Batman and Robin: Domino Questions

Earlier this year, I posted a series of multiple-choice questions about Grant Morrison's current run on Batman and Robin. The intention was to focus our collective efforts on solving the mysteries at hand, and I created these questions (and some of their possible answers) in a very deliberate attempt to copy what I'd done with a fair bit of success regarding Morrison's run on Batman. I wasn't as happy with my work this time around; I felt like I might have been missing the correct answers from my lists of choices. Moreover, there is just plain less information this time: This run has been much shorter, so far, than the Batman run that led into Batman, R.I.P. I was trying to pin down Oberon Sexton's identity when we'd only seen him in about three pages of story, and it's far from clear even that his identity had been decisively hinted at, then or now.

In the interests of focus, I analyzed the domino clues only, and offer here a short list of questions that feel more likely to be comprehensive on this subtopic than the sixteen questions I posted before.

The first bit of analysis (or "data reduction") on the sprawling set of clues we have was to consider how many independent points of information we have concerning the dominoes. In all, we have seen dominoes over a dozen times, if you count out-of-story references (like the cover of issue #2), but it seemed to me that these can likely be clustered into four. Then we can consider separately how the possible answers to those questions align with the facts and with each other.

The four elementary domino appearances in the story, in my formulation are:

Domino Appearances
D1) El Penitente alluded to a force acting on his behalf as "The Mexican Train". We know this to be the name of a domino game.
D2) The dominoes that have appeared in Gotham on three occasions when someone likely to be working for El Penitente was defeated in some way.
D3) The dominoes said to have been found in cases where the Black Glove members from #680-681 were killed or abducted.

D4) The dominoes Pearly was playing with when Batman spoke with him.

And furthermore, let's throw out a list of the likely suspects:

Domino Suspects
S1) El Penitente or his agents
S2) The Joker
S3) Talia
 S3a) Out to get El Penitente
 S3b) Framing Damian
S4) Bruce Wayne from the past leaving dominoes
S5) Grant Morrison
S6) Oberon Sexton if he is not one of the above
S7) Two of the above taking turns
S8) Nobody

Finally, here is a timeline of events relevant to the Domino plot. I give an approximate count of the days since the end of RIP. There is a big jump from RIP to the "six months later" when Dick and Damian collar Le Bossu. The smaller scale of the timeline (eg, events shown in Batman and Robin) are in order (although the actual day of Cardinal Maggi's death cannot be pinned down). The absolute count of days is guesswork, and probably not important.

Domino Timeline
T1) RIP+000 Malenkov killed by the Joker
T2) RIP+001 Jezebel's plane attacked by Talia's man-bats
T3) RIP+178 Drug deal with dominoes in the trunk
T4) RIP+179 Toad dies, domino in hand
T5) RIP+180 Domino in Pyg's lab
T6) RIP+181 Cardinal Maggi slayed
T7) RIP+185 Santo

Oberon Sexton arrives in Gotham: RIP+183
El Penitente and Sexton phone call #1: RIP+188
Pearly and Batman: RIP+190
Oberon Sexton and Batman: RIP+200
El Penitente and Sexton phone call #2: RIP+200

Unknown Time:
 al-Khidr DEAD <183, Sir Anthony MISSING/DEAD <183, Malenkov found <183

Given these facts, the three primary questions concern the cause-and-effect relationships (or lack thereof) between the "D" items. For the sake of brevity, "EP" = El Penitente.

1) What is the relationship between EP's "Mexican Train" and the dominoes in Gotham?
1A) EP is using dominoes as a symbol
1B) EP is using dominoes as a weapon
1C) Someone opposed to EP is using dominoes as a reply/taunt/clue to EP
1D) Gotham dominoes to frame Damian

2) What is the relationship between the dominoes in Gotham and Sexton's report to Batman?

2A) Dominoes with dead BG members same agenda as ones in Gotham

2B) Someone is using BG dominoes as a copy of Gotham ones

2C) Someone is using Gotham dominoes as a copy of BG dominoes

2D) Sexton's story is made-up to link to Gotham dominoes

3) What is the relationship between EP's "Mexican Train" and Pearly's dominoes?

3A) Pearly knows something and was trying to tell Batman nonverbally

3B) Pearly has dominoes because he is a defeated criminal

3C) Pearly has dominoes as part of a plan to spread them to many people

3D) It is a coincidence that Pearly has dominoes

Other clues/hints

Phosphorus Rex says El Penitente's forces (or those of Pyg, who works for El Penitente) will "kill us all".

The secret of the dominoes is "terrifying".

While everyone seen in Gotham with dominoes is an underling of EP who has just been defeated when the domino is found, the Circus of the Strange are underlings of EP and are defeated and do not end up with dominoes.

Grant Morrison interview: "this isn't about Bruce Wayne at all, except in as much as it deals with his absence".

The one BG member whom Talia took out was not found with domino.

The one BG member whom  Joker killed was found with domino pattern. But if the dominoes

are "terrifying", then the symbol may be an imitation (or fiction) by a copycat who failed to understand the significance of the physical dominoes.

The solicit for #1 said that Batman and Robin would be tracking the Domino Killer, who had abducted a child. Sasha was abducted by Pyg. So either the Domino Killer is on El Penitente's side, or Dick would have been making a mistake in his detective work, or the story was changed significantly after that solicit was written.

Solicit for #12 says that the Domino Killer's identity will be revealed (but there strong indications of misdirection; e.g., that there is no Domino Killer).

Was Malenkov's body taken from Gotham and put into alligator elsewhere? Either someone took great trouble to create an impression or Sexton is lying

Grant Morrison interview: re: the Joker, "an idea I don't think has been done before with him".

If you compare the art between Batman and Robin #3 and Batman #676, it looks like Le Bossu was in the "House of Hurt" where we first saw the Club of Villains. The newspaper announcing Cardinal Maggi's death was there, and the policeman had been inquisitive about something, perhaps tracking the Black Glove murders to Le Bossu and thus to Hurt / El Penitente.

My opinions

I don't think it's possible given what we know to pin down the answers to the Domino questions, the identity of the Domino Killer, and the identity of Oberon Sexton. That said, I think some answers look more likely than others. If the secret of the dominoes is "terrifying", then they are not a message from Bruce Wayne, and they are not a mere symbol or hint-for-hint's sake, like Jason Todd's calling cards. Talia is unlikely to be leaving the Dominoes, because Jezebel was not found. If she were merely using them to frame Damian, that would not be terrifying.

I have argued for a Fourth Wall scenario in which Grant Morrison was the Domino Killer and/or Oberon Sexton. This remains possible, but we are now very close to the climax of this plot without much commitment to that outcome, and a lot of story left to tell regarding the main characters.

Perhaps Pearly's role is of lesser importance, but I think he knows about the dominoes and used them (instead of a drawing on paper) to tell Dick not only where the Lazarus Pit was but also that the "Mexican Train", Doctor Hurt's big attack, was coming. Note that the guard makes at least two references to Pearly being too talkative, and Pearly chooses to communicate his key point to Batman silently.

As I noted in a previous post, I think Sir Anthony makes a lot of sense as Oberon Sexton, but this is far from conclusive. Sexton could also be Mangrove Pierce, as I conjectured much earlier.

And so, I think the Domino Killer is most likely either El Penitente or the Joker. I think the single strongest interpretation of what we know is 1B, 2D, 3A, as presented in Theory #1 below. However, as a demonstration that the mystery is not, as far as I can see, solvable, I offer two other theories which also fit the facts and are not, as far as I can see, falsifiable. In fact, Theory #1 fails to do anything original with the Joker, so for it to be true, the plot will have to conclude with the original idea for the Joker coming in later.

Theory #1

Doctor Hurt is going to use drug/toxin on dominoes to cause a mass slaughter. The dominoes are also being used as a suicide/punishment to kill his underlings when they fail. The Black Glove murders, committed by Joker and Talia, are not actually being marked with dominoes; Oberon Sexton (Sir Anthony) made this up to get Batman's help.

Theory #2

The Joker is doing the Domino killings and leaving dominoes in other places, just to vex Doctor Hurt. He knows about the "Mexican Train" and has chosen to use dominoes as a taunt. "Tony Li" was a Joker henchman in disguise who planted the one on Santo. Oberon Sexton is Sir Anthony, trying to get Batman to stop the killer who might be after him next.

Theory #3

Doctor Hurt is going to use drug/toxin on dominoes to cause a mass slaughter. The dominoes are also being used as a suicide/punishment to kill his underlings when they fail, or as a symbol of his work, and this includes the Black Glove members. Oberon Sexton is an amnesiac Joker trying to be a detective and work for the good against evil, in the guise of a voodoo loa Baron Samedi.

Other permutations are possible. The point is that we can, I suspect, narrow the possibilities down, and see as we read which choices Morrison made from a list of known alternatives. Even so, there are sure to be utterly unforeseeable twists, not to mention the truth about Doctor Hurt, the Wayne family, the return of Bruce Wayne, Talia's attack on Dick Grayson, and whatever makes this part of the story tie into Batman #666 "considerably".

Whatever the truth is, we now have a yearlong plot coming down to the final two issues, with the penultimate installment out tomorrow. And as the preview for #11 shows, it's a big one. The showdown: Doctor Hurt versus Dick Grayson. The action starts now!

Batman and Robin 10 Preview

Just a few hours ago, DC placed a preview to Batman and Robin #10 on its website. A few short pages provided a wealth of clues about the main mystery of the entire 16-issue opening portion of Grant Morrison's run on the title. Damian stands mighty, instructing Wayne Enterprise's board on the nature of the finanical irregularities that have long been hinted at, a moment of "and a child shall lead them" of biblical proportions. Then Batman confers with Oberon Sexton, obtaining copious information about the Domino Killer -- but is the information true? True or false, this is a huge fraction of the entire Domino Killer plot in just a couple of pages. Enough to make it worth revisiting the questions that remain open in this story. I will also incorporate some observations from the rest of the series.

Damian tells the board that the irregularities stem from an excessive and growing amount of money that has been siphoned off into an fund, in the name of Thomas Wayne, for the victims of railroad accidents. That piece of information is tangled in a number of possible deceptions -- the thing of which we can be most sure is that the fund is not being used simply to aid the victims of railroad accidents. Damian says that its use goes back years, so it's not something that began after Bruce's disappearance. Is it the fund that has always funded Batman's activities, and is no longer being covered up by Bruce? It's a bit suspicious that Bruce would leave a detail like that unaddressed. Is it something that has been siphoned out of Wayne Enterprises for the Black Glove? It's also suspicious that something like that would have escaped Bruce's notice.

The conversation between Oberon Sexton and Batman is, on the surface, full of details. Up until this time, the story had presented dominoes to us on five occasions. After the second, when Toad was found dead with a domino in his hand, Dick listed the oddities he'd faced in the first two issues and included a mention of "domino killers". The plural there when only one body had been found can be explained as his exaggeration as he registers a general frustration with the elements around him. Or it may be a clue that there is, after all, more than one domino killer.

Sexton describes a larger pattern. We were told earlier that he is an "amateur detective" on the trail of "a globetrotting serial killer." Now he lists five or six other victims, including three members of the Black Glove as seen in the finale of Batman, R.I.P. He gives a timeline of "six months" for the murders and disappearances. Assuming that the faces match with the ones they seem to match with, they are:

1) Cardinal Maggi, a Black Glove member seen in RIP. The newspaper announcing his "gruesome slaying" has previously been shown in the possession of Le Bossu as well as in Sexton's hotel room.

2) al-Khidr, an oil sheihk, a Black Glove member seen in RIP. "Choked to death on peanuts and poison".

3) Malenkov, the Russian general, a Black Glove member seen in RIP. (The "soldier" in RIP had a uniform similar to, but not exactly matching, that of current Russian generals' dress uniforms.) We saw the Joker kill him. Sexton says that "they found his remains inside an alligator, with a domino pattern painted on its back."

4) Jezebel Jet, working for the Black Glove and seen in RIP, but not one of the five betting members. We saw Talia's man-bats attack her plane, which either led to her death or some other outcome of Talia's choosing.

5) "Sir Anthony", British, accompanied by the headline "The mystery deepens." His appearance is similar to that of a member of the Black Glove seen in RIP who said that he made his fortune in electronics -- the match here is uncertain. It could be that a man with the first name "Anthony" was knighted after making a fortune in electronics. So it could be that yet another of the five betting members has been slain, or the two men could be different. If so, then this is the only victim on Sexton's map who was not in RIP. Dick, looking at Sexton's evidence lists "a media guy". That could be "Sir Anthony".

The one betting member of the Black Glove not, perhaps, named is a short man wearing a cowboy hat who smokes a cigar and is the only one with absolutely no spoken words. It's possible that he is the "media guy" and is for some reason left off of the map (perhaps the case that brought Oberon Sexton "west"). In that case, it's possible that every evil wealthy person present in RIP has been accounted for as a victim in Sexton's report -- those six and exactly those six. If not, then either Sir Anthony or the "media guy" are a wealthy person who was not in RIP, hinting that they entered the organization as a replacement once the killings started. The only one with a domino clue described to us was Malenkov. Given that some have "vanished", there would not be the possibility of a domino clue with the bodies. it seems likely that dominoes showed up in other cases, too, or else the other cases are linked to Malenkov by the prominence of the victims and only he had the domino clue.

There are irregularities in Sexton's report:

a) He had been contacted by El Penitente and given a demand to do something. Perhaps this meeting with Batman was that demand. Either way, Sexton does not mention that phone call, and does not mention the folder on his bed with the likely image of Doctor Hurt / El Penitente -- an admittedly blurry shape like that of a man wearing the Thomas Wayne batmask with the upside-down pentagram underneath. That Sexton does not mention the phone call indicates that he is fearful of repercussions ("since the eyes and ears of El Penitente are everywhere") and thus is probably telling Batman exactly what El Penitente asked him to tell, give or take a possible sneaky clue that he might work in subtly.

b) Sexton ends with the comment "They can bury the truth as deeply as they like, Batman. But good men will always find shovels to dig with." The teaser images seen at the end of #9 include a shovel stuck into the ground by the gravestone formerly used to hold the body of "Bruce Wayne". Either Sexton's final comment is delivering Dick a clue which leads him to take a shovel to that gravesite or someone else places the shovel there. But Sexton does not purport to know that Wayne was "buried" there. So why would he have knowledge enough to leave such a clue? Note that burial is how the Black Glove tried to dispose of Batman.

c) We know that Malenkov was killed by the Joker, much the same way that we know that Santo was assaulted by Jason Todd, and Jezebel by Talia. While it may seem to Dick or Sexton that there is a killer carrying out a pattern, we know for absolute certain that there isn't a single killer following this pattern. We have no doubt whatsoever who killed Malenkov. The question is how his body ended up inside an alligator after the events of RIP, which should have ended with the general's body in the care of the authorities. It is equally unclear how Le Bossu managed to get free after RIP. He had a newspaper mentioning Cardinal Maggi's death. Is his escape related to the removal of Malenkov's body? The Black Glove had Gotham authorities working for them as of the end of RIP, they may have chosen to start working on their agenda immediately and accordingly placed the body in the alligator and let Le Bossu free. (Whereas Jezebel has to escape on her own.)

Moving on, we have the five appearances of dominoes in the story in Batman and Robin.

The drug deal that opens the first issue remains a tricky thing to understand; Gutter Treasure has posted some comments regarding what was going on. Given dialogue in other issues, we can say:

I) Sasha's uncle is one of the customers of Pyg who used the drug to enslave women for the mob. Jason tells us this in #5 and Dick refers to that setup in #3. But it seems odd for both sides of a drug deal to be fleeing in the same car with just one trunk. This may signify that while Toad usually sold to the Russians, in this case he was going somewhere with the Russians to make a sale to some other, and perhaps important, unknown character. If that character gave Toad and the Russians dominoes, that's highly suspicious whether they intended to receive dominoes or not, and I believe that Dick's dialogue probably indicates that they intended to receive cash and were surprised not to.

II) Sasha says that the people who make and trade these new drugs sent Pyg to kill her papa. Given the solicit for #10 that mentions "El Penitente's drug cartel", we can be rather certain that Pyg worked for El Penitente. The fact that Pyg, like Flamingo and the Replacement Batman, was made into a villain out of a good person through real or unreal psychology is further corroboration of that.

III) Santo unquestionably works for El Penitente and moreover indicates "just when we think we have Gotham in our grip" that Batman has returned (he mistakenly confuses the Red Hood's activities with Batman's). This indicates that El Penitente has not just now struck, but has been doing so for at least a short time already. A Morrison interview indicates that Doctor Hurt will be back to finish what he started and El Penitente's comment to Sexton that he has "unfinished business" in Gotham and "scores to settle" leaves us with no doubt that El Penitente is fundamentally Doctor Hurt.

And the upshot of this is that all five or six recipients of dominoes in Sexton's report to Batman are members of Doctor Hurt's Black Glove while all three who have dominoes in Gotham are working for El Penitente... and thus we have eight or nine people in all, all of whom were associated with the same Devilish master, who have been tied to the dominoes. In every case, the domino has been seen after the person failed or was defeated. But we know without a doubt, in at least two cases, that it was not the person who dealt the defeat who placed the domino, and the set of defeats have been doled out by no fewer than four characters: the Joker, Talia, Jason Todd, and Batman himself. Meanwhile, unless it is the Joker behind all of this, the placer of dominoes is not the one who brought about any of those defeats. Finally, the domino pattern on the alligator's back is not a physical domino at all, so that nixes the idea that some physical effect of the domino (poison, restorative, or spiritual) is crucial to what's going on.

It remains the case that the Joker would have had a hard time planting dominoes in these situations unless, perhaps, he posed as a policeman in the GCPD, and was dressed as Tony Li in the meeting of mobsters. Note that the very first time that Dick Grayson, as Robin, ran into the Joker, the Joker was disguised as a policeman.

Now, what information is being disclosed by Sexton to Dick, and why? Dick should know something about the Black Glove simply from Alfred. As I noted on the DC Message Boards, Lane told Batman the complete and undoctored truth in Batman #674 while doing what Doctor Hurt asked him to. The Devil's fond of lying, but will send others to tell the truth when it serves his purpose. Did Doctor Hurt want to spook Bruce with his encounter with Lane, and thereby had Lane tell Bruce the truth? Or did Morrison simply want to tell us what was going on, and left the issue of Doctor Hurt's control over that message undetermined?

All of the events in this run may be an elaborate overarching plan to attack Dick's psychology. The first villain he faced had a circus theme. The second was the Robin with whom Bruce replaced him (the psychological wound of this was a major focus of Nightwing: Year One). The third was a version of Bruce himself. Is this just high-drama storytelling, or is it a targeted attack on Dick's confidence? If it is, and El Penitente is pulling the strings, then how does Sexton's report fit in? It's clearly incomplete as it doesn't mention El Penitente. The idea of a killer killing rich people in other countries wouldn't spook Dick Grayson, but the mention of Bruce Wayne stands out. Up until the last panel of #9, Dick thought that Bruce was dead, and wouldn't be worried about an attack on him, for the logical fact that Bruce wasn't around to attack. But now he thinks Bruce is alive and somehow mysteriously absent after the events of Final Crisis. Bruce's silence is proof that his usually reliable ability to take care of himself has been interrupted. That he is alive gives Dick reason to worry. El Penitente wants Dick to hear that Bruce Wayne is the next target. He wants Dick to know that the wealthy people were being killed by someone leaving dominoes. This increases the likelihood that El Penitente is responsible for the dominoes being revealed in the first place. (We don't even know that any of the wealthy people who were murdered had dominoes with them -- that's only something that Sexton has said about Malenkov.) Of course, El Penitente knows that Dick knows who Bruce Wayne is. Sexton likely doesn't know that, unless he is playing coy in talking about Wayne in front of Grayson like that.

It seems less likely than before that Sexton is the Joker if he has been menaced into doing El Penitente's will. If he is the Joker and retains his memory, he would know that he killed Malenkov. If he is acting as a new personality due to some bump on the noggin as his ambulance was run off the bridge (ambulances are long, blocky, and white -- the first "domino" to fall?), the secret that El Penitente mentions in the phone call is one that Sexton himself doesn't know.

It's also less likely that Sexton is Bruce Wayne. If he is, then he's being used in a way over which Bruce Wayne should be able to prevail -- if not now, soon.

It remains the case that the pattern of attacks and clues would work with a fourth wall reveal, but there's nothing more backing that conclusion in these two pages. But then, there can only be so much in just two pages.

Batman and Robin: Domino

Batman and Robin intercept a car full of drug dealers. They secure Gotham City Police Headquarters when a powerful trio of metahuman circus acts try to break one of those dealers out. They stop the insidious head of the circus and bring down his operation. Later, they break in on a vigilante who has just mown down some of Gotham's organized crime bosses. All very tough stuff that only Batman and Robin could manage. But something was funny: In all four cases, someone got there first and left a taunting clue: one or more dominoes. Or so it seems.

As the first year of Batman and Robin nears its midpoint, the story is undoubtedly complex. While Morrison is providing a rigid structure to his run -- four arcs of three issues each -- the arcs seem to be bleeding into one another (at times, literally), and the complexity of the plot is bewildering. A reader might be enjoying these stories by rooting for Batman and Robin and assuming that anyone who punches back is the bad guy, but the roster of bad guys is itself a source of mystery: We have alleged bad guys who have been seen in person, other who have left evidence, others who have been referred to within the story, and yet others who have been referred to outside the story. Given the large number of villains and villain references, one puzzle is to match them and their plans up. There probably aren't enough clues to complete the puzzle yet. But we can ask: Is there one alpha villain behind the whole twelve issues? One who commands the allegiance of most of the lower-ranking villains we will see along the way? If so, is that alpha villain El Penitente, or the Domino Killer, or Doctor Hurt? Are those three different individuals or two... or one? What does Oberon Sexton have to do with it? The questions are so numerous that it's easier to start with the facts.

We know that Professor Pyg (now in custody) was a tortured soul who dealt addictive new drugs, using the Circus of the Strange and his Dollotrons as muscle. They were dealing with Russians and also seem to have had Russians working for them. That's one group of criminals.

Later, a Mexican named Santos tells us of his as-yet unseen boss, El Penitente, someone new to carrying out evil in Gotham. El Penitente's plan to addict ordinary people to drugs sounds like it might be the same as Pyg's, but is it the same plan or are they two similar plans? Santo's purple hood indicates a (real) order within the Roman Catholic Church called Los Penitentes, with a presence in Mexico and some members wearing purple hoods, with others wearing other colors to indicate their branch. Maybe Pyg was part of Penitente's organization, although they could hardly be more different in terms of style.

The Domino mystery has a logistical element to it: it's all well that a trunk that was supposed to contain cash actually contains dominoes. We can imagine the people who were supposed to leave cash leaving those instead. But the domino in Toad's hand is a real mystery: We should imagine that nobody was capable of sneaking in right before he was found dead. There are tactical possibilities: Someone invisible or otherwise "meta". Damian was on the scene, and has been in conflict with Dick since the beginning; could Dick's teasing him about detective skills have goaded Damian into faking a mystery to taunt his boss with? Or did someone sneak in and out of Toad's cell?

We have been told that there is a Domino "Killer" -- but only outside of the story, in a quotation from Grant Morrison and in the (somewhat inaccurate) solicit for #1. But Toad's case is the only murder involving a domino so far. The dominoes in the trunk accompanied no murder. The one found in Pyg's lab may have coincided with arson, but no murder. And the one found in Santos' hand took place at the scene of a multiple murder, but Santos himself was not killed. Moreover, we know exactly who assaulted Santos and the others -- it was Jason Todd.

We might imagine Jason Todd to be the one planting dominoes -- he has the ability and the anti-crime motive, even the specific opposition seen in Under the Hood to those who would deal drugs to kids. However, note that Jason was apparently never in physical contact with Santos. Jason, as the Red Hood, threw a broken glass as Santos, and the artwork seems to prohibit any opportunities for Jason to have walked over to Santos to hand him a domino.

We also have a clue from outside the story, and I mean that in more ways than one. The solicit for #1 says that Batman and Robin investigate "a child who's been abducted by the mysterious Domino Killer." It is clear that no such event takes place in #1 nor any of the issues since then. This probably indicates that Morrison tweaked his story somewhat since offering the solicit for #1; those sorts of changes happened a couple of times during his longer run on Batman, and it was potentially instructive to compare the solicit to the actual plot to try to work out Morrison's general intentions given two sets of alternative specifics. In this case, the abducted child seems almost certainly to be Sasha, who was abducted by Pyg (and by extension, by whomever Pyg worked) before going along willingly as the sidekick to Jason Todd. Again, Jason Todd seems to be mathematically alive as a suspect, but that possibility almost vanishes when you take into account another clue from outside the story. In an interview, Morrison said that the series' first arc is intertwined with a "bigger mystery, involving a character called the Domino Killer". It's hard to imagine how it would truly be a "bigger mystery" if Jason's bloody exploits, seen in detail already, also involved him leaving dominoes behind. He's been leaving business cards behind: It would be a mere redundancy if he were also leaving dominoes.

I think of the ways one can work on a mystery roughly dividing into top-down and bottom-up methods. Top-down works from the generalities -- the author's motivations and so on -- to narrow down the suspects. Bottom-up works from the clues to determine what is possible. I think the top-down approach to the identity issue, the question of who the Domino Killer is, is probably less likely at this point to bear fruit, beyond ruling out Jason Todd, than the bottom-up. So let's look at the possibilities that the clues allow:

In the most "aggressive" interpretation of the domino appearances, we might imagine a real killer who is using dominoes as taunts. Imagine that someone broke into Toad's cell and killed him (we see blood only in the "next issue" images at the end of #1) and left the domino as an omen of the killer's dreadful nature. But this pattern hasn't gone anywhere yet: No one had been found dead with the dominoes in the trunk, nor was anyone found dead with the second single domino in Pyg's lab, although a fire had been started. And then the third single domino was in Santos's hand, but we know that he was not assaulted by anyone mysterious, assuming that his facial injuries were his only ones.

At the other extreme, imagine that the "Domino Killer" is doing something quite different. Maybe the dominoes have been put into place before or beside the killing, at least in some cases. Maybe Santos was holding the domino for his own reasons -- as a good luck charm, or protection. (Clearly, he's not adverse to showing belief in the religious or supernatural.) Consider the Joker's work in his first story (Batman #1): some of his victims had already been subjected to a slow-acting poison before the Joker served notice that he was "going to" kill them. (This was used by The Dark Knight's version of the Joker as well.) Suppose the dominoes had been handed out long before the acts of violence took place. Maybe Toad was killed by some slow-acting poison. And if someone's using the Joker's original motif, are we perhaps waiting to see the Joker himself show up -- Dan Didio and Morrison have both indicated that the Joker may show up before this run is over, and his role is rarely a minor one. Consider also that if the Domino Killer is actually a passive actor, placing dominoes but not "killing" that it may be a plot cooked up by, say, Oberon Sexton, leaving dominoes where crimes take place to add an element of intrigue without actually committing the crime. He purports to be following a serial killer to Gotham. Maybe there is no killer, just a cluemaster leaving clues. And that, again, would be borrowing from the Joker, who left meaningless clues in Batman, RIP.

One key out-of-story mention of dominoes is the title of the first issue: "The Domino Effect". This phrase highlights the famous way, besides the game, in which dominoes are commonly used. When lined up and stood on end, pushing one domino over causes the next in line to fall and so on. Massive displays are created in which the toppling of one domino can cause enormous numbers to fall in a line or wave of collapses. The domino effect was historically used to refer to the way in which Communist revolutions might spread through southern Asia were South Vietnam to fall. (It proved to be partly correct: South Vietnam's two neighboring countries did become Communist, but the wave, if it was a wave, stopped there.)

This theme of criminality spreading from one person / victim to another turns up several times in Batman and Robin. Someone apparently created Pyg, and Pyg creates the Dollotrons. In particular, Pyg tells Sasha's father, just before his horrible conversion, that once he has become a Dollotron, he will help Pyg force such a fate onto his own daughter. (The Justifier helmets and other devices spread the Anti-Life Equation in Morrison's Final Crisis, with the same shock plot device used: Black Lightning puts one on Green Arrow; Green Arrow tries to put one on Black Canary.) Pyg and El Penitente both want to spread addictions (perhaps the same one), infecting as many people as possible.

Issue #5's final face on camera, Flamingo, was also created, having undergone a sort of brain surgery that turned him into a super-vicious killer (this calls to mind the forensic case of Phineas Gage and the recent Batman villain The Amygdala), although his attacks seem to end the cycle -- his victims do not become criminals themselves.

But the most direct personalization of a domino in the plot may be Sasha, who began the story as a seemingly ordinary teenager and who "fell" from the first story arc to the second. If the domino theme is being carried out with her, then we might expect to see some victim in the Red Hood arc turn into a villain for the third arc. No such victims have stood out so far, though -- Pyg persecuted the innocent while Red Hood kills the guilty.

Because we know that in some working draft of Morrison's story that the Domino Killer is who abducted Sasha, if the printed story is not too far from the draft, then either Pyg is the Domino Killer or represents him. And in fact, the remaining in-story mention of dominoes comes from Pyg as he talks to himself in captivity, saying quite directly that his victims are lined up like dominoes. If he has awareness of his putative boss's methods, he may be rambling on that topic. But then, if the person leaving dominoes is on Pyg's side, why did Pyg's henchman Toad twice end up receiving dominoes, with Pyg's lab containing another? If El Penitente is the force behind the Domino side, why did Santos end up with the domino in his hand? If all of the dominoes seen so far as part of the 12-11-10 countdown -- in Toad's hand, in Pyg's lab, and in Santos's hand were badges or good luck charms, then perhaps we haven't yet seen a domino being used as a marker of a crime, but as a sort of membership card found by people on the Domino side. But then, how is a countdown taking place if not by coincidence?

The countdown seems at least to indicate that the sequence of domino appearances has been chosen with a meaning, but it is improbable that any single agent would have foreseen the actions of Red Hood, or have known that Batman was about to corral Pyg. If we assume, therefore, that the countdown is planned and not coincidental, and that the Domino side does not control Batman and/or Red Hood, then it seems like someone must be arriving at these sites and leaving dominoes post hoc for Batman to find them. And that implies either prophecy or powers to sneak about that surpass Batman's. So while we haven't been able to pin the "killer" down, and can identify at most one killing in three appearances of a single domino, we do see that someone's got the kind of capability that could seriously test Batman if they come into open confrontation. The key question is if that test is really about "killing" or if it's a mystery first and foremost. In other words, is the Big Bad leaving silly clues while weaving a big web of evil or is someone like Sexton giving Dick Grayson a Joker/Riddler style mystery to solve and using their surprising capability just to do the clue-leaving while seeming like a killer. The blood on Toad's domino (seen only in the teaser at the end of #1) points to some real menace which is for now still well-shrouded in mystery.