Batman,
the Current Era.
Bruce Wayne Post Crisis
Born c.1953. (adjusted to c.1962 by Zero Hour)
Started career c. 1978. (adjusted to c.1984 by Zero Hour)
First comic book published in 1986.
Bruce Wayne had a short but very protected childhood. The only son of the very wealthy industrialist Dr. Thomas Wayne and his socialite wife Martha, young Bruce was insulated from the harsher troubles of the world as he played on the grounds of stately Wayne Mannor outside the rat race of Gotham City.
Thomas taught Bruce that a man's greatest asset was his intellect. That brute strength and violence were no match for reason and self-discipline. He tried to instill the old values of duty and respect for the law into Bruce's young mind.
Martha set an example of compassion for Bruce as she devoted time and energy to charitible causes. She helped him to understand the nobility of aiding those who were weak and helpless rather than exploiting them.
Having little contact with other children, Bruce found a friend and constant companion in Alfred Pennyworth, the Wayne major domo... The Waynes had hired Alfred because his extensive education made him qualified to act as a sort of tutor to young Bruce, while his military training in combat medicine meant that he'd be the perfect person to have around should some accident befall their precious son.
While playing on the grounds, young Bruce fell into a cave opening. Inside the cave were very large bats, who'd might as well have been demons or monsters for the effect they had on the child. The sheer terror of this breif incident would leave an indelible mark on Bruce's mind, although he would seem to forget the event shortly afterwards.
When Bruce was around seven years old, the Waynes took him on a rare excursion into the city. The old theater in Gotham's Park Row neigherhood was playing the Mark of Zorro, which Bruce wanted to see. Although Thomas wished his son would idolize a more intellectual hero like Sherlock Holmes, he indulged the boy this once. Park Row had once been a socially elite neighborhood, and that's how Thomas and Martha tended to think of it despite the gradual decline it had been undergoing recently. So noone gave it a second thought when Thomas took his little family for a short walk after the movie.
As the Waynes passed Chryme Alley (originally named after a family, a clerical error would later designate it as "Crime Alley", which would become the popular name for the entire neighborhood), a man with frightened, hollow eyes and a voice like broken glass being crushed would accost them. In his robbery attempt Joe Chill would shoot both of Bruce's parents to death right before his eyes.
Although the mugger's bullets didn't touch Bruce, they killed him as surely as they destroyed his universe. Violence had destroyed Reason. Brute force had detroyed Compassion. All sense left Bruce's life. All that remained was rage. A need to avenge his parents' murder... To make the mugger pay...
Some small part of Bruce found a reason to go on living in that. To avenge the victims of crime... To make all criminals pay... To put things right. An utterly impossible task, but one to which Bruce dedicated his existance.
As he grew up, Bruce studied and practiced anything and everything he thought might serve him in his task. He mastered various forms of martial arts as though possessed by a demon. He travelled the world to train under the greatest fighters, hunters, detectives, and even magicians he could find. His lack of attention to formal classroom studies gave Bruce's regular teachers the impression that he was lazy and not very bright... His frequent dissappearances to pursue his personal training goals lead people to assume that the teen-age Bruce was off on hormone-driven misadventures. Bruce learned to use this to his advantage, allowing people to think he was AWOL from boarding school to chase a little redhead in Paris or a blonde in Barcelona, when in fact he would be participating in a judo tournement in Japan under an assumed identity or learning to control his heart rate in a Bhuddist monastary in India.
When he felt ready, Bruce returned to Gotham to begin his fight. But he knew something was missing. He needed something to bring all his training and special weapons together... But he didn't have the patience to wait for it. Dressed in a nondescript disquise, Bruce went on a "recon" mission, just to see how bad Gotham had become. The city had degenerated into a veritable cess pool, with most of the police force on the take, and the city officials in the pockets of organized crime. On the street level, criminal scum hunted anyone weaker than themselves like sharks hunting guppies. It wasn't long before Bruce found himself stupidly getting involved with a pimp who was manhandling a child prostitute. In no time Bruce was in the middle of a street brawl with the pimp and his stable of hookers, which ended with a gunshot from a trigger-happy cop. Bruce barely made it home alive. In his shock-induced delirium, Bruce mocked himself for "putting the fear of God" into the criminals... Then he realized that fear was the key. He had to find a way to make the criminals terrified of him from the first glance. Home, in the study that had been Thomas Wayne's, within easy reach of the bell that would summon Alfred, who could stop the bleeding before it was too late, Bruce resolved that he would die if the answer didn't come to him then and there.
Without warning it came. The same image that had struck him dumb with terror so many years before. The unearthly, flying predator of night. The bat. He would become a bat!
After recovering from the gunshot, Bruce began his career as Batman in earnest. Starting with the street scum, he worked his way up to the upper eschelons of the criminal world. Along the way he ruined many bad cops, finally including the corrupt Police Commissioner.
In addition to Alfred, Batman had other important help in his crusade. Assistant District Attorney Harvey Dent was his original "inside man". Police detective Lt. James Gordon was originally in charge of hunting down the Batman, but instead developed a working relationship with the Dark Knight by the time he became Captain. Later, as Commissioner, Gordon would grant the Batman "special officer" status.
A couple of years after becoming Batman, Bruce took in Dick Grayson, who became his first Robin. Dick was good for Bruce, since teaching Robin to use his head first and fists second reminded the Batman of the same thing. As often happens with maturing boys and their gardians, Dick and Bruce eventually had serious disagreements about Dick's future. In his late teens, Dick went off to pursue a life and superheroic career seperate from Bruce's.
Not long after, Bruce discovered a kid named Jason Todd (whose father had been murdered by the villian Two-Face, and whose mother died of illness) living on the streets. Batman took the boy in, and eventually trained him to replace Dick as Robin. This Robin was later murdered by the insane, deformed criminal known as the Joker.
The death of Robin left Batman barely in control of his rage. And he took this rage out on himself as much as the criminals who crossed his path. He pushed himself needlessly, took unnecessary risks, and sustained too many injuries. This behavior even prompted Dick Grayson, now acting as Nightwing, to intervene. Bruce's pain was beyond Dick's power to heal, but some degree of reconcilliation was achieved between the two.
Batman definately did not want another Robin, but one was sort of imposed on him in the form of Tim Drake. When he finally stopped resisting the idea, Batman discovered that Tim was a great Robin, and, like Dick, was good for the Batman.
Just as Tim was getting established as Robin, Bane came into the picture. Bane was a criminal mastermind. He had his physique, strength, and constitution enhanced to superhuman proportions by a chemical that was periodically injected into his brain by a wrist-controlled device, but was clever enough to know that this alone did not make him a match for Gotham's defender. So he blew up Arkham Asylum and let all of Batman's most insanely dangerous foes loose at the same time. By the time Batman finally confronted Bane, he was an exhausted shell of his usual self, and Bane was able to break the Batman's spine.
Restricted to a wheelchair, and needing to go overseas to track down Tim Drake's kidnapped father, Bruce appointed Jean-Paul Valley to act as Batman in Gotham. Valley had been subjected by the Order of St. Dumas to a series of subliminal training sessions called "the System". Valley was completely unaware of this training until the System was activated to make him into St. Dumas' enforcer knight, Azrael. Batman had defeated Azrael and learned the basic nature of the innocent Valley's conditioning. Hoping to put the System to good use rather than evil, Batman had taken Valley in to train for heroic duties... In his weakened, injured state, Bruce made the mistake of thinking that Valley was in control of the System, and could use it to act as Batman.
With Bruce Wayne out of the picture, Jean-Paul Valley began to remake the Batman, with a great deal of influence from the System. Soon "Batman" was a heavily armored, flamethrower-weilding, borderline maniac. One of his first actions was to nearly kill Bane. After that, Valley became more and more savagely out of control.
After recovering from his spinal injury, Bruce would have to undergo an extreme form of martial arts re-training to regain his confidence and prowess. After this, he was able to defeat the now insane Valley and resume his place as Batman.
Batman's unending war on crime continues to be chronicled in various DC magazines.