Written by Grant Morrison, penciled by Tony Daniel, and with covers by Alex Ross, the story pits the superhero Batman against the Black Glove organization as they attempt to destroy everything that he stands for.

Events then flash back to Gotham City six months earlier, where Simon Hurt announces the Black Glove's next venture: the destruction of Batman.

Meanwhile, the Black Glove member, Le Bossu, while in his secret identity as a psychologist, contacts the Joker in Arkham Asylum and offers him a role in their assault on Batman.

[3] Jezebel tries to convince Batman that he is simply living a life he has fabricated in his own head as a child to cope with the death of his parents.

This suggestion begins to affect Batman's already-strained psyche, and he passes out when Jezebel says aloud a word that was on all the Bat-computer's screens: Zur-En-Arrh.

As the two spend time together, traveling in what Honor calls an "odyssey" across the city, Bruce sees more evidence of his forgotten life.

[5] The Batman of Zur-En-Arrh hunts down and dispatches two small-time members of the Black Glove, and finds that his next destination is Arkham Asylum, armed with nothing but a baseball bat, his Bat-radia, and miscellaneous bits of junk that serve in place of his utility belt.

[7] The term "Zur-en-Arrh" was written all over the city by Hurt as a subliminal trigger to be used when the time was right to break Batman's mind.

The straitjacketed Batman is buried in a shallow grave, Hurt's intention being to exhume him once oxygen deprivation has permanently damaged his mind.

Back in the asylum, Joker casually murders a Black Glove member and places a bet with those who remain: that Batman will emerge from the grave undamaged and hunt them down, as he always does.

Before Joker flees in an ambulance, he promises the remaining Black Glove members that he will collect his winnings from them soon and tells Hurt that he should not have called him his servant.

Back in present-day Gotham, Le Bossu tells his henchmen that Batman has not been seen in months and that they are free to commit crimes unmolested, when suddenly a Bat-signal-like light comes on above them, bringing the story full circle to its opening image.

[8] Discussing the genesis of the storyline and its linkage to the rest of their run, Morrison commented: I can tell you this much—this is the first story I had planned when Peter Tomasi, the editor at the time, asked me to do Batman, which must have been two years ago now…or longer.

Everything…the "Zur-En-Arrh" graffiti, the Joker prose story, the Club of Heroes…every detail that's been in the book for the last couple of years is significant, everything is a clue to the grand design that's unfolding.

[9]In an interview with Comic Book Resources, Grant Morrison explained that Batman's fate in the story is "so much better than death.

at the April 2008 New York Comic Con "Spotlight on Grant Morrison" panel: "When we begin to suspect the identity of the villain, I think it's the most, like I said the other day, it's possibly the most shocking Batman revelation in 70 years".

[11] DC Universe #0 shed some light on the potential plot of the series, with a scene between Batman and the Joker written as a prelude to the upcoming storyline.

The Joker, nonchalantly dealing out a "dead man's hand" from a deck of cards, taunts Batman regarding his fear of the mystery villain and how the Black Glove intends on destroying him.

In "Scattered Pieces", which ran in Robin #175–176, also parallel to the main story, Batman is missing and rampaging through the city in a delusional state.

Nightwing is imprisoned in Arkham Asylum and Robin, fearing that Batman could have lost his sanity and gone rogue, tasks himself with finding his mentor and stopping him if necessary.

In the crossover story Final Crisis, Darkseid attempts to mind-control Batman, capturing him while he is investigating the death of the New God Orion and attempting to create an army of clones based on him, but cannot, and only manages to make imperfect copies of him, the clones being unable to cope with the psychological stress of being Batman.

[18][19][20] According to DC Senior Vice President and executive editor, Dan DiDio, Bruce Wayne does not really die in the storyline, although it leads to his absence.

The titles Nightwing, Robin, and Birds of Prey were canceled, and both Batman and Detective Comics went on hiatus for three months in March 2009.