WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Batman: Gotham Nights #19 from Gabriel Hardman, Mike Spicer and Simon Bowland, available now.

In the Batman mythos, the Dark Knight is currently destined to die of cancer in his old age, thanks to the after-effects of an encounter with Dr. Phosphorus. In Detective Comics #1027, it's revealed that Batman would be exposed to dangerous levels of radiation, which will cause him to become terminally ill years down the line and die a peaceful yet tragic death away from killers like the Joker, Bane and Co.

Now, in Batman: Gotham Nights #19, we're getting a trip through time to see one of their first encounters and it focuses on Phosphorus, undoubtedly the Caped Crusader's deadliest villain, being turned into a literal poison.

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In this story, Batman's tracking a bomb explosion on a ship at Gotham's harbor following the poisoning of a councilwoman, Ann Vinton. The Bat thinks the real target is Vargas, a South American politician and philanthropist who's in Gotham for humanitarian aid. But as he and Batwoman begin investigating the ship, Bruce realizes the radiation can be traced to Phosphorus.

Created in Detective Comics #469 by Steve Englehart and Walt Simonson, Alexander Sartorius was a member of a board of scientists who wanted to build an offshore nuclear power plant. However, due to an accident, Sartorius was turned into a walking radioactive reactor, with his body glowing and skeleton appearing through his skin similar to Batman Beyond's Blight. He'd threaten to poison the Gotham Water Supply in revenge and since then, he's become a major thorn in the side of the Bat-family.

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But he cuts a more sympathetic figure here as Bruce deduces he was taken from Arkham thanks to falsified paperwork by none other than Rupert Thorne. This corrupt councilman actually wanted to kill Vinton all along and was using the rumored hit on Vargas as a distraction. Vinton was against the nuclear power plant that was eventually built on the outskirts of Gotham and as she was lobbying to shut it down, Thorne had to kill her so he could protect his cabal's revenue stream. He had scientists operate and drain Phosphorus' blood to create a near-untraceable poison that would act quickly, hoping Vargas would take eyes off him as cops might have figured it was South American terrorists who got the wrong target.

The vigilantes would eventually find Phosphor at the plant trying to heal himself with fuel rods, but knowing this would cause a meltdown, Bruce uses a silica casing, Vargas' insight, and then traps Phosphorus in a special nuclear container. The Bat instructs STAR Labs to patch him up before he goes back to Arkham, and this kicks off Thorne's arrest. Ironically, Vargas is an anti-nuclear energy activist himself, so all Thorne did was doom his plant. Still, it doesn't feel like a big victory for Bruce as we don't know what the science team did with the research garnered from turning Sartorius a lab rat, which means the weapon could still be floating around the city.

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