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In Batman: The Adventures Continue Season Two #6, an iconic and vital part of Gotham City is destroyed by an everyday villain.
WARNING: This article contains major spoilers for Batman: The Adventures Continue: Season Two #6, on sale now from DC Comics.
Among the gothic cathedrals and towering skyscrapers of Gotham City, the Bat-Signal stands out as one of the city’s most iconic features. Perpetually emblazoning the cloudy skies above Gotham, the signal stands as a testament to the fact that Batman will always protect Gotham.
Batman: The Adventures Continue: Season Two #6 (by Alan Burnett, Paul Dini, Rick Burchett, and Monica Kubina) sees the Bat-Signal get brutally destroyed when a villain uses it as a weapon against the Caped Crusader. After attending a campaign event for Emerson Mayfield, a corrupt politician running for mayor of Gotham, Batman saw the Bat-Signal in the sky and immediately responded. On the rooftop, the Dark Knight was met by a tuxedo-wearing man who effortlessly took Batman’s punches and used the Bat-Signal as a weapon, slamming it into the hero. The man fled as Harvey Bullock and other GCPD officers arrived on the scene.
The Bat-signal is a vital part of the Batman mythos, but it has a long history of being destroyed in the DCAU. In the Batman: The Animated Series episode “Heart of Steel, Part II,” the hero was attacked by a Harvey Bullock duplicate and Barbara Gordon used Batman’s grapple gun to pull the fake into the signal, electrocuting it. In The New Batman Adventures episode “Over the Edge,” Barbara Gordon had a dream in which Bane ripped the signal off of its housing to use as a weapon against Batman and her father, Commissioner Gordon. Finally, in the Batman Beyond episode “Ascension,” Terry McGinnis smashes the Bat-Signal with a batarang after Paxton Powers uses it to call him to his tower and ask him for help. The signal was not seen afterwards.
While the Bat-Signal serves as a way to summon the Dark Knight, it also shows that civic authority is not enough to protect Gotham from the evils of the city. The first time Commissioner Gordon used the Bat-Signal in the DCAU, Batman even commented that it would get him in trouble with Mayor Hill. No one embodies this better than Harvey Bullock. He was originally extremely hesitant to use the Bat-Signal, only relenting when he realized he needed Batman’s help to find an assassin who was targeting him. Another time, in The Adventures of Batman & Robin, Bullock was handcuffed to a pipe and the only way he could escape was to turn on the Bat-Signal and get Batman’s help. The GCPD’s continued use of the Bat-Signal shows that they really need Batman’s help to handle some of the more “specialized” crime of the city.
While the Bat-Signal is a staple of Gotham, it more importantly serves as a symbol that Batman will always protect the citizens of his city. It also serves as a reminder that the GCPD actually needs the help of the Caped Crusader to handle some issues plaguing the city.
The destruction of the Bat-Signal in this issue sends a subtle reminder that Batman and the GCPD need to function in conjunction if they ever hope to really rid Gotham City of its criminal element.
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