Art by Cliff Chiang

January 2003

Written by Jen Van Meter
Art by Cliff Chiang & Tommy Lee Edwards

How would Batman have waged war against injustice without the vast fortune of the Wayne family to aid in his fight? The answer can be found in BATMAN: THE GOLDEN STREETS OF GOTHAM — a startling new Elseworlds one-shot written by Jen Van Meter (FLINCH, Hopeless Savages, The Blair Witch Chronicles) and illustrated by Cliff Chiang (JOSIE MAC, BEWARE THE CREEPER) and Tommy Lee Edwards (DISAVOWED, Zombie World: Winter’s Dregs), revealing a Dark Knight born in the twentieth century’s first decade.

With the birth of the labor movements, women’s rights and the downfall of capitalist “robber barons” as its backdrop, THE GOLDEN STREETS OF GOTHAM is a tale that finds true-life events shaping a very different kind of hero. When a disastrous 1906 fire kills dozens of women and children who worked in a garment factory, as well as immigrant Bruce Vanekow’s parents, the young man assumes the identity of the Bat, pledging to fight the criminal negligence that killed them. Enlisting the help of union agitators, social reformers and bohemian theater-types — including a young female journalist and the leader of the Underground Workers Movement, known as the Cat — he extracts the only kind of justice the powerful elite of Gotham City will notice: their wealth!

But when a serial murderer begins preying on Gotham’s poor and the crimes are blamed on the Bat, Bruno must clear his alter ego’s name.