DETECTIVE COMICS - #439 NEAL ADAMS COVER ART (1974 - FN)

💥 NEAL ADAMS COVER ART! 

One night in Gotham City, as Batman prowls the city, he witnesses a couple being shot down in front of their child. This event causes him to flashback to the tragic night in which he lost his parents. Batman descends upon one of the killers in the crime scene, capturing him immediately, but the three remaining crooks manage get away. Batman gives them chase across the city until they reach the outskirts of the city, when the crooks finally realize they're being chased by the Dark Knight.

The criminals stop their vehicle and they shoot at Batman, which makes no harm to the dark vigilante. One of them decides to confront Batman, despite his extreme fear of the creature of the night. The struggle ends when both men fall from a cliff to their apparent demise. The two remaining crooks decide to retreat to their hideout in the woods, believing that both their accomplice and Batman are dead. However, Batman has managed to get a hold of a branch and stopped their fall. Leaving the criminal that attacked him unconscious, Batman continues his manhunt for the two remaining criminals.

Moments later, Batman finds the shack in the middle of the woods in which the criminals are hiding and he breaks inside, scaring both crooks. One of the criminals tries to run away and Batman chases him down to a pond, where they fight for a brief moment until the crook gets the upper hand in the fight and tries to make Batman drown underwater, apparently achieving victory. As the criminal starts celebrating his victory over Batman, the Dark Knight grabs him from his clothes, pulling him downwards and then knocking the criminal. Finally, Batman is confronted by the last of the criminals, but the man is unable to fight or even face Batman, who soon realizes that the man is barely an adult and is truthfully remorseful for the crime he committed. As the sirens of the police cars announce their arrival, Batman decides to leave the last criminal to face justice at the hands of the law and not punishment at his own hands.

Afterwards, Bruce Wayne arrives at his penthouse in the Wayne Foundation building and for a moment, the entity of fear and justice recalls the night when he was just a helpless child, left alone in the world.

💥 CONDITION: FN