Beware the Court of Owls

Batman goes face to face with the creepy members of The Court of Owls. 

Everyone knows Gotham City is Batman's city.  In many ways, it's the city that helped create Batman all those years ago when young Bruce Wayne's parents were gunned down before his eyes in one of the city's dark alleyways.  Years later, when Bruce returned to Gotham and unleashed his alter ego Batman, it was to reclaim the city from the clutches of Gotham's criminal underbelly.  Bruce has always thought he knew the city down to the bone, but in Scott Snyder's Court of Owls series, he discovers that he doesn't know the city as well as he thought.  There are sinister secrets lurking behind the façade of the city, dark secrets which stretch back over a hundred years and intertwine with Bruce's own family history.  A mysterious organization known as The Court of Owls is out to prove to Batman and Bruce Wayne that the city belongs to them. 
I'm long overdue for writing about the spectacular Court of Owls storyline, but I figured better late than never.  As part of the New 52, Snyder puts a fresh spin on this timeless character, maintaining the essential traits that drive the man while adding some much needed depth.  At it's core, this story is about Bruce slowly learning that the Gotham he thought he knew so well might not really exist.  When a John Doe is found peppered with throwing knives, all which bear the symbol of an owl, it seems to be the calling card of The Court of Owls, a shadowy group mythologized in an old nursery rhyme.  The group was thought to be simply an urban legend, but the evidence seems to indicate that they might be real.  Only Batman remains skeptical.  When he discovers a message left by the john doe warning that Bruce Wayne will die, he goes about getting to the bottom of the mystery.  Not long after, Bruce is attacked at Wayne Tower by a masked assassin, called The Talon, who states that the Court has sentenced Bruce to die.  In the battle, Bruce gets kicked through a window of Wayne Tower and plummets to the street along with his assassin.  Luckily, he's able to grab onto one of the building's many gargoyles, and he watches his would be assassin slam into a car below.  Even this attack is not enough to convince him of the Court's existence and when Dick Grayson a.k.a. Nightwing asks why he doesn't believe it's them, Bruce tells him how he investigated the Court's existence when he was a kid and found nothing.   
I enjoyed how Snyder finds a way to tie the Court into the murder of Bruce's parents.  After their death, young Bruce in his sorrow became convinced their death wasn't random and started to piece together clues that seemed to point to the Court of Owls.  Believing the Court to be made up of Gotham's most influential who perhaps felt threatened by Thomas and Martha Wayne, Bruce set out to uncover the Court and the truth.  He tells how he found an abandoned social club with a owl for a crest and found his way into a room in the upper tower, certain he'd find their secret meeting place, but instead found just a dusty, empty room.  After that, Bruce came to the conclusion that the Court didn't exist.  Despite his skepticism, Bruce continues obsessively digging and discovers that his great-great grandfather, Alan Wayne was obsessed with Owls and believed they were in his house before he was found dead in Gotham's sewers.  Bruce investigates all buildings funded by the Wayne trust and in each finds a secret floor between the 12th and 14th full of weapons and trinkets of the Court going back to the late 1800's.  His investigation leads him into the sewer where Alan Wayne's body was retrieved years earlier and it's there that he's again attacked by the Talon, who managed to survive the fall (I'll explain that in a bit), and ends up in a dizzying maze called the labyrinth with members of the Court watching his every move.  Here, a wounded Batman must work his way through a maze of rooms, all while being chased by The Talon and seeing photos of Gotham citizens who vanished without a trace, including Alan Wayne.  Bruce, in a state of delirium from drinking drugged water, sees his dead parents and manages to fight through his terrifying visions.  In the process, he learns just how far reaching the Court's influence goes, secretly pulling the strings behind Gotham for centuries.  On the verge of death, the members of the Court order The Talon to finish off Batman but Bruce musters his last ounce of strength and finally defeats The Talon in badass style, after which he escapes back into the sewer while the Court disposes of the Talon's defeated and therefore unworthy body.   
Snyder builds the story up in an exciting way, unfolding crucial revelations little by little.  For instance, early on we learn that DNA found on the John Doe matches Dick Grayson and he explains that the dead man approached him weeks earlier, vaguely warning him about the Court and grabbed tightly onto his arm, explaining how his DNA got under the man's nails.  Towards the end of Vol. 1 when Bruce manages to make it back to the Cave after escaping the labyrinth, he discovers that Alfred found The Talon's discarded body and Bruce begins to run tests on it.  It's revealed that the body contains large amounts of electrum, a substance capable of re-animating dead tissue, which seeped into his cells over many years from a deposit on his back tooth bearing the Court's symbol.  This allowed The Talon and anyone else specially prepared by the Court in this way, to cheat death again and again.  Only by keeping the body cold as Bruce does can it be kept in a comatose state.  Bruce then reveals to Dick that this Talon is Dick's great-grandfather and when Dick gets angry at this news, Bruce strikes him across the face, knocking out a deposit on his back tooth like the Talon's.  Turns out the Court was preparing Dick to be among the next generation of assassins after scoping him out years earlier when he was a circus acrobat.  While this is being explained, we see the Court members preparing a new Talon to lead a full out assault and take back the city of Gotham in an epic ending to Volume 1.   
The Court of Owls is a gripping read from start to finish and a immensely satisfying new chapter for The Dark Knight.  Snyder gets into Bruce's thought process in an interesting way as it swings between the contemplative, informative and sometimes the humorous.  His personality doesn't feel the least bit one dimensional, but he's still the deeply driven and focused detective.  What I like about his adversary here is that it's not simply one guy but rather an entire clandestine organization lurking in the shadows of Gotham.  Like the Illuminati, the Court seems to have its Talons in everything, challenging Batman's authority in the city.  The art by Greg Capullo perfectly suits the tone of the story: dirty and gritty in some places, clean and clear in others.  The story is after all a gritty mystery story but there's also plenty of action.  At times, the action explodes out of the panels.  During the scenes in the labyrinth, panels are turned sideways and even upside down as if to mirror Batman's disorientation.  The story continues in Vol.2, The City of Owls, in which Bruce faces off against a horde of assassins who attack Wayne Manor and uncovers deeper, darker secrets about his family's ties to the Court.  Court of Owls is an engrossing mystery and a perfect Batman story for old time fans and first time readers that only gets better as it steams along.