recruited by the Joker to take part in his attacks on Gotham City. Matches Malone Matches Malone was originally a Gotham gang boss whom Batman attempted to recruit to help take down Ra's al Ghul. He was accidentally killed by a ricocheting bullet that was meant for Batman, who began to impersonate the man to use his underworld contacts and to fool Ra's. Post-Crisis, he was a relatively small-time arsonist with his brother Carver and who came to Gotham City early on in Batman's career, attracting Batman's attention when Carver was apparently murdered. Although Matches was the prime suspect, there was no concrete evidence to make the charges stick and Matches was released, only for Batman to subsequently find what appeared to be Matches's dead body in another fire, apparently a suicide. Batman never reported his death; at the time, he had been attempting to establish a criminal alias for himself to help gather information, but the exclusive nature of the criminal sects meant that no one would recruit someone that they had not heard of, prompting Batman to adopt Malone's identity as his own as nobody else knew of the death. Years later, Batman learned the truth about what had happened. Carver's death had actually been a suicide prompted by his guilt over a fire that he and Matches had started that resulted in the death of a homeless man who had been resting in the building they had torched. Matches made the body look like a murder victim because he was ashamed of his brother's suicide, but did such a good job of it that he ended up basically framing himself for his brother's murder. Deciding to escape Batman stalking him for the crime, Matches used the body of their earlier victim to fake his own death; Batman was so eager to establish a criminal alias that he never took the time to definitively confirm the body's identity. After operating underground for years by committing low-end robberies, Matches returned to Gotham after hearing reports of 'his' activities, only to be shot by Scarface for 'his' recent betrayal, surviving long enough to simply confess his role in events to Batman and Nightwing before dying. His last request was that Batman bury him next to his brother and avenge his death. Batman subsequently destroyed Scarface in 'revenge' for Matches. Talking with Nightwing, Batman observed that he would continue using Malone's