Tear Jerker / The Batman Adventures

At their best, the Batman Adventures books had tragedy as heart-rending as the animated series that it is based on.

The Batman Adventures

• Holiday Special: Agitated that there would be no snow at Christmas, Mr. Freeze breaks out of Arkham Asylum and manufactures a blizzard. When Batman stops him at Gotham Cemetery, he gives Freeze one chance to turn himself in peacefully, tiredly demanding to know why he would cause trouble on Christmas Eve, of all days. In response, Victor shows him a particularly special headstone◊ and quietly explains why, with him visibly breaking down in grief as he finishes. The story ends with a silhouetted shot of Batman sympathetically putting an arm around Victor as they walk away.
  Batman: It's Christmas, so I'll give you one chance to end this quietly. Why'd you do it, Freeze? Tonight of all nights?
  Freeze: (points at Nora's grave) We were married ten years ago on a snowy Christmas Eve. Nora loved the snow. I thought it... sad that there should be none this year. And I wouldn't want my Nora to be sad tonight.
• Mad Love: It holds even more weight than the cartoon adaptation, and you can't help but pity Harley.
• Issue #8 Larceny My Sweet: Clayface, trying to seek some normalcy in a relationship with Summer Gleeson while plundering Gotham, gets caught by Batman; During the insuring fight, Summer appears and screams at the sight of the former. Clayface stops, letting Batman knock him out. Batman's paused response to Summer's question about what happened to her date hammers it in.
  Batman: No, Ms. Gleeson. The person you described... was never here...
• Issue #13 Last Tango in Paris: On one of his investigations, Batman encounters Talia Al Ghul, who convinces him to chase down a thief who stole a statue from her father. They tracked him down to Paris, where they relax before continuing and succeeding, At which point, Batman demands Talia's real intentions. Letting out a tear, Talia tells him why she didn't told the truth about the statue:
  Talia: If I had told you, we wouldn't have had Paris...
• Issues #34-36: Bruce got most of his memories stolen, regressing him mentally to that of a 7-year-old, long before the night his parents were taken from him. Seeing him act happy and cheerful hurts when you know what's going to happen by the time it's over. Alfred's line in the last chapter sums it up:
  Alfred: It's just that it's been so many years since I've seen him so... so carefree. I find myself wishing there was a way he wouldn't have to go through it all again.
• Annual #1 Study Hall: After having a moment of clarity, the Scarecrow escapes Arkham and manages to changes his identity, getting a job at a local university, making a Heel–Face Turn as he finds himself teaching a smart female student, who he genuinely likes and is proud of. But all of it comes crashing down when he finds out later that her Jerk Jock of a boyfriend not only beat her, but is also heavily implied to have sexually assaulted her; traumatizing the poor girl. All of this is too much for Crane as this results in him having to go back to the life he tried to escape. Despite this, it's a Moment of Awesome, as the first thing he does as Scarecrow is to teach the asshole boyfriend a lesson in fear.

Batman & Robin Adventures

• Annual #1: The tribute to DC artist Mike Parobeck.
• Issue #7 His Master's Voice: Scarface, thinking Arnold is trying to replace him, goes after the poor guy's family to keep him in line. He threatens his mother in particular, which upsets Arnold more than anything. Batman and Robin catch up with him, only to find that Arnold's family is full of bloodthirsty mobsters, with Arnold's late father as their former leader. By the time they fight their way through them, they discover Arnold sobbing on his knees. turns out Arnold's beloved mother has been dead for 25 years, after taking a bullet meant for his father. All he had left to remember her was a picture, which Scarface forced him to destroy. Arnold then shot him.
  Arnold: So I shot him in the head. And now my hand really hurts...
• Issue #23 Crocodile Tears: Killer Croc sees a news report where Summer Gleeson wonders on-camera just what the life of someone like Croc must be like. He confronts her and tells her how he's been mistreated, and when she fearfully says she feels sorry for him, he leaves delighted that someone's on his side. Then at the end, as he's fighting and beating Batman and Robin, he sees Summer staring at him in horror and Croc just... shuts down.

Batman Gotham Adventures

• Issue #11 The Oldest One in the Book: The Riddler, after escaping Arkham and deciding to give Batman clues to other people's crimes, somehow subconsciously forms a three-part riddle to his own location. His realization is heartbreaking.
  Riddler: You don't understand. I really didn't want to leave you any clues. I really planned never to go back to Arkham Asylum. But I left you a clue anyway. So I... I have to go back there. Because I might need help. I... I might actually be crazy...
• Issue #13 The End: In which the Threatening Trio wind up disbanding with Mr. Nice leaving the country to fulfill a prophecy by helping a young boy. It ends with him leaving into a bright light. It becomes incredibly more sad when you see the real life context: Mr. Nice had been created to resemble comic writer Archie Goodwin, who had died earlier that year; the issue was made in dedication to him.
• Issue #37 Wham!: Batman starts out with a lot of Silver Age antics, only to reveal that he had actually been captured by the Mad Hatter and put in a fantasy dream world the whole time. When Batman gets free and asks Hatter why he'd done it, the reply is heartbreaking.
  Mad Hatter: Well, because you always seemed so unhappy. Every time we met you always won, and yet it didn't seem to bring you any joy. In fact, I thought you were the saddest person I'd ever met. So I just tried to help you.
  • Made worse by the fact that the reason Bruce realized that the world was fake was because he felt happy. That was the thing that made him distrustful of the dream. He hasn't been happy since his parents died.
• Issue #51 Early Thaw: After being tricked by Clayface, Mr. Freeze figures that Nora couldn't possibly love him anymore, he says goodbye and that she's made the right choice by moving on, escaping Gotham for a life in the Arctic. Cue Nora arriving at Arkham Asylum asking for Victor Fries. To make it worse, the only reason why she hadn't gone to see him sooner is because her new husband was hiding the other letters Freeze had sent.

Batman Adventures 2003

• Issue #14's backup story While Justice Needs Me: Young Bruce gets in trouble for imitating the Gray Ghost and is taken to bed by his mother Martha. When Bruce explains that he's practicing his moves in case he has to fight bad guys, Martha assures her son that his father is big and strong enough to handle any criminals who may threaten them. Knowing that Martha's promise won't be kept because of what ultimately becomes of her and Thomas as well as how Bruce copes is very heartbreaking.
• Issue #16 The Flower Girl: It's revealed Poison Ivy left Gotham and replaced herself with a plant clone. There's a drawback to this as the clones die after a while. This particular clone, after the hijinks of the day goes to Baoyu Country to find Dr. Alec Holland and get him to help her, only to die moments after arriving. Clone or not, It's hard not to feel sorry for her.
• Issue #17 Fear Itself: which shows that Joe Chill has spent the last twenty years or so bouncing in and out of prison on petty charges and living in fear that someday Bruce Wayne will find him. He's no criminal mastermind, he wasn't working on any orders, he's just a dumb crook who let a robbery get away from him, and has been living in guilt and fear for it ever since. And then one night, while fighting Batman, he gets a look under the mask, sees Bruce Wayne's face... and thinks he's snapped entirely, and winds up killing himself by accident trying to get away, while Batman just looks on dumbfounded wondering "what was that about?". There's something very sad, and very poignant, about seeing such a human rendition of Joe Chill, and just how random and senseless it makes the Batman origin story, and that in the end neither of them ever knew the truth.

Batman The Adventures Continue

• After everything, Nora Fries lived for only a few years but then succumbed again to her illness, fatally as Victor wasn't there to cryo-freeze her again.
• The penultimate issue of Season Three reveals that Francine has decided to leave Kirk Langstrom due to having her fill with his constant transformations into Man-Bat.