Beware The Court of Owls, that watches all the time, ruling Gotham from a shadow perch, behind granite and lime. They watch you at your hearth, they watch you in your bed, speak not a whispered word of them or they’ll send The Talon for your head.
In Gotham City there was a mystery that even the famed Batman could not discover the truth behind. A sinister cult who watched over the city, sinking their claws into those who it deemed a threat to the established order. Worshipping a god who destroys universes this cult has been the puppetmasters behind Gotham’s corruption for centuries. The Court of Owls story arc is a mind melting story with disturbing visuals, and almost saw Batman broken. This makes the Court of Owls a perfect group to look at for 2022’s Month of Horror.
Creation
The Court of Owls was created by Scott Snyder who is a fantastic horror writer. This is not the first time we have looked at his comics for Month of Horror as he has also written the fantastic Wytches which (pun intended) I wrote about for 2020’s Month of Horror. However, you need a good artist to properly dive into the horror of the Court, and this was achieved by Greg Capullo who has also drawn horror comics being a longtime artist for Spawn. Metal fans might also know his name as he has designed album covers for Korn and Disturbed. The Court and its Talons were first introduced in 2011’s Batman #2, but gradually appear in pieces over the next few issues. This was the first Batman comics in the New 52 – DC’s big reboot in the 2010s – so Snyder and Capullo created a brand new antagonist for this new reality. Fitting in with their ethos, we gradually find out more and more about the Court, and at the end of Court of Owls we still know very little about them. It would be later comics that more of the Court’s history and backstory would be revealed.
The Court of Owls
Bruce Wayne had a busy day – announcing a new project to redevelop Gotham to end poverty by day, and by night investigating the brutal torture and murder of a John Doe. One of the knives forced into the corpse had an owl insignia on it, leading Commissioner Gordon and Nightwing to hypothesise that this could be the mythical Court of Owls. After all, Batman used to be an urban legend, so why not the Court? Batman disagreed and explained to Dick why – his first ever investigation, while just a child, he tried to find out if the Court was real. Unable to imagine that his parents had just been killed by a random mugger, he believed the Court must have been behind it. After finding their supposed base all it got the young Bruce was accidentally trapping himself in an abandoned building for a week. Instead, Batman believed that this killer was using the legend of the Court to generate fear. Meanwhile, an unknown audience, after watching Bruce Wayne’s earlier speech, announced that Bruce Wayne is to die. At John Doe’s crime-scene a fiery message was left ‘Bruce Wayne will Die Tomorrow’. Whoever John Doe was he knew someone would be after Wayne, and knew when his body would be found. Not only that – Dick Grayson recognised the Doe as a man who tried grabbing his arm at a function rambling that someone was coming.
In Old Wayne Tower Bruce was meeting with prospective mayoral candidate Lincoln March the next day, but a shadowy assassin identifying itself as a Talon tried to assassinate the two of them. Instead, the Talon was left plummeting out of a window to his death – although he would later wake up and slaughter the paramedics. Bruce Wayne’s great-great grandfather Alan Wayne had gone insane claiming that owls were hiding within the walls, and the Alan Wayne Trust had funded the construction of Gotham’s skyscrapers. Knowing that the thirteenth-floor was bricked off or made a mezzanine due to fear of unluckiness, Batman tracked down the blocked off thirteenth floors in Alan Wayne Trust buildings. To his horror in each building was signs that the Court of Owls was very much real, and very much active. A tripwire went off in one building planted by the Talons, but that doesn’t stop the investigation. Alan Wayne had died when, raving about owls watching him, fell into an open manhole and drowned. Investigating his great-great grandfathers bones Batman found evidence of torture, so looked in the spot where his ancestor died. Instead, he was met with Talon who drugged the Dark Knight.
The next week of Batman’s life was Hell. Incredibly dehydrated he had no choice but to drink from a fountain that he knew was drugged. In a drug-induced torture, Batman is forced to wander a maze surrounded by the photos of those who had been mentally broken and tortured by the Court over the last century. As he stumbles through the corridors he saw closed coffins containing the Talons – over the last four hundred years people had been given special drugs that extended their life and ability to heal, creating effective immortal assassins. Batman continues to stumble through the maze, and it becomes more and more disjointed. You get this as a reader as well – the layout of the comic changes and you have to move the comic in order to actually read it. I would 100% recommend reading this story arc for this reason alone. As Batman’s sanity wavers he sees his hands turn into talons, feathers sprout from his body, and owl eyes burst from his skull. Eventually, the Court itself decides to honour Batman with their presence, due to their respect for their foe. Ordering the Talon to beat Batman to death, instead he draws on the last of his strength to beat-down the Talon. Throughout his torture the Court had an old camera take photos of him, and it is revealed that Batman had been taking the sodium from the camera to manufacture a quick explosive.
Batman had also realised that the water’s taste meant that the base was near the river, so used this as his escape. The Court gave the Talon one last chance to redeem himself: catch the Batman. However, the river’s water causes the Talon to die – Batman revealing the chemical used to give the Talon’s their power ceases to work in the cold. While being nursed back to health by Alfred Batman revealed to Nightwing that this Talon was Thomas Cobb – Nightwing’s own ancestor. A quick fist to the face knocked out Nightwing’s tooth that revealed an owl – the Court also intended to turn Dick Grayson into a Talon, but Wayne adopting him scuppered their plans. Meanwhile, the Court woke all of their Talons – tonight they would take Gotham for themselves.
Night of Owls and After
For the first time in four hundred years, since the founding of Gotham, someone had escaped the Court. Made of Gotham’s elite, the Court had experienced whatever they wanted through generations – whatever they could not get through their civilian life, the Talons would do for them. Always a secret, what was known about them became a nursery rhyme told to the children of Gotham. Now, tired of the Batman evading their claws, the Court unleashed every Talon to take Gotham for themselves. This is the Night of Owls. The Talons were tasked with wiping out Batman, the Bat Family, and those deemed to stand in the way of the Court – Commissioner Gordon, Gotham’s villains, various activists. With centuries of combat, regenerative ability, and an undying loyalty to the Court, the Talons soon swept over the city killing target after target. However, the Bat Family and others managed to fend them off. Damian Wayne decapitated one, Poison Ivy locked one away in a meat container, and the Penguin even managed to shoot one in the head. Lincoln March was assassinated by a Talon but managed to reveal to Batman in a note where he believed the Court was hiding.
All was not as it seems – as ever with the Court. When Batman arrived to face the Court they were all dead; killed by poison. The killer: Lincoln March. A member of the Court, he was originally used by the higher ups to get close to Bruce Wayne so a Talon could assassinate him. However, Bruce fighting off the Talon made March realise that Bruce Wayne is Batman. Using the cover of the Talon’s war on Gotham Lincoln poisoned the Court and survived his own assassination by ingesting the drug used to give the Talons their immortality. As head of the Court Lincoln March would begin his war against Batman – March was convinced that he was the son of Thomas and Martha Wayne, accidentally given to an orphanage as a baby after a car crash. March is the main reality version of Owlman, the Earth-3 version of Batman who is a supervillain (named Owlman as owls eat bats). Batman personally believes that his brother was miscarried during the crash, and the Court used this to manipulate Lincoln. Regardless, now dressed in a new Talon suit, designed to survive against Batman, Lincoln planned to use the Court to fund Cluemaster’s plan to kill Batman. The public death of the Batman by an unknown enemy would forever destroy the myth of the Batman leaving just the Court. This failed when Gordon, the Bat Family, and the people of Gotham rallied behind the Batman, making the Court realise that they could not break the Batman’s myth.
Eventually, it was revealed that the Court of Owls was just one part of a wider cabal. Scattered across the world, in major cities, there were courts that were part of the wider Parliament of Owls. Fun fact, a group of owls is called a parliament. With the Gotham branch being the oldest and most powerful, it held large sway over the Parliament, but a coup put of stop to this. The rest of the Parliament were angered at March’s open war in Gotham and had their assassin called Raptor to shoot him through the eye killing him. March would later be resurrected – the Joker reinjected him with the drug as a way to get March to work for him.
DC Metal
Finally, we are up to Snyder’s and Capullo’s multiverse shattering event DC Metal. Bringing back the Parliament we get to find out about their origins, but to do so we have to go way back in time – long before the beginning of the multiverse. Every decision, hope, and fear a person had sparked a new reality, and this was overseen by the World Forger. The World Forger created a being who would destroy unstable realities so that the energy from these worlds could be used to forge new realities. However, this being’s desire for destruction led it to kill the World Forger, and the unstable worlds would become the basis of the Dark Multiverse. This being was Barbatos and set his sights on the multiverse. Trying to come into the multiverse in humanity’s infancy his presence led to the Tribe of Judas worshipping him. When Batman was blasted through time during Final Crisis this drew Barbatos’s attention to him, and orchestrated the Tribe to ensure Batman came into contact with the five metals of the Dark Multiverse. Meanwhile, Barbatos recruited an evil Batman – the Batman who Laughs – to create an army for him to invade the multiverse.
Over the centuries a branch of the Tribe of Judas evolved into something else in North America. It evolved into the Court of Owls. Not only would they rule Gotham behind the scenes through terror, but they would set the stage for Barbatos’s invasion. Knowing that the House of Wayne would allow Barbatos to return they ensured members of the Wayne family would slowly be introduced to the metals of the Dark Multiverse. Eventually, the Court managed to introduce Batman to the final metal which opened the portal to the Dark Multiverse. For their loyalty the Batman who Laughs had the cannibalistic and monstrous Robins to tear them apart. The slaughter reduced the numbers of the Parliament of Owls to a few individuals. During the Watchmen crossover Doomsday Clock the villains of the world gathered to hear the Riddler’s lecture on the ‘Superman Theory’ where Black Adam offered them refuge in Kahndaq. Now led by the mysterious Judge, the last members of the Court decided to remain in Gotham.
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