When millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne first began his career as the Batman in 1939, it was mentioned several times that, "He always works alone." But this phase of his career was to last less than a year before he was joined by Robin the Boy Wonder, the first of many characters who would end up aiding Batman in his fight against crime. A number of readers have regretted the introduction of these additional characters as being inappropriate additions to the life of an obsessive vigilante.

And yet writer Devin Grayson has attributed her fascination with Batman directly to his extended family, and most of her past work on Batman has explored this apparent dichotomy. Because, in truth, it's not a dichotomy at all; Batman's fictional life and the continuing parade of characters in it has paralleled his real history and the writers and artists who brought it about.

For the first quarter-century of his existence, Batman's stories were credited solely to his creator, artist Bob Kane. But Kane had had a collaborator from the very beginning: a former shoe salesman named Bill Finger who'd met Kane at a party and proved to have an immense talent to craft gripping and believable stories. Kane and Finger went on to introduce Police Commissioner Gordon, Robin the Boy Wonder, and most of Batman's most memorable villains, including the Joker, the Catwoman, the Penguin, Two-Face, the Scarecrow, and many more.

As Batman increased in popularity and began to appear in longer stories and in more titles, other writers and artists began to make contributions of their own to his increasingly-eventful life. Writer Don Cameron introduced a fussy but dedicated butler named Alfred to the Wayne home.

Gardner Fox sketched out the details of Batman's hitherto-unknown origin, relating how young Bruce Wayne was inspired to become a crimefighter when, on the way home from a movie, his parents were shot before his eyes. Although Finger didn't write the original version, he did expand and develop it in subsequent years, revealing the name of the killer (Joe Chill) as well as what transpired when Batman caught up with him many years later. Remaining as head Batman writer for over a quarter of a century, Finger was a master at bringing all the characters and concepts introduced by writers and artists over the years together in an almost seamless tapestry.

Two decades afterward, Fox introduced Commissioner Gordon's daughter Barbara and had her launch her own crimefighting career as Batgirl. After British writer Alan Moore had her shot by the Joker, she assumed a new role as Oracle, a literal armchair (or wheelchair) sleuth who could locate almost anyone or anything through the Internet. Writer Marv Wolfman gradually aged the original Robin, Dick Grayson, had him assume the new name of Nightwing, and later introduced the current heir to the Robin name and role, Tim Drake. Denny O'Neil, Batman's current editor, was one of the first writers to rediscover Batman as a solo hero, but has long been interested in different interpretations of the character and his extended family. And in only her first story for this title, Grayson underscores why Batman, not only despite but because of the trauma that once left him all alone at a young age, not only wants but needs to have his own extended family around him.

At first glance, the plot of Gotham Knights seems to be one that's potentially revealing, but in recent years has suffered from overuse. Batman is confronted by a case with striking parallels to his own origin: a husband and wife gunned down by a mysterious assailant, leaving their young son an orphan. First used by Steve Englehart and Sal Amendola in 1973, the same idea has been used several times since, most recently in the hardback novel Batman: War on Crime, by Paul Dini and Alex Ross. So to drag it out yet again with only minimal updating (this time the husband was a United States Senator, rather than a doctor like Thomas Wayne) seems like overkill, except that this time Grayson has added a new twist that sheds light not only on the situation but on Batman's own psychology.

Grayson's assessment of Batman is, as many other recent writers have portrayed him, extremely obsessive, but it's also, ultimately, a positive one. She remembers something too many recent writers have forgotten: that Batman is supposed to be the world's greatest detective, and that crime detection involves more than (as some recent writers apparently thought) running around and beating up people. There's a genuine mystery here, and all the clues are in plain sight, and are perfectly fair to the reader.

Batman also is shown to have great affection for those close to him. Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Barbara Gordon, and Alfred Pennyworth, all of whom play important roles, and apply their various fields of expertise, to the case in "Constants." In recent stories, Bruce Wayne has come off as so obsessive that some have wondered what kind of adolescence Dick had as he grew up in the household of such a man. But the published stories from that period show Bruce to have been one of the kindest and most loving father-figures imaginable. If not quite to the treacly extent of Adam West's deliberately campy portrayal on the 1960's television show, he took great pains to insure that, despite his Robin career, Dick would have as normal an adolescence as possible. Deprived of his own parents at an early age and determined to see that no other child would undergo a similar deprivation, Bruce could have done nothing less. As Devin Grayson notes, "The pain that once made [Bruce] want to shut out the entire world eventually moved him to assume care for a young circus boy whose parents were murdered in an extortion incident. And it was, in part, raising that young man that gave Batman the emotional maturity to recognize other opportunities for beneficial companionship."

This and several other passages are apparently written by an unidentified narrator, one ostensibly hostile to Batman. This individual concludes the story with an apparent threat: "I don't pretend to be that ambitious, but I will know Batman. After all, in the end, the final hour of retiring him permanently will almost certainly come to me." I've seen several suggestions made to his identity: Ras al-Ghul, Bane, Deathstroke the Terminator (all villains who know his Bruce Wayne identity and much of his history), but also, given the ambiguous phrasing, perhaps someone more sympathetic such as Barbara Gordon, her father, Alfred, or even Bruce himself, longing for a day when Batman will no longer be necessary. But, all in all, this was an excellent and thought-provoking story about Batman and his interactions with those around him, and how (as in the rebuilding of his house, badly damaged in a recent storyline) he sometimes comes to realize that the old must give way to the new.