The Batman- Explosive Gel Analysis

  The desperate criminal tried to twist loose, but Bruce held his arm tightly. Using his free hand, the robber pulled out his vial of explosive gel, smeared a glob of it on Bruce’s glove, shoved the vial back in his pocket, and pulled out his remote.

  Seeing that the criminal was about to ignite the explosive, Bruce released his grip and slid his hand out of his glove. FWWTT! With a puff of smoke, the gel reduced the heavy glove to shreds. Bruce had made the glove out of bulletproof material, so the substance, whatever it was, clearly could do some serious damage.

  The second Bruce let go, the thief sprinted out of the store, leaving the jewelry behind. Bruce started to follow him but heard a police siren—the store’s alarm had alerted the cops to a robbery in progress. He decided to disappear before the police arrived. Quickly gathering the remains of his glove, he dropped the fragments into a plastic evidence bag and vanished into the darkness just before the squad car arrived with its siren blaring.
…

  Back in his workspace, Bruce carefully removed the fragments of his glove from the plastic evidence bag. Since he’d made the gloves himself out of experimental material, he knew their exact chemical composition. Any other chemicals he found probably came from the mysterious explosive.

  His analysis did show chemicals not found in his gloves’ material. When he searched databases of commercially available explosives containing those chemicals, he came up empty-handed. None of the explosives combined all the qualities of the thief’s gel.

  Staring at his monitor, Bruce considered his options. Since he’d planted the tracking device on the crook, he could follow its signal and bring him in. But before he did that, he wanted to know more about what he was dealing with.

  He thought about calling an expert at Wayne Industries, but he didn’t want to arouse more suspicions at the company. He’d already tried searching their research files but had failed to find a match for the explosive gel.

- Before the Batman, Chapters Sixteen and Seventeen