Awesome / Batman Eternal

• Steph's escape in issue 3; she's not a super skilled fighter, but she's quick on her feet and adapts to things quickly, and manages to get out before its too late.
  • Later, her first time donning the Spoiler outfit as she gets ready to wage a one-girl-war on her dad's plans.
  Steph: And the Bad Guys expect me to just disappear down the memory hole? SPOILER ALERT: No Damn Way.
  • More Steph Brown awesome comes Issue 24: Facing down her father for the first time since all this began, she fights him off long enough to get on a motorbike and lead them on a chase down the highway. He throws explosives at her, but she manages to avoid crashing off of the bridge and makes him get cornered by state police officials...while now outside of GCPD jurisdiction, meaning he can't pull strings with the ones controlling the GCPD to escape. Turns out, Steph planned this, hurling back his previous comments about always keeping control of the game board.
  • #32: Steph's been caught by Hush, who's gotten incredibly frustrated at her ability to escape his forces so far in-spite of a very large hit placed on her head and her lack of real training. Her response to his attempt at a Breaking Speech is to pepper spray him and punch him, though that backfires as she hurts her wrist doing so while not doing much damage. However, when Batman shows up to save her, he succeeds in only providing a destraction as he's too fatigued to really take him on, but it gives Steph the time to ready her bike and just run the sucker down. While they manage to escape by tossing an explosive at them, Steph is able to slip away before Batman can talk to her -Again- so she can continue her work.
  • #41: Steph has dispatched at least 6 armed killers coming after her for the bounty by the time this issue comes up.
  • In the finale, Steph delivers a mask-breaking punch to Lincoln March while declaring that she is Batman.
• Jason Bard's massive Batman Gambit in order to take down Forbes, Falcone, and Penguin, all by using the war-on-masks against them. At the end, Forbes and Penguin are in prison, and Falcone has to get out of Gotham.
  • Penguin's attack on Falcone is a pretty badass move on his part. Falcone doesn't take him seriously, since he always cowered behind his personal muscle and never fought anyone himself. But, after finding all of his men killed brutally, he finds that Penguin left his boys at home, and is here by himself. With only a bladed umbrella, Oswald took down several armed thugs, by himself. And now we know why he ran crime in Gotham for the last few years.
• Killer Croc's team-up with Batman. The two make a surprisingly good team.
  • Later, when Croc faces down Bane, and for the first time after Bane had previously beaten him in order to 'make an example', actually manages to win. Not by sheer brute force, though, as Croc demonstrates that he's not just Dumb Muscle, and actually learns from his past fights, this time using Combat Pragmatist tactics to disable Bane's Venom, and when Bane taunts him on how he's 'more than just his venom', Croc recalls the recent time he himself used Venom and, now with knowledge on how it works (specifically, that it stays in one's bloodstream and continues to give them strength after the supply is cut off), uses that knowledge to target Bane's arteries, making him ''bleed out the Venom in his system' to weaken him, leaving him for Batman, but not before this:
    Bane: (injured and barely able to stand) K—Kill me.
    Croc: Oh this ain't about beating you. And it ain't about killing you. It's all about making an example of you.
    • The kicker on this is that when Batman goes to find Bane, he's trussed up, hands tied above his head and hanging from a sewage pipe, with "Le Roi Est Mort. Vive Le Roi" (The King Is Dead, Long Live the King) written in his blood on the wall, proving that a) Croc wanted Batman to get him and b) he wasn't kidding about reading French literature, as he said during the fight.
• Gordon going Die Hard in Blackgate prison, trying to take down both sides of the gang war that erupted and are holding hostages. He doesn't do it all himself, but he certainly helps calm things down, at least until his cellmate, Leo, arrives, who's arrival is also a moment of awesome when it reveals him as The Lion, the man who ran Gotham's crime syndicates before Falcone. Suffice to say, the remaining rioting inmates don't last long.
• When Blackfire succeeds at creating a portal to hell, which Batwing and Jim Corrigan working together were unable to stop. The Spectre gets out of Jim, and then proceeds to destroy the portal, banish Blackfire back to hell, and contain the spirits released within a few minutes without even appearing to be all that impressed by what he had done.
• Despite having been pumped full of hallucination toxin, Alfred teams up with Bane to escape into the sewers. He earns Bane's respect by showing off his old military skills, finds a hidden Batcave, and then proceeds to knock Bane out with sleeping gas. Then becomes a Heartwarming Moment when he reaches out to Batman over the comm, and his daughter, who had been worriedly searching for him, finally hears his voice again.
• Bard tries a massive trap on Batman, forcing Lucius Fox to send the Batmobile out of control and crashing through buildings. Bard celebrates only to find every cop on the roof with him glaring with utter disgust before walking out on him.
  Bard: You don't understand, Harvey.
  Harvey Bullock: Men like you...I don't want to understand.
• Bard then calls his lover Vicki Vale, only for her to berate him, having uncovered Bard is being driven by his loss of his former partner/lover because of a vigilante and this is all just a twisted sense of revenge. When Bard says he "just took down Batman," Vicki snorts that "I'm going to hang up just before he shows up to give you the punch in the face you damn well deserve." She does and Bard turns in time to see a gloved fist coming at him.
• Batman explains he escaped with help but "even without that, there were six other ways for me to get out of that car."
  Bard: You're just trying to scare me. I had you.
  Batman: You can certainly tell yourself that.
• Bard tries to give Batman a "The Reason You Suck" Speech only to have it turned on him.
  Bard: You go out there and you don't see the effect you have on the world. I see it! I've lived it. There wasn't a single life lost tonight because of what I—-
  Batman: Three stabbings. Eight shootings. A young woman was beaten to death by a mugger six blocks away from here. The officers you assigned to this foolish display of force are just getting the calls now. Far too late for you to do anything!
  • Bard then tries to arrest Batman only for Robin, Batgirl and Red Hood to show up and let Batman go free and warn Bard to do his real job or else.
  Bard: You can't threaten me like that.
  Batman: Yes. We can.
• Harper managed to take the machine controlling the nanobots infecting everyone, leaving Mad Hatter powerless for Batman to grab.
• #49-50 has some for three characters:
  • Batman tearing through Gotham, helping everyone take down their respective villain after Hush messed them up. He starts by crashing a jet into Bane, and goes from there. Also comes with a smaller one from Barbara, who doesn't need his help taking down Joker's Daughter.
  • Gordon, still in prison, is targeted during a second riot. At first it seems he's going to get beaten to death by Penguin and some muscle, but instead he, once more, takes care of himself by basically evoking Rorschach; he beats Penguin and a few others so hard that all he has to do is give a Badass Boast every time someone else comes close, and he can sit the riot out, peacefully reading until GCPD come to pick him up.
  • And finally, one for the Big Bad. After 50 issues, Batman still has no idea who the villain behind this is, and has exhausted every possibility, gone after every important mastermind villain in his galllery trying to find out who it is, but each time its proven to be a dead end. Finally, they invite him to the roof of GCPD to finally end this, and he finally comes face-to-face with who it is: Cluemaster, who's taken advantage of his C-List Fodder status to plan everything from behind the shadows, knowing that Batman would never even consider him as a suspect. Tellingly, even readers, who had seen what he was doing throughout the entire plot, didn't believe he was the Big Bad and expected him to be usurped in the following issue (51) after The Reveal due to him being C-List Fodder, only to be proven wrong. Not-So-Harmless Villain indeed.
  • While he did get usurped by Lincoln March, Lincoln does reveal that this was all Arthur Brown's idea and his only mistake was trying to become one of the greats instead of getting away with being a nobody.
• The big climax: March beats a weakened Batman down, declaring that when he's done, Batman will be forgotten by Gotham. At that moment, Gordon gets on the broadcasting screens across Gotham to give a Rousing Speech to the people of Gotham to stand ready and "tonight, we all have to be Batman." He then has Bat-signals lit across the roofs to fill the skies as the people begin to fight back against the various crooks running around.
  • During the fight, Catwoman shows up with Croc to help Gordon out and make it clear that her gang isn't going to let anyone burn their city down.
• Lincoln is stunned, unable to accept the people of Gotham willing to fight back. He tries to kill Batman only to get knocked down and when he looks up, Gordon and every one of Batman's costumed allies are standing before him, ready to beat him down.

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