Batman #425 – “Consequences” – Jim Starlin/Mark Bright/Steve Mitchell
This one starts with Bruce Wayne opening a letter that was left at police headquarters addressed to Batman. It’s from Jose Garzonas (whose scumbag son died “accidentally” last issue in close proximity to Robin) and contains a photo of Commissioner Gordon tied up in a junkyard. Garzonas wants Batman to “bring the boy”, meaning he obviously thinks Robin killed his son and wants to even the score. Bruce doesn’t mention anything to Jason and heads out as Batman to take care of things alone. But Jason notices something’s wrong and ditches
school to tag along, hiding in the trunk of the Batmobile. At the junkyard, Batman knows Garzonas will have armed men waiting for him—Garzonas is a coke smuggler, so he can afford the best thugs money can buy—so he sneaks over the fence quietly. Batman finds two gunmen close by his position and takes them out hard and fast. He makes his way through the junkyard, whittling down the opposition carefully (although he does take one guy down by throwing a car battery at him). He gets caught by a couple of triggermen, but dodges so they shoot each other. Garzonas knows Batman has arrived and anticipates 
killing him (and Robin, who he assumes Batman brought along). Batman gets close to Garzonas and Gordon, taking down more thugs as he goes. Unfortunately, one of them squeezes off a few rounds before passing out from a drugged Bat-dart and Garzonas knows exactly where Batman is hiding. He threatens to kill Gordon, so Batman has to step into the open, where Garzonas’s last two hoods can cover him. Before they can start shooting, Robin (who snuck into the junkyard himself and followed Batman quietly) disarms Garzanas with a Batarang. Batman goes after the two gunmen and frees Gordon, but the gunmen start blasting and Gordon takes a bullet in the arm.
Batman pounds one thug but ends up caught between Garzonas and the last gunman, so he climbs onto a stack of wrecked cars. Batman is trapped, but he gets lucky when the stack of car wrecks topples over, crushing Garzonas and giving robin the chance to take down the last thug. Batman explains who Garzonas was and why he wanted revenge, warning Robin that actions always have consequences. Again, I think this might be setting up the Death in the Family storyline that’s coming up next.
Detective #592 – “The Fear, Part One” – Alan Grant, John Wagner/Norm Breyfogle
This one starts with Batman pounding some muggers while not far away, a cabbie helps a woman who’s leaving her husband. The cabbie and the woman are getting her stuff and her kid is waiting outside when a guy comes along with a shopping cart and tosses something into the open trunk of the cab. It turns out to be a dead body and the woman’s screams bring Batman, who asks the kid what he saw. The kid tells Batman about the guy who dumped the body and says he looked exactly like Jesus Christ. The dead guy (whose heart has been ripped from his body)
turns out to be a missing person named Ed Hunt, who was last seen in a bar drinking with someone who looked just like Abe Lincoln. Speaking of which, a homeless guy runs out of booze and is approached by someone looking like Abraham Lincoln, who offers to pay him for some help moving stuff. The old drunk falls for it and gets kidnapped by Not-So-Honest Abe. Batman attends the autopsy and figures out Hunt might’ve been literally scared to death before his heart was torn out. He checks recent releases from prison and Arkham 
Asylum and goes to look up the first guy on the list, whose nickname is Hooker because he has a hook for a hand. Hooker has been ripping off charity donation bins, so he doesn’t want to go back to prison. Batman pounds him and gets him to admit he didn’t kill Hunt. Meanwhile, we see the real killer (Cornelius Stirk) truss up his latest victim and change his face from Lincoln to his real appearance, which is pretty intense … he almost looks like a zombie or something, having a death’s head for a face. Turns out he feeds on fear (literally it seems, drawing it out of his victim with a kiss) and
wants to terrify the old dude as much as possible. Stirk is the next name on Batman’s list and he tracks down the doctor who acts as Stirk’s community liaison after his release from Arkham. Batman finds the doctor dead, his heart torn out, and gets Stirk’s address from the doctor’s files, hoping he can get to Stirk before he takes another victim. I guess Batman’s a little late on that one.
Green Arrow #10 – “Here There Be Dragons 2” – Mike Grell/Ed Hannigan/Dick Giordano, Frank McLaughlin
This one starts with Oliver (Green Arrow) Queen and Dinah (Black Canary) Lance celebrating Ollie’s 44th birthday. Dinah invites him to the zoo, which apparently serves some great chili dogs (although Oliver will bring his own Tabasco sauce, as usual). Elsewhere (in Hawaii as it turns out), Shado is attacked by a bunch of guys dressed like ninjas, but more likely they’re yakuza, looking to avenge the death of their oyabun who Shado killed last
issue. She wastes them all, but realizes the yakuza are onto her trail. At the zoo, Ollie and Dinah notice a couple of guys following them and lure them to a quiet place so they can take them down. Turns out their shadows are Greg Osborne (the crooked CIA agent Green Arrow met in the Longbow Hunters mini-series) and Eddie Fyres (the freelance operative Arrow last saw in issue 4). While Dinah and Fyres go outside to spar, Osborne tells Oliver a long story about how the Philippine government buried their treasury right before the Japanese 
invasion in World War II. The location of the gold was lost after the war, but recently a map turned up that showed the locations of fifteen buried caches that supposedly held the money. The map went missing and soon after a yakuza front-corporation started buying up pieces of land for “development”, abandoning them after a bit of digging. But the yakuza stopped buying land because someone stole the map. Osborne tells Oliver that Shado stole the map and he wants Oliver to retrieve it so the Filipino government can get the money back and stabilize their economy. Oliver doesn’t trust Osborne, but the agent threatens to turn him over to the IRS for donating the stolen slush-fund
money (from Longbow Hunters) to a charity, so Oliver has no choice but to comply. (He also finds out that his “secret identity” as Oliver Queen isn’t really a big secret after all.) Later, Dinah wonders if Oliver has another motive, like wanting to see Shado again. Osborne sends Oliver to Hawaii, where Shado wasted the yakuza who attacked her, and Oliver tracks her down to a boat. But she’s ready for him and puts an arrow into his chest.