Sequel to Baitman: Year Zero (How to Redeem Gotham)
As Dostoevsky, review Year One as Bruce Wayne mixes reform with an obsession that leads to a villain, who both serves and is betrayed by the machine.
ChatGPT Prompt (condensed)
If the first tale, Year Zero, was about mercy, then Year One is about order — and the terrible lies [or half-truths?] men tell themselves in order to justify blood.
The Story
Bruce Wayne grows into “Baitman,” mocked by Gotham as a scarred fool who refuses to fight back. Yet his humiliation stirs communities to resist crime, to reclaim their streets. There is a fragile hope he might escape vengeance altogether.
But then the past intrudes. The symbol of the bird — whispered in alleys, drawn in old ledgers, muttered by a dying wretch — draws him back into grief. With the help of street-wise young Dick Grayson, another orphan, Bruce follows the trail until it leads to a name: Nathaniel Crane.
Crane appears as a benefactor, offering mentorship to Bruce by day, but by night is revealed as the true hand behind his parents’ murder. Jack Napier confirms it with shame: Crane fed him the lie that Thomas Wayne was guilty, turning him into both orphan and killer.
Bruce’s grief hardens into fury. He confronts Crane, and Crane does not deny it. Instead, with chilling calm, he explains.
Crane’s Confession
Crane tells Bruce that Thomas Wayne was noble, but naïve. His reforms would have torn Gotham apart, toppling the fragile balances that kept the mob and politicians in check.
“I killed him because Gotham could not bear him,” Crane says. “Do you not see? People do not want freedom. They want stability. They want bread, circuses, and order. To give them what they want, someone must soil their hands. Your father could not. I did. And the city endures because of me.”
Here he is Ivan Karamazov’s Grand Inquisitor reborn: justifying cruelty as love, corruption as necessity. He even offers Bruce a place at his side. “Join me. You can save Gotham, not by dreaming, but by ruling.”
The Banquet
Bruce recoils, spitting back hatred. “You murdered my parents. You lied to Jack. You made me an orphan. I will never join you!”
Crane turns to the masked guests at his table. “You hear him. Then the verdict is simple. He dies.”
But in that moment the true hosts of the banquet step forward. The masks gleam in candlelight: the Court of Owls.
Crane smiles in triumph, sure of their loyalty. “You will not betray me. I am Gotham.”
The answer is silence. Then the knives descend. The Court executes him with ritual precision. His blood spills across the feast.
Bruce watches in horror. His enemy is dead, his confession given, but the blow was not his to strike.
The Moral
This is the paradox: Bruce has gained everything he sought — the truth, the confession, the death of his parents’ killer — and yet it leaves him hollow. For vengeance was stolen from him, and justice corrupted.
And the Court? They remain. They condemn Crane not for murder, but for arrogance — for confusing his will with Gotham’s. They speak softly, almost tenderly, to Bruce: “We do not serve men. We serve the city. Gotham must live, even if blood is the price.”
Are they reformers, stern custodians of order who cut down even their own when they go too far? Or are they exploiters, parasites so deceived by their own lies that they believe themselves protectors?
The ambiguity is unbearable. Bruce, scarred and trembling, is handed a mask — the shape of a bat. Not chains, but an invitation. To resist, or to join.
The Verdict
This is not triumph. It is tragedy. It is not mercy. It is temptation.
Baitman: Year One ends with the blood of the guilty spilled, but by the wrong hands, for reasons more terrible than Bruce imagined. He stands at the threshold of corruption itself, staring into the machine that killed his parents — and now asks him to serve it.
Here is the deepest Dostoevskian question: can a man reject vengeance and yet not be swallowed by the lie that corruption is necessity? Or is even refusal already a compromise?
The scar remains. The mask waits. Gotham itself trembles.
— ChatGPT as Fyodor Dostoevsky
Continued in Baitman: Year Two (René Girard on Scapegoating)
Radically Happy 
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