įollowing the blackout, Commissioner Loeb declared the Batman a vigilante criminal. He warned that he would not restore power until someone could outsmart him. Despite this victory, an EMP detonation soon removed power from the entire city, with Edward Nygma taking responsibility under the name of The Riddler. In their fight, Red Hood One was knocked into a vat of chemicals. When cornered by Red Hood One, Bruce caused a power outage, and reveals his Batsuit for the first time. The gang attempted to disrupt it, and Bruce ducked inside the plant in the confusion, with Lt. With his return to Gotham made public, Bruce held a press conference outside the ACE Chemical plant to expose the Red Hood Gang's plans. Philip Kane was recruited, and confessed as much to Bruce when he learned his nephew had survived. The Red Hood Gang's recruitment methods involved blackmail that forced its members to commit anonymous crimes. He was inspired, then, to take on the appearance of a bat. Bruce had survived the explosion, though, and crawled through underground tunnels, back to Wayne Manor, where, in his father's study, he discovered a mapping device which projected an image of the cave below the manor, and the bats that lived inside. His strategist out-thought him, though, and tendered his resignation. Learning of this, Philip confronted Nygma, blaming him. Not long after returning home, the Red Hood Gang blew up the Park Row brownstone with Bruce inside. After storming off angrily, Bruce encountered Nygma, who revealed both his penchant for riddles and the fact that Philip had given more to the Red Hood Gang than just weapons. At the museum, though, Philip outed Bruce's return to the media. Finding little success in his battle with the Red Hood, and in conflict with Alfred about the best way to proceed, Bruce agreed to meet Phillip at the museum in the hopes of preventing the sale of WayneTech devices to the gang through his uncle's subsidiaries.

When Bruce refused, Nygma suggested Phillip have him killed. He had also gained control of Wayne Enterprises in Bruce's absence, and had hired a strategist in Edward Nygma, on whose advice he urged Bruce to return to the company. Despite trying to remain off the grid, Bruce's uncle Philip Kane had kept tabs on him. Bruce Wayne temporarily became a voluntary patient at Arkham Asylum, almost going through with a shock therapy that would erase his very identity so as to avoid his grief, but he backed out at the last second, and never told this to even his butler, Alfred Pennyworth. With only his mission in mind and no care for his legacy as a Wayne, Bruce moved himself out of Wayne Manor and into a brownstone on Park Row from which he based his early attempts to infiltrate the Red Hood Gang after only six weeks back in Gotham.

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