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The Many Loves of Batman

In Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight Halloween Special #1, during the beginning of his career, Bruce finds himself hunting Jonathan Crane (a.k.a. The Scarecrow) who is loose in Gotham City on the first night of the Halloween weekend. In an attempt to apprehend him, Batman breaks up a meeting of goons and shakes them down for info. The Scarecrow has been blowing up electrical relay stations and then looting the areas without power. Batman learns from the goons where Crane's next target is, and catches him there in the act. Batman apprehends the Scarecrow just as the police arrive.

Soon Batman is gone, off to Wayne Manor to attend a charity costume ball as Bruce Wayne. While at the party Bruce dances with a beautiful woman who is unknown to him. Her two Dalmatians almost sniff out the entrance to the Batcave, behind the grandfather clock, before Alfred arrives bearing news that the Bat Signal is in the sky. Bruce bids a hasty farewell to the strange woman and goes out on patrol.

While Bruce Wayne was occupied, the Scarecrow used his infamous fear toxin on his guards and has escaped to wreak more havoc on Gotham. He succeeded in destroying another relay station, and Batman is out trying to find him and control the looting. When Bruce returns back to the manor empty-handed, he collapses into bed, asking Alfred to bring him some food. But instead the strange woman appears with his breakfast, revealing that her name is Jillian Maxwell. Bruce cannot help but be intrigued.

Looking over Gotham on the following night, Batman is pondering the events of the past day, wondering what made him choose to leave Jillian's side to go on patrol. Suddenly, he is attacked by a group of crows under the influence of Jonathan Crane's fear toxin. As they drag him down from the rooftops, his mind wanders again to his time spent with Jillian that very morning.

There is a flashback to that morning, which picks up with Jillian bringing Bruce breakfast in bed. After adjourning to the patio, they converse for a while, and Jillian and Alfred exchange lines from an old movie about being bitten by a dead bee. Bruce and Jillian go for a drive, then shopping, and finally for a horse and buggy ride in the park. While riding, Jillian asks Bruce, "For a man who could have anything he wanted, why do I have the sense that you rarely get what you want?" The answer comes when the two are held up by a gun-toting Seattle Mariners fan. Jillian hands over her purse saying to Bruce, "It's only money. It's not worth your life," a comment Bruce gives thought to. Later upon, reaching the mansion again, Bruce bids Jillian adieu so he can "go to work," although he contemplates letting it slide when he hears the police captured the mugger on their own. But the Scarecrow is on the loose, and nothing can deter Batman from his task.

Back in the present, one of the crows brings the Scarecrow a scrap of Batman's costume. However, Batman has tracked the crow directly to Crane's lair. Crane flees into a hedge maze, and when Batman gives pursuit, he is scratched by thorns in the walls of the maze, thorns coated with the Scarecrow's fear toxin. Meanwhile, Alfred finds Jillian snooping around the manor and begins to suspect there is more to her than meets the eye.

Alfred, having decided to investigate Jillian, is using the computer in the Batcave to accomplish this task when the Batmobile pulls in. Alfred finds Batman in the car, passed out. While Alfred attends to his wounds and tries to give him an antidote, Bruce has a fever dream in which he chases Crane into a church and runs through a maze to the altar. There Jillian is waiting for him, and the Scarecrow presides over a wedding ceremony of sorts. But at the end of the ceremony Jillian asks him to unmask and he cannot. Bruce comes out of the dream to find Alfred there, trying to tell him something about Jillian. Jillian, however, interrupts and Bruce tells her he has chosen to take some time off and would like it if she would go on a trip with him.

On the roof of the police department, Captain James Gordon switches off the ignored Bat-signal, worried because he needed Batman's help to stop the Scarecrow from following through with his NEW plan, to kidnap a city official until he gets a ransom. As Gordon leaves the roof, the Scarecrow appears and makes him the first kidnapping victim. Back at Wayne Manor, Bruce asks Alfred to pack a steamer for his trip, but Alfred instead gives Bruce a disk containing his findings on Jillian. The disk has to wait, however, as Bruce looks out the window to see the Bat-signal has been appropriated by the Scarecrow. The entire signal has been recolored orange, and two blotches have been painted over the bat to transform it into the infamous jack-o-lantern face. Batman springs into action, tracking the Scarecrow to the face of a clock tower, where Jim Gordon is precariously perched. Batman rescues Gordon just in time, and then triumphs over Crane inside the clock's workings.

The story wraps to a close when Jillian Maxwell arrives at Wayne Manor, ready for her trip. She is stopped at the door by Alfred, who reveals that he knows about her criminal past. It seems that "Jillian" is an alias, one of many she has used(including Kathryn Cole, Christine Gherard, Diana Lopez, and Pamela Weisman)to marry rich husbands just before they die under mysterious circumstances. She slaps Alfred and leaves angrily. Bruce, first in the cave then underneath his parents' portrait, contemplates the desire he expressed through his relationship with Jillian for a normal life. In the end he chooses to stay in Gotham, fighting crime as the Batman, a life he finds fulfilling.

Weeks later, "Jillian Maxwell" is sitting on a beach in Brazil, planning to marry again under the identity Audrey Marguerite. She will kill her new husband with a car bomb and blame it on drug lords. But then she receives a note: the word "Confess" is written on a piece of paper, with a Bat symbol drawn around it. And she knows she has no choice but to comply.

Jillian was created by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale.

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