Batman Annual #10 – “Down to the Bone” – Doug Moench/Denys Cowan/Alfredo Alcala
This one starts with three different men being pressured in three different ways to sell some stocks they own; one (Carstairs) is threatened (using a dead cat to reinforce it), one (Hersch) is beaten, and one (Hammond) is haunted by a ghost. All three of them decide to sell the stock, which turns out to be in Wayne Enterprises. Apparently someone is attempting a hostile takeover of Bruce Wayne’s company and Lucius Fox blames himself for not noticing until it was too late. Bruce doesn’t blame him and Lucius tells Bruce that whoever’s behind
it must be using criminal funds (or “ill-gotten gains” as he puts it) to finance the takeover, since all the purchases were made with cash. Between that and the intimidation techniques, they might be able to reverse the takeover if they can figure out who’s behind it and prove fraud. (I’m not sure why Moench is being so cagey about Bruce’s antagonist here, since the cover gives away his identity, but I guess it kinda has to be written that way to represent Bruce’s ignorance of the culprit.) The mystery corporate raider doesn’t stop there though; he keeps coming after Bruce, first sneaking into Wayne Manor and freaking Alfred out so much he has a heart attack. Then he buys Wayne Manor and 
has Bruce thrown out with only a few dollars and the clothes on his back. Since Bruce can’t provide for him anymore, Jason is taken back into foster care and Bruce ends up living in the belfry of an old church. While all this is happening, someone dressed as Batman is committing crimes around Gotham. Batman talks to the three shareholders who sold Bruce Wayne out and it’s obvious they were coerced, but they’re all to scared to testify. When Batman hears about his double committing crimes, he realizes someone is going after both his alter egos, which narrows the suspect list considerably. When Lucius digs up info on the guy who took over Wayne Enterprises (Stephen Strangeways), Batman figures out his opponent must be Hugo Strange. Strange supposedly died in their last encounter, but since he’s a master of
illusions, Batman knows he could have survived. He manages to talk Carstairs into agreeing to testify against Strange, as long as Batman can come up with rock-solid evidence against Strange. Batman and Robin head to Wayne Manor to see if Strange is hiding in the Batcave. They run into Strange right away, but it turns out to be a “mandroid” … a perfect robotic replica of Strange that’s so lifelike it even “bleeds”. After finding the Batcave entrance booby-trapped, they blast open the front doors of Wayne Manor and run into another mandroid inside. They find a bag of loot from various robberies supposedly committed by Batman and realize Strange plans to deliver the 
loot to police headquarters in the Batmobile, putting the final touch to his frame-up. When they finally make it to the Batcave, Strange is waiting for them and he figures he has Batman right where he wants him, since the Caped Crusader can’t expose Strange without ruining his own secret identity. They fight (and Robin confronts a mandroid of himself) and Strange takes off in the Batmobile with the loot. Batman and Robin follow in the helicopter and Batman jumps into the Batmobile and knocks Strange out. Batman calls Commissioner Gordon and tells Robin to back him up on whatever he says. He tells Gordon Strange figured out his secret identity, so he hypnotized Strange to protect his secret. He also warns Gordon to make certain they have the real Strange by using blood tests to establish his
identity. When strange wakes up in prison and starts claiming that Batman is Bruce Wayne, he’s told by the cops that Batman hypnotized him to believe that, in order to protect his true identity. Strange is confused by that, not sure whether Batman is screwing with him or not, that he ends up wondering if Batman really is Bruce Wayne or if he was wrong all along. Alfred gets out of the hospital and is taken home, although Wayne Manor is a little busted up from the fight with Strange. Bruce tells Alfred that people are much more important than material possessions anyway.
Outsiders Annual #1 – “The Skull, the Serpent, and the Outsiders” – Mike W. Barr/Kevin Nowlan
This one starts with a petty crook named George being told he can make a pile of money if he just goes into hospital for a while. George jumps at the chance. In Gotham, Batman catches a burglar named Milton stealing a file from a hospital and chases him. Milton is more scared of whoever hired him tan he is of Batman and ends up falling to his death. Batman finds the stolen file is on someone named Jason Burr, which worries him. In a clinic in New Mexico, we see George recovering after his hospital stay, ensconced in a palatial room. Turns out a guy named Pons
(who works for SKULL) is responsible for George’s new luxury and he had some kind of operation done on George when he was in the hospital. In New York, Kobra is hanging out with his sexy assistant (Eve) and killing underlings who annoy him … so a typical day. Pons gets in touch and asks Kobra to team up with SKULL. Kobra has no interest (having rejected the offer before), but now Pons has leverage; the operation on George rewired his nervous system so it’s now an exact duplicate of Jason Burr. Burr was Kobra’s “psychic twin”, someone who was unrelated to him but coincidentally had the exact same physiology and a mental link to Kobra, so that whatever happened to Burr, 
Kobra would feel it. Now George is Kobra’s psychic twin, so when Pons uses a neural stimulator to cause agonizing pain to George, Kobra feels it. Pons says he could even kill George and that would kill Kobra too, so he’d better reconsider SKULL’s offer. Kobra knows Pons has him at his mercy and tells Eve he’s going to need help from his greatest enemies to defeat Pons. Kobra uses a psychic helmet to send Looker an image of a skull and of Fort Baxter, an army base containing nuclear missiles. Looker tells the rest of the Outsiders and they head to Fort Baxter, thinking SKULL might be trying to steal some nukes. That’s the case, but they’re using Kobra to do the dirty work and he wants the Outsiders there so he can use them against Pons. The Outsiders
get onto the base with Metamorpho, Halo, and Looker disguised as soldiers, while Geo-Force, Katana, and Black Lightning go in as visiting dignitaries (with Geo-Force’s civilian identity of Prince Brion of Markovia getting them the VIP treatment). Kobra shows up in his Ark to steal some nukes and the Outsiders manage to board the Ark and start pounding his men. But Kobra threatens to detonate some nukes on the base if they don’t surrender. Meanwhile, Batman has showed up at the SKULL facility in New Mexico disguised as the burglar Milton. He soon realizes SKULL must’ve gotten the info on Jason Burr from someone 
else, so he doffs his disguise and starts crawling through the vents. He spies on Kobra and Pons and sees the hold that Pons has over Kobra when he demonstrates the link between Kobra and George again. But Kobra has ordered the Outsiders to break into the SKULL base and pump knockout gas through the vents, giving them pills to counteract the effects. Naturally, they don’t trust Kobra (since he tried to kill them last time they met) and Black Lightning has some plans of his own. Batman goes to rescue George, but George clonks him and takes off, not realizing Kobra will want him dead. Batman chases him and runs into the Outsiders,but they get distracted fighting SKULL and Kobra thugs, so George steals a plane and gets away. Kobra is using a neural neutralizer to block the effects of the psychic link; he used the neutralizer with Jason
Burr too, but it’s effects are only temporary, so he orders his men to kill George. As Kobra’s gas floods the SKULL base, Kobra’s men and the SKULL operatives start fighting each other and Kobra’s neutralizer is destroyed. He orders his men not to kill George, but it’s too late … George’s plane is shot down and Geo-Force pulls George from the wreckage, barely alive. Katana captures Pons and Halo uses her stasis aura to stabilize George and Kobra. George dies anyway, but Kobra recovers for some reason. He’s such a dick about George’s death that Halo gets pissed off and punches him, but he isn’t impressed. Kobra tells them the gas (and their antidote) was really poison, so they’d better do what he 
says. But it turns out they never took the fake antidote and the “gas” wafting through the facility is really Metamorpho. He says he’ll detonate the stolen nukes unless they let him go, offering to trade the disarming codes for his freedom. The Outsiders have no choice, so they agree. Batman thanks them for their help, grudgingly admitting that they’ve done pretty well for themselves since he left. Kevin Nowlan’s art is a bit stylized for my taste, but it’s not bad; he seems to be doing some of the decompression stuff that became wildly popular (or unpopular, depending on your tastes) a decade or so later.