Fan Casting Batman: Mask of the Phantasm

While Batman is busting an illicit counterfeiting operation, gangster Chuckie Sol attempts to make his getaway on wheels from a high-rise parking garage. He is suddenly confronted by a shadowy figure in a cape, which he assumes to be Batman. However, it is instead a different costumed figure, with a deep, echoing voice, a ghostly mask, and a vicious blade on the end of one arm. A frightened Sol tries to run down the new threat, but his target disappears in a cloud of smoke. Sol instead smashes through the wall of the parking structure and crashes into an adjoining building, dead on impact. Witnesses note Batman's arrival on the scene and most jump to the conclusion that he has finally let one of his normally non-lethal pursuits go too far.

Batman is still a mysterious and frightening figure to most of the public. Fueling the anti-Bat bias is councilman Arthur Reeves, a vocal opponent of Batman's methods and a major thorn in the side of Commissioner James Gordon. Reeves goes over Gordon's head to recruit police officers who share his distaste for Batman's activities.

Later, Reeves is contacted by his old friend, Andrea Beaumont, who is just arriving in Gotham City. He asks Andrea whether she is planning on looking up "old friend," Bruce Wayne. Dropping the in-flight magazine which she had been nostalgically looking at, she dismissively calls the relationship "ancient history", but a flashback tells otherwise...