Captured by an unknown foe, Alfred finds himself reminiscing about his life growing up the son of a butler as well as his adventures as a MI5 agent. The flashbacks in particular show his relationship with childhood best friend and fellow agent Shirley Pemrose, as the two travel to the Soviet base Nagurskove. At the same time he attempts to figure out who has captured him, slowly realising how that old mission is returning to haunt him.
Tropes
- Adaptational Badass: Despite being marketed as part of the show, Alfred’s father here is revealed to have been a spy pretending to be a butler.
- Adaptational Heroism: Instead of a butler loyal to a terrorist group like in the show, Alfred’s father is a spy who was murdered.
- A Day in the Limelight: It’s a limited series about Batman’s butler.
- The Ageless: Shirley and her father at some point took some sort of formula that halted their aging.
- Alternate Continuity: It isn’t canon to the show, which also provides an origin for Alfred. It also doesn’t appear to be canon to the main comics, as it heavily retcons Alfred’s current comic book history and hasn’t been referenced in any other comics.
- Canon Immigrant: Daveboy appears in the comic.
- Childhood Friend Romance: Alfred and Shirley were best friends as children, but become a couple when actors and as agents they continue this relationship when they can. Which is why Alfred is heartbroken when she turns out to be a traitor and leaves him to die.
- Crazy-Prepared: It appears this is something Bruce learned from Alfred. When the two super-soldiers told him the chemical formula to free them from Soviet mind control, Alfred told them that if they ever meet again they can trust him if he gives them a codeword. Using the Bat-Computer, he has routinely created the cure every six months and kept it on him in case he ever meets them again, which he does when Shirley traps him in a room with them.
- Face–Heel Turn: Shirley betrays MI5 and Alfred, with Daveboy revealing that the agency had suspected her for awhile.
- The Ghost: Batman and his villains are mentioned, but don’t appear.
- Irony:
- As it turns out, Alfred actually keeps secrets from Bruce because “he doesn’t have MI5 clearance”. The irony is that Bruce is infamous for keeping secrets from his friends and loved ones, with Alfred usually being the only one he usually opens up to.
- Shirley is convinced that Alfred must be bored out of his mind taking care of the wealthy and spoilt Bruce Wayne.
- No Ending: The comic ends on a cliffhanger, with the super soldiers free and Shirely captured by Alfred and Daveboy, but not clear resolution for what happened with her father and the scientists.
- Uptown Girl: Shirley is the daughter of a wealthy British aristocrat while Alfred is the son of a butler, yet they fall in love with each other before going on to become actors together and even spies.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Once Shirley reappears, her father vanishes from the story despite presumably still being in the same base as her, Alfred and Daveboy.
