Batman. It's written as thought it were a comic book script with eight issues. It's unclear to me whether this is in violation of 's terms of service - if there are any objections to the format, please let me know and I will revise or post elsewhere. Obviously this has no artwork, so you will have to use your imagination; I tried to describe the pertinent action as best I could.]
BATMAN: THE WAY WITH WAYNE
[A half-page panel, YOUNGER WOMAN, an innocent-looking blonde in her early 20s, with a bruised right cheek, solemnly washes dishes while a TV plays a campaign speech in the background. From her window we can see a Gotham skyline at night.]
Gotham then.
TV CANDIDATE: This is a new day in Gotham. People are fed up with the old ways, the old politics.
[As the TV goes on, she walks to her bathroom.]
[TV CANDIDATE:] I see a way forward from the chaos. I see a phoenix rising from the ashes. I see hope on the horizon.
[She gazes at a bottle of sleeping pills.]
Gotham now.
[a dead man in a high-rise apartment is lying upright in his bed. He's shirtless, wearing a red ball gag with blue stars on it. A TV in the background, that we can barely see, plays a mayoral debate.]
TV: It's a new dawn in Gotham. The old ways just don't work anymore. People desperately want change. They'll crawl across broken glass just for the chance of it.
[Someone off-panel yanks away the dead body.]
[We cut to the mayoral debate forum, see that the candidate talking is BRUCE WAYNE.]
BRUCE: My father taught me many things.
He taught me about Gotham. He taught me what it means.
Gotham isn't the poverty. It isn't the empty shipyards and factories. It isn't the corrupt. It isn't the criminal.
Gotham is not Batman.
Who else here is sick of hearing about him? Batman this, Batman that. They use him to divide us, every year. Honestly, who cares? I don't. He's going to do what he's going to do.
He's not Gotham's future. He never was. That's what I'm here to talk about tonight.
MCCASKILL: [A woman in her late thirties, with a dark tan, very blonde hair, wearing a blue pantsuit.] Well, I guess if I entered into an ill-fated business partnership with a vigilante criminal, I wouldn't much want to talk about it. I also wouldn't want to talk about your actual business experience, because there really isn't any.
And I definitely wouldn't want to talk about how the last time you dipped your toe into local politics, it was to support a district attorney who is now a blight on Gotham's good name.
BRUCE: Now see, that's just.-
That's old politics. And you're wrong, by the way. I'm happy to talk about Harvey Dent, who I'm not ashamed to call my friend. He needs to pay for what he's done, but I think what we really should talk about is the help he never got from Arkham Asylum-which was in your district, by the way-
[COMMISSIONER GORDON and DEPUTY SMITH are in a dump hotel room.
GORDON: You transferred in three years ago, right?
SMITH: Yeah chief.
GORDON: Well...welcome to election season in Gotham.
[a dead body is impaled onto the hotel room wall, naked except for a skin-tight thong with red, white and blue stars on it. His head is dressed up in a large Uncle Sam hat and fake beard, but his right arm is outstretched, with some kind of black liquid oozing from it, while bloody stripes drawn from his stomach make him into the flagpole on a crude, bloody American flag.]
GORDON: He looks familiar.
SMITH: It's Uncle Sam, Jim.
GORDON: Yeah-is there a wallet?
SMITH: Scott James.
GORDON: Yeah, with the city council. Deputy chief of something. ... Find the hotel clerk.
SMITH: Sure.
[After SMITH leaves GORDON watches, standing next to a shadow created by the hotel closet.]
GORDON: Wallet's here, no break-in, and I probably don't need to mention this hotel isn't in the Michelin guide.
[no reply.]
[GORDON turns his head towards the shadow, perplexion seeping through his steely demeanor.]
[BRUCE and ALFRED are in the kitchen, while a TV shows a re-run of the debate.]
[TV BRUCE: I've been a fighter my whole life. As your mayor I will fight to bring jobs back to the factories and shipyards, the jobs that the bureaucrats let get stolen away-]
BRUCE: It was right here, Alfred. It was right here you said, the city needs Bruce Wayne. My resources, my knowledge. Not my body.
ALFRED: This is absolutely not what I had in mind.
[TV BRUCE: But that's not enough. Gotham has the best universities, the sharpest minds. We need to invest in the knowledge economy, in renewable resources, in medicine-]
BRUCE: Of course not. But this is the juncture we face. The Wayne Foundation, the reforms-all of it is at threat. Firefly has taken out everyone else, there's no one left but Wayne to keep what we started moving. People came to me and they begged, one man cried.
[TV MODERATOR: Let's shift gears for a second. Deputy Mayor McCaskill, you've made fighting crime a centerpiece of your campaign...]
ALFRED: Fifteen years ago, if you'd told me you had an interest in politics I'd have said great. I'd have worked my knuckles to the bone knocking on doors for you. But now, after everything we've been through...nothing good comes of mixing these roles.
There's still time for you to drop out. Your family name-
BRUCE: My family name is a resource. It's a weapon like any other, to be used for a purpose.
ALFRED: It's not a resource like any other. It's not renewable.
[TV MCCASKILL: Gotham is tired of feeling unsafe. It's tired of letting the capes dictate the law to us. It's tired-]
BRUCE: It's not just the reforms. Firefly was part of something bigger, I can tell. All of my sources are dry. I don't know how else to draw it out.
I'm not going to win, it's impossible.
[TV BRUCE: It's a new dawn in Gotham.]
ALFRED: And if you're wrong?
BRUCE: That doesn't sound like such a bad problem to have.
[TV BRUCE: My father taught me many things.]
ALFRED: I've heard this speech before. But the real version.
BRUCE: My father's most important lesson...lying in the street.
ALFRED: Dying for no reason at all.
BRUCE: He taught me...the world only makes sense when you force it to.
ALFRED: And what if Gotham doesn't want to be forced? What do you do then? Mayor?
[BRUCE is meeting with a GIARDINO, a slightly heavy-set middle-aged man with grey hair wearing a short-sleeve button-down white shirt and tie. They're in a nice oak street-level office building overlooking the Gotham coast, filled with paintings and memorabilia. The office includes an American flag in the corner overhanging, with a unique trim. BRUCE is examining a portrait on the wall.]
BRUCE: Who is that?
GIARDINO: Elbridge Gerry.
BRUCE: No...
GIARDINO: I'm impressed, Wayne.
Third governor of this great state and fifth vice president. Fought to get the Bill of Rights in the Constitution.
BRUCE: But mostly known as the inventor of gerrymandering.
GIARDINO: People forget it's literally as old as the Republic.
BRUCE: [Looking at photograph] And that's-
GIARDINO: Me with Jim Keller. Greatest county party chairman in Gotham history.
You didn't run for anything, vote on anything, or hire anyone without talking to him first. People don't realize the glory of it, what was lost. He ran this city ran like a Swiss watch.
BRUCE: It was something.
GIARDINO: That day is gone. You got lies whizzin' around the Internet, getting more attention than any of my ads ever could. Capes flying around gettin' everyone convinced the laws don't matter, and the people who make them don't either. Zero Year and the War wiped out a lot of the old bosses.
But chaos doesn't change human nature. The fundamentals still matter. And I think your campaign could greatly benefit from my support.
BRUCE: You think I need donations? That's adorable.
GIARDINO: It's not just money. You need organization, support, people like mine who understand Gotham at a molecular level.
BRUCE: It's all been taken care of.
GIARDINO: [leans back, smiling] You hate me. It's fine, I'm used to it. You think I hate democracy. But I love it. If it weren't for guys like me, people would have abandoned democracy centuries ago.
Democracy only makes sense when you force it to.
BRUCE: I don't hate you, I actually like you. We both love history. But if I'm not running a different kind of campaign, there's no reason for me to be in it. There's no reason for anyone to vote for me, and they know it. I'm not talking morality here, just strategy.
GIARDINO: You know, you're not the first rich guy to get a sudden interest in civics. You all come in thinking you can just float above it all, like him.
People like you are used to picking and choosing your worlds. But if you wanna be mayor of Gotham, you gotta be mayor of Gotham. All of it.
But I do appreciate that you came to see me.
[BRUCE is in the Batcave with BARBARA and DAMIAN]
BRUCE: We've done the best we can. But now that the campaign season is in full swing, it's clear I'm going to have to pull back.
DAMIAN: This is so insane.
BRUCE: You just keep doing what you're doing.
[To BARBARA] But you'll be taking on most of the Batman's duties. I'll handle contact with Jim.
DAMIAN: Why aren't we calling Blüdhaven?
BRUCE: I'm not going to be going away.
[BRUCE walks further down the Batcave, BARBARA follows him.]
BARBARA: Bruce, I'm not sure about this.
BRUCE: My patrol routes. The sensors, the alarms, the drones. Our pattern recognition and predictive algorithms. You know it all because you built it all.
BARBARA: I know Bruce, and I'm happy to help you from here in the Batcave. But...
BRUCE: I know you can do this. And you promised to follow my plans without question.
BARBARA: What you do every night, what drives you... I'm not you. I don't want to be you. You've got Delta Qui Epsilon over there and any one of them would be happy to do this.
BRUCE: They're birds. Not bats. It has to be you.
BARBARA: We're not the same. You put on the ears to scare people, I put them on to help people.
I mean, this is the 5th-largest city in the world and you know every alleyway by heart. That obsession just isn't in the card for me, I just-
BRUCE: Card?
[We see the Joker card in between them. Neither turn their head to face it.]
BARBARA: Don't go there.
BRUCE: I won't. ... Maybe you should.
[DAMIAN walks up to them.]
DAMIAN: And you don't think people will notice that Batman's pulling back the same time you're running for office?
BRUCE: They won't. Batman is an idea, not a person. Ideas don't go away so easily.
[BRUCE walks out while DAMIAN looks at Two-Face's coin in a glass case.]
DAMIAN: Are you sure?
[With two assistants, including ED SCHREIN, WAYNE SPEECHWRITER, in tow, WAYNE leaves his towncar next to an elegant downtown building. Walking in, we see that it's a casino-high-end, as casinos go, but still filled with zombie-eyed Gothamites yanking at slot machines with big cups filled with quarters. We can't see the name of the casino. He walks through the lobby to an elevator and presses the top button. He walks into an office, sitting down in front of a desk while conversing with an off-screen voice.]
OFF-SCREEN VOICE: How'd your meeting with Giardino go?
BRUCE: Exactly as expected, Max. Door-to-door, precinct organizing.
OFF-SCREEN: Like we need him. An offer or a threat?
BRUCE: Just an offer. I think.
OFF-SCREEN: So small-time. All of them are. Let them go to McCaskill.
[We reveal who Wayne has been talking to-MAX SHRECK. He's wearing his signature bow tie and pinstripe, old-school suits, but his demeanor is older, gaunter, and more vampiric than as in "Batman Returns." His white hair, still standing up in a fro, is thinner than before. He's sitting as his desk, fingers in a pyramid. Behind him, in a window, we see that this casino was his department store. The store's cat head symbol is lit up with bright casino lights, and we see a bright neon sign as "Shreck's Castle."]
SHRECK: None of them have the balls to go 15 rounds with Muhammad Shreck.
