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urbanlegend[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Bruce Wayne, Batman
SERIES: DC Comics, Batman
CHRONOLOGY: After Bruce Wayne: the Road Home, before Batman Incorporated #1. (December 2010)
CLASS: Vigilante
BACKGROUND:
Bruce Wayne was born in Gotham City, New Jersey, a city plagued by misfortune and organized crime. He was the only child of Thomas and Martha Wayne, both from wealthy families. In addition to being a surgeon of great skill, Thomas was also the owner and chief officer of Wayne Industries, one of the keystones of Gotham’s economy. When Bruce was a young child, his parents were murdered before his eyes by a mugger in a back alley as they were walking home from the Monarch Theater in downtown Gotham. Bruce was traumatized by the experience, and, angry and haunted by the implications, vowed that he would find some way to stop crime in his city and avenge his parents’ deaths. Raising Bruce fell to the family’s immensely capable valet, Alfred Pennyworth, and though he did his best, Bruce made few friends, and threw himself both into conventional schooling and into training himself to become better able to combat criminals. He began to travel, seeking out the greatest minds in fields from forensics to fencing. He enrolled at some of the best schools in the world, but then often dropped out after a semester when he learned what he was looking for or lost interest. He also sought martial artists and other masters of trades outside the academic spectrum, training under Japanese ninja, African bushmen, Nepalese monks, even ventriloquists, acrobats and other performers.
When he felt the world had taught him all that it could, he returned to Gotham, intent on taking his fight to the streets. While his skills and knowledge were top notch, something was still lacking. When a surveillance mission went bad, leaving him critically injured and on the run from both criminals and cops, he barely made it back to Wayne Manor. There, broken both physically and mentally, he struggled to figure out what he could do, what was missing. In Thomas Wayne’s former study, he pled for his father help him with his war on crime… and that was when a bat crashed through the window and landed on his father’s bust, giving the half-delirious Bruce the inspiration he needed—he would become a bat.
With the help of ever-loyal Alfred, he set out to turn himself into something more than human, a symbol of fear, an agent of justice. He created a costume that would both protect his identity and inspire fear, combining black body armor with a bat-like cowl and cape. For a base of operations, he delved into the cave system beneath his house (the source of the bats) and built passages linking it to the mansion. He also poured his fortune into buying and developing advanced equipment, from climbing equipment that allowed him to scale buildings and move across rooftops to custom vehicles to an arsenal of nonlethal weapons.
“The Batman,” as he came to be called, was a great success against Gotham’s organized crime, and while he was often at odds with the (often corrupt) police, he also found allies within the system, namely police James Gordon and assistant district attorney Harvey Dent. But even as he took down the more conventional criminals plaguing Gotham, a new breed of villain began to appear, using the same tactics of showmanship, anonymity and fear that Bruce himself did. None paralleled him as closely as Catwoman, aka Selina Kyle, a jewel thief who sometimes worked with him, sometimes against him, and with whom he shared a great deal of sexual tension. Also in this period, he first confronted the Joker, a demented, brilliant serial killer who dressed as a clown. When it became obvious that some enemies, such as the Joker, required Batman’s intervention, Bruce gave Gordon a special spotlight on the roof of the police headquarters which could be used to signal him, though as the police refuse to officially acknowledge the Batman’s existence, it officially exists only to use the “urban legend” to terrify Gotham’s criminals.
Tides turned for the worse when a serial killer with a holiday theme appeared, targeting members of Gotham's organized crime families, drawing enemies from all sides, and forging an alliance between the Falcone crime syndicate and the "costumed freaks" against both the Batman and this new threat. Then Harvey Dent was attacked, half of his face severely ruined by acid smuggled into the courtroom during the trial of one of the prominent crime bosses. But when Dent escaped from the hospital, having stabbed his own surgeon and fled, it became obvious that Gotham's golden boy, one of the few people Batman trusted, was tarnished, and was suspected to have been living a double life as the Holiday Killer, though a lesser son of the Falcone family eventually took the rap. Now, cracked even further, Dent emerged as the villain Two-Face, and was interned at Arkham Asylum, a high-security mental health facility quickly becoming the chosen place to keep the cabal of irredeemable characters that Batman captured.
About a year after the Holiday case was wrapped up, a new string of killings began, still occurring on holidays, but these victims were police officers, and found hung, a game of "hangman" pinned to each of their chests, written on Dent's personal files. Through all of this, Bruce-sans-costume attempted romance with Selina Kyle, both of them oblivious to the other's secret identity. While they worked wonderfully together, she, like every woman Bruce tried to date long-term, grew frustrated with his distraction and inconsistencies, and eventually broke it off and left town. Bruce was left with a pair of tickets to the circus, which he had intended to attend with Selina, and was convinced by Alfred to attend by himself rather than let them go to waste. There, he witnessed the tragic sabotage of the main act--a family of acrobats known as the Flying Graysons--which killed a young boy's parents before his eyes, much like his own parents had been taken from him. Recognizing the boy's pain, Bruce took the boy, a twelve-year-old named Dick, in. Late one night, he--as Batman--found Dick on the roof of Wayne Manor, both of them having returned from investigating the circus, and having both come to the conclusion that the Falcones were involved. Dick begged to help, but Bruce brushed him off.
Things grew increasingly tense between them, as Bruce Wayne was still not good at opening up, or finding time for others. He could buy Dick anything, but the boy still felt isolated and alone, and Bruce was too preoccupied with the continuing murders and escalating supervillain activity to understand why. After Bruce caught Dick at the circus again, this time trying to take on the gangsters who had caused his parents' death all by himself, he finally understood what he had to do. He revealed his identity to Dick, and, because he was obviously going to go out and attempt to avenge his parents whether Bruce allowed it or not, to train him for that purpose in an attempt to at least keep him safer.
Dick brought a new perspective to Bruce's work as Batman, helping him successfully track down the Hangman (the supposedly-crippled woman who now led the Falcone family), but an alliance of his super-criminal enemies managed to murder most of the heads of Gotham's mob, but then to infiltrate Batman's home base which had been left unguarded... except for Dick, who had been training in the Batcave daily. The young acrobat swung to the rescue clothed in a costume of his own devising, and helped to delay the criminals until Batman could arrive and deal with the intrusion. After that incident, Dick insisted that he could and would work beside Bruce, even in his "night job," and took the name "Robin" after a nickname his mother had given him.
Batman and Robin were far more efficient than Batman alone had been, not only for the help that another pair of eyes and fighting hands could bring to the table, but because Dick gave Bruce something to fight for, something to keep him grounded, something to break him out of the dark tunnel-vision that he tended to fall into when working alone. For Dick, the entire thing was an adventure for about a year, until he misjudged a trap Two-Face had set for Batman and the new D.A., leading to the D.A.'s accidental death, and Robin's being beaten within an inch of his life, all of which Bruce was forced to watch helplessly while he struggled to escape. Angry at both himself and the boy for allowing harm to come to both Dick and a civilian, he sidelined Robin, forcing him to hang up his cape until he could prove himself more responsible. Dick did eventually win back the right to wear his green scaly panties, but also began to undertake more solo missions, and to work with the newly-formed Teen Titans. He also had independence out of costume, and left Gotham to attend Hudson University.
It was while Dick was away at college that Bruce met what would be one of his greatest nemeses, Ra’s al Ghul. Dick had gone missing, and Batman had received a message stating Robin had been kidnapped by the mysterious League of Assassins. He rushed back to the Batcave... only to find that someone was waiting for him, someone who knew him not only as Batman, but as Bruce Wayne. Ra’s had deduced his identity by tracking purchases for equipment he knew that Batman possessed, but now was seeking his help because his daughter--Talia--had also been kidnapped. As Bruce rushed around the world following a trail of bizarre clues, it became eventually clear that the entire thing was engineered by Ra’s himself, the true leader of the League of Assassins, to test Bruce's skills, and worthiness as a successor and consort for his daughter. Bruce, though fascinated by Talia, rejected the offer outright.
About three years after Robin swung into Gotham, another young person began helping the Dark Knight. Commissioner Gordon's teenage daughter Barbara took up the mantle of "Batgirl." She originally created the costume for a masquerade ball to annoy her father, but it became all too real when an actual villain attacked. Bruce was initially dismissive, and slow to warm up to Barbara as a hero, even though Dick was instantly infatuated, and far more encouraging.
At some point in his early career, Batman also began involvement with some of the world’s other costumed heroes, most of whom had superhuman powers, and became a founding member of the Justice League, a group seeking to protect the entire world from powerful threats. Though his main focus generally remained on Gotham, his skills and resources made him indispensable to the team. Bruce, however, didn't entirely trust the superhumans who he worked with, and continued to be as standoffish with his teammates as he was with almost everyone else. He also researched other heroes extensively, and to this day keeps updated files on their capabilities, along with contingency plans in case they should be compromised or go rogue. His conflicts with the League reached a head when they refused to help him rescue Lucius Fox--one of the leaders of Wayne Enterprises--from a foreign villain due to political reasons. Wanting a group who could move outside the bounds of the law like he himself, Batman founded the Outsiders, a new black-ops team who could operate where the Justice League could not.
Back in Gotham, while Bruce Wayne began an affair with the beautiful reporter Vicki Vale (a strong critic of the Batman), the Batman had a bigger problem: Robin. When Dick was shot in the shoulder by the Joker and fell off a rooftop, the watching media wondered if Robin had died.. and Bruce vowed to let them think that he had, forcing Dick out of the job--this time for good. Dick didn't stay out of the game for long, though. Instead, he moved across the bay to the city of Bludhaven, where he donned the identity of "Nightwing," and began his solo career with his own city to protect.
But only weeks after Bruce fired Dick, while patrolling Crime Alley on the anniversary of his parents' death, he returned to his car to find something quite unexpected--someone had stolen the front tires off of the Batmobile. And then, even more, the teenage boy who'd done it returned to finish the job while Batman was still there inspecting the damage. Instead of confessing when confronted, the boy fought back. He followed the boy back to his crash space in an attempt to get his tires back, and discovered that the boy was living alone, practicaly an orphan himself, with an absent criminal father and deceased mother. The teen introduced himself as Jason Todd, and Bruce tried to make his life better, enrolling him at a scool for boys that had opened up on Crime Alley, but which wasn't what it seemed. Batman encountered Jason again a short while later, again stealing tires from cars. At this meeting, Bruce learns that the school where he had enrolled the boy was actually a front for a school of crime. Investigating further, he stopped the students and proprietor from stealing a diamond necklace for the Joker, with the unexpected help of Jason himself. Impressed with how the boy handled himself, Bruce offered him a position as the new Robin.
In affairs outside of Gotham, Batman took command of some of the lesser-known heroes to form a splinter League, and convinced the United Nations to grant them an international charter, forming the Justice League International. Meanwhile, in part because of Dick's shooting, things between Batman and the Joker escalated, their mutual obsession coming to a head when the Joker escaped from Arkham and took control of a decrepit carnival outside of Gotham. He invaded the Gordon home and shot Barbara in the spine, crippling her, then kidnapped Commissioner Gordon and forced him to watch video they had taken of his daughter being sexually abused. Batman was able to free Gordon and apprehend the Joker, resisting his need to punish the man, and forcing himself to do it by the book, to capture him and allow the court system to do its work, but it was an unforgivable act which tainted Bruce's view of his job, and made him realize just how many people were potentially collateral damage.
Robin—Jason—was growing more violent, aggressive, and disobedient. This grew worse when, while digging through old files of his father’s, he discovered that the mother who he had known, who had died when he was young, was actually his step-mother, and his real mother was someone else entirely, someone who had left Gotham when he was a baby. While Bruce headed to the Middle East in search of the escaped Joker, Jason also traveled to that region, following leads on the possible identity of his biological mother. Bruce was furious with him for having so blatantly disregarded his orders, but agreed to try and help Jason when he could. After several false leads, they finally located Jason’s mother, Dr. Sheila Haywood, but the reunion was soured by the fact that she was being blackmailed by the very villain Bruce was hunting. The Joker planned to steal the region’s medical supplies and replace them with deadly laughing gas. They tracked the supplies to the warehouse where they were being kept, but learned that a shipment of tainted supplies had already gone out. Batman rushed to stop the shipment, while Jason stayed behind, on strict orders not to confront the Joker if he appeared, no matter what happened. Orders he disobeyed when Dr. Haywood was in danger. The Joker easily overwhelmed the teenager, and beat him within an inch of his life with a crowbar before leaving him and his mother tied up in the warehouse, which he rigged with explosives and locked. He attempted to free himself and his mother, but was not able to get to safety before the bombs went off. Bruce saw the warehouse explode from afar, but couldn’t reach it in time. He found Jason’s broken body in the wreckage, but it was already too late. Horrified and guilt-stricken, Bruce returned to Gotham to arrange the funeral… but learned that during his distraction, the Joker had taken a position as the U.N. ambassador from Iran and had complete diplomatic immunity. Furious and determined to put an end to the Joker’s madness once and for all, Bruce traveled to Washington, with Superman accompanying him in an attempt to prevent him from doing anything regrettable. Together, they stop the Joker’s plot to murder the other U.N. delegates, but they were unable to apprehend the Joker himself.
Following Jason’s death, Bruce grew more withdrawn and violent, tackling crime with single-minded fury, and taking his frustrations out on everyone around him. Without someone to balance and ground him, with so much hate and anger turned inward, he was becoming increasingly destructive, both to himself and others. All of this was observed by a teen named Tim Drake, who had deduced Batman’s secret identity. Tim realized that Batman needed Robin to keep his darkness in check, and tracked down Dick, begging him to go back to Bruce. Instead, Dick took Tim to Bruce, and suggested that he become the new Robin. Bruce disagreed, not willing to put someone else in danger. But when Batman and Nightwing were caught in a death-trap orchestrated by Two-Face, Tim took the Robin costume and came to rescue them, disobeying orders. He succeeded, and though Bruce was furious and continued to insist he didn’t need a side-kick, he eventually did agree to start training Tim and take him on as the third Robin.
Though Tim helped to pull him back to himself, Bruce still struggled more than he had before, especially as crime within continued to escalate with the return of gang-leader Black Mask and others. Much of this was due to his own inability to take the advice of others and rest, or delegate responsibilities to the others who worked with him. While in Switzerland investigating the mysterious death of a Gothamite, Bruce encountered a young man named Jean-Paul Valley who had been unknowingly conditioned from before birth by a fanatical religious order to take on the mantle of the holy crusader Azrael. Bruce convinced Valley to put aside the zealotry of the Order who created him and adopt his own non-lethal system of working more within society’s legal system. And, in light of Bruce’s own recent failings, began to train him (with Tim’s help) as a potential replacement as Batman, in case something should happen.
That came sooner than intended when Bane came to Gotham City. Bane was a brilliant tactician who had trained his body to physical perfection and beyond in part because of a chemical treatment known as Venom, which he had been a test subject for and become dependent upon. Bane engineered a massive breakout from Arkham Asylum, and forced Batman to confront many of its worst denizens in quick succession. Though Tim begged Bruce to let him help, Bruce still would not allow the boy to put himself in danger, feeling that he should be capable enough alone. All of this took its toll, as Bruce was worn down physically and mentally by the onslaught. After a final fight in which he faced both the Joker and the Scarecrow, Bane confronted Bruce in his own home, having, like Tim, deduced Batman’s identity. The fight was short and quick… and ended with Bane breaking Bruce over his knee, fracturing his spine and leaving Bruce mostly paralyzed.
While Bruce tried to physically recover with the help of psychic Dr. Shondra Kinsolving (who he also developed a romantic interest in), he asked Jean-Paul Valley to don Batman’s costume so that Gotham wouldn’t be without its protector. Tim, having worked badly with Valley, argued that Dick should be Batman in the interim, but in actuality, Bruce was attempting to protect Dick from Bane, as he knew that Dick wouldn’t be able to resist confronting the man who had crippled his mentor. While Bruce and Alfred traveled outside the country in an attempt to track down Kinsolving and Tim’s father who had been kidnapped, things in Gotham weren’t going well. Jean-Paul wasn’t Bruce, and that was obvious to those who interacted with him as Batman, especially after an encounter with the Scarecrow’s fear gas caused his Azrael programming to reassert its control. Azrael defeated Bane and allowed him to go to prison instead of killing him, but continued to grow increasingly unstable. In England, Bruce located Shondra, but a psychic battle between she and her adopted brother healed his spine, but left Dr. Kinsolving herself broken, her mind reduced to that of a child. Bruce reluctantly placed her in a mental institution and returned to Gotham, but Alfred remained in England, not willing to watch Bruce hurt himself further.
At first, Bruce was willing to let Jean-Paul remain Batman, but Tim told him about an instance of Azrael intentionally allowing a killer AND his to hostage die. Bruce sneaked into the Batcave and demanded Jean-Paul step down, but Jean-Paul refused, and threatened to kill Bruce if he returned. Not able to fight Jean-Paul in his current condition, Bruce sought retraining from the assassin Lady Shiva, who had been one of his few real rivals in combat, though her intent was to try and make Bruce break his vow not to kill. When he felt he had achieved peak condition once more, Bruce donned the original Batman costume and tracked down Jean-Paul, eventually culminating in a battle between the two Batmen in the caverns beneath Wayne Manor, with Jean-Paul finally surrendering and leaving Gotham. His lesson learned from his defeat by Bane, Bruce decided to step back for a while to re-evaluate what it would take to restore Batman’s reputation as an invincible force of Justice. In the meantime, he reaffirmed his need for and relationship with Tim, but passed the mantle of the Bat temporarily to Dick Grayson.
Bruce finally returned to the streets of Gotham as Batman once more with updated equipment and a new sense of duty. He saved Gotham from a communist plot involving a nuclear device the size and shape of a baseball, then, in a fight against Doctor Destiny, joined with other heroes to re-establish the Justice League of America. Together, they fought a new team of heroes, the Hyperclan, who were revealed to actually be White Martians, whose invasion plans the JLA halted. Much to everyone’s relief, Alfred Pennyworth returned, Dick having convinced him that he was needed at home.
The return to the familiar didn’t last long. Bruce was alerted by Azrael of an apocalyptic Ebola-based plague being tested by the Order he had been created by…and that an infected individual was on their way to Gotham. While Batman tried to track down a cure through the military, Robin looked for the carrier. Unfortunately, it was too late, and they learned that a cure could only come from a survivor. As both disease and civil unrest set in, the fight became even more personal when Tim fell ill. Finally, when it looked like all was lost, it was Azrael who came through with a cure, discovered in the Order’s files. Tim—and Gotham—were saved. While tracking the origins of the plague in the middle east, Bruce found that the perpetrator had been none other than his nemesis Ra’s al Ghul, now aided by the man who had broken him--Bane. Though with the help of the rest of the Bat-family, the remaining threat of the plague is eliminated and all of the villains are defeated, none are captured. However, the plague would be quickly forgotten, overshadowed by a much greater catastrophe. Only a few months later, Gotham City was almost completely destroyed by a magnitude 7.6 earthquake.
Bruce himself was trapped inside of the Batcave, and nearly killed by falling rocks. His car crushed and normal escape routes completely closed, he was forced to escape through underground streams into the harbor, where he saw his city in flames. The only properties not destroyed were those owned by Wayne Enterprises, which had recently been retrofitted to be earthquake-resistant. Though there had been a break-out from Blackgate Prison, Batman was still able to put down much of the rioting, and to, with his enemy the Penguin’s help, enlist some local gangsters into the rescue effort. Despite all of this, over a hundred thousand people had died in the initial earthquake, and they were forced to turn to mass graves to stymie the spread of disease. Bruce Wayne, as one of Gotham’s most prominent citizens, went to Washington D.C. to ask for federal assistance… but was opposed by a corrupt senator and the charismatic rock star and cult leader Nicholas Scratch, who argued that Gotham, crime-ridden as it was, was not worth saving. Congress arrived at the conclusion that Gotham’s negative elements would have to be isolated before they got out of control. Everyone within the city limits was given 48 hours to evacuate, excluding those with connections to any known criminal element. After that, the bridges leading into the city were destroyed and the National Guard posted to prevent anyone from getting in or out. The government had declared Gotham City a “no man’s land.”
The city was quickly carved up by gangs and supervillains, and the most loyal members of Gotham’s police force, led by Jim Gordon, were forced to adopt gang-like tactics in an attempt to hold territory of their own. Batman was nowhere to be seen, as Bruce had still been outside the city from his attempts to lobby for Gotham’s future when the quarantine had gone into effect. When he finally made it back in, he worked separately from the police, though both he and Gordon had a similar tactic of conquering Gotham back from the gangs piece by piece. Superman’s long-time enemy Lex Luthor attempted to take over the city by laying claim to properties with lost deeds, but Lucius Fox of Wayne Enterprises prevented this from happening. Eventually, Gotham was re-taken and allowed to re-join the United States.
Batman’s relations with the JLA were soured when Talia al Ghul broke into the Batcave and stole his contingency plans from his computer. Her father then began using those methods to incapacitate each member of the League, meanwhile distracting Bruce himself by stealing his parents’ corpses and threatening to lower them into a Lazarus Pit, which would bring them back to life as twisted versions of themselves. While confronting Ra’s, Bruce realized that his plans had been stolen and was able to warn the rest of the Justice League. After Ra’s and Talia were defeated, the JLA voted to dismiss Batman from the League, believing he could no longer be trusted. At Superman’s urging, Bruce attempted to regain their trust by revealing his secret identity to the rest of his allies on the team.
The trust of the rest of the Bat-family was tested, as well, when Bruce found his ex-girlfriend Vesper Fairchild murdered in Wayne Manor only minutes before the police barged in, alerted by an anonymous tip. He was incarcerated, but unable to establish an alibi or prove his innocence without endangering his identity as Batman. He escaped from prison and announced to the team his plans to cease using the identity of Bruce Wayne entirely, and be Batman full time. Finally, he and his allies learned that the man behind the entire fiasco was then-President Lex Luthor, angry at having been humiliated during the “No Man’s Land” incident. With new evidence they were able to clear Bruce’s name, and he again returned to his double-life.
The next threat came when, while chasing Catwoman after a fight with Killer Croc, Batman’s line was cut, letting him fall stories to the ground, where he was knocked unconscious. He was rescued by allies and taken back to the Batcave, but there was little even Alfred’s impressive medical skills could do for a severe skull fracture. Though barely conscious, Bruce was able to request the aid of one of his few childhood friends, Thomas Elliot, now a brilliant neurosurgeon. Dr. Elliot was summoned, Alfred had Dick wreck one of Bruce’s sports cars for an alibi, and the operation was a success, with Bruce being released. While investigating the circumstances around his fall, he uncovered a strange conspiracy among his enemies, in which they were being manipulated by unknown forces. He tracked Poison Ivy to Metropolis, where he was forced to fight Superman, who Ivy had enthralled. With Catwoman’s help, he freed Superman, and was able to apprehend Ivy. Later, at the opera with Selina, Tommy Elliot, and Leslie Thompkins, they were attacked by Harley Quinn, the Joker’s sometime-sidekick, and in the alley outside, he found Elliot murdered, seemingly by the Joker. Bruce, as Batman, flew into a murderous rage, and had to be restrained by Catwoman before he killed the Joker with his bare hands. Later, encouraged by Dick, Batman finally revealed his secret identity to Selina. Even more conflicts arise between the Bat-family and many of Bruce’s most prominent adversaries, all of the strings leading back to a man called “Hush.” When Batman finally confronts him, Hush captures Robin… and reveals himself to be none other than Jason Todd. Robin is rescued by Catwoman, while Bruce fights Jason, who confesses that he was the one who cut Bruce’s line. But during the confrontation, Bruce begins to suspect that this isn’t actually Jason, which is confirmed when Jason’s features dissolve, revealing that it was actually the shapeshifting villain Clayface. In the end, after further investigation, it’s discovered that Hush had actually learned all of Batman’s secrets via monitoring equipment in the Batcave… and that Hush’s true identity was none other than Tommy Elliot, who sought revenge on the Wayne family after Bruce’s father had foiled his attempt to kill his parents and take his inheritance early. The confrontation ended when Jim Gordon and a (rehabilitated) Harvey Dent arrived on the scene. Dent then shot, sending his body into the bay and forcing Gordon to arrest him. Later, tying up the loose ends, it was discovered that the Riddler had been pulling strings the entire time, and had told Hush of Bruce’s identity in the first place, though Bruce convinced him not to share the information further.
Not long after, Tim was briefly forced to resign as Robin when his father discovered his identity. Stephanie Brown, a teen girl known as Spoiler, sought to replace him in the position, and Bruce agreed, though he fired her shortly after for disobeying him in a fight. Trying to impress him, she then sought to activate one of her own contingency plans and upend Gotham’s underworld of organized crime, but her plan went wrong, resulting in a large-scale gang war, and from the resulting power vacuum, Black Mask rose to take control of the city once more.
But perhaps the hardest conflict Bruce had ever faced came with the emergence of a new criminal who went by the name “Red Hood,” a moniker first used by the criminal who would become the Joker, before the accident that turned him into what he is. He was ruthless… and familiar. Bruce was troubled by the suspicion that he might actually be Jason Todd, somehow returned from the grave—a suspicion that his magically-inclined allies confirmed could in fact be true. In a climactic battle, the Red Hood revealed that he was in fact Jason, and had returned to Gotham to do what Bruce couldn’t—to save the many by killing the few. They clashed repeatedly, but Bruce failed to either apprehend Jason or convince him to come back to the fold.
When someone began attacking the families of Justice League members, Bruce used his detective skills to help… but not before his partner Tim’s father, Jack Drake, was attacked and killed by Captain Boomerang, one of the Flash’s foes. Bruce was horrified that he hadn’t been able to prevent Tim from also being forced to witness a parent’s death and become an orphan, and filled with suspicious rage as the story unfolded further and he learned that in the past, the League had agreed to let the sorceress Zatanna use her powers to wipe the memories of those who had discovered their secret identities… and worse, had wiped Bruce’s own memory of the event when he protested. Because of this, he grew increasingly suspicious of other heroes, especially those with superhuman powers, leading him to create the “Brother Eye” satellite to monitor superhuman activity.
When, during another Crisis, the satellite was taken over and helped to incite a worldwide conflict, Bruce’s reputation was severely damaged… but he didn’t realize how far he had fallen until he feared that Alexander Luthor had killed Dick, and in his rage, picked up a gun and nearly killed him with it… almost violating his most sacred rule. Shaken, Bruce withdrew from the public eye, and along with Dick and Tim went on a journey around the world, retracing the steps he’d taken while training to become Batman and trying to reconnect with the core of who he—Batman—was.
It worked, and he returned to Gotham with a renewed vitality and drive with which he cleaned up nearly all super-crime in his city, until Alfred pointed out to him that he was once more over-focusing on Batman and neglecting Bruce Wayne. This time, Bruce listened, and took a trip overseas. At a charity ball in London, he met supermodel Jezebel Jet, who he immediately fell for. But he couldn’t entirely escape from Batman, as he was attacked by the League of Assassins, and confronted by Talia al Ghul, who revealed to him that ten years before, she had become pregnant from a liaison they’d had while Bruce was drugged, and given birth to a boy, Damian. Bruce somewhat reluctantly took Damian in, but he turned out to be incredibly difficult to work with. Though Talia attempted to bring them together and win Bruce for herself once more, it failed again, and she declared war on him.
Back in Gotham, Bruce was haunted by a mysterious secret society known as the Black Glove, who attempted many different ways to break Batman through psychological means, including helping the returned Hush, who had undergone plastic surgery to look identical to Bruce himself. He survived, but was worn down, so that when the cosmic villain Darkseid attempted to wrest control of the universe using the Anti-Life equation, he was able to be captured, though he was able to break free and confront Darkseid face-to-face, striking down the dark godlike being… but not before Darkseid was able to retaliate, seemingly killing Batman as well.
While everyone (with the exception of Tim Drake) believed him to have been killed, as Superman recovered a charred corpse that matched his DNA, Bruce had actually been flung far back in time, turned by Darkseid into a living “time bomb” that would destroy reality itself if allowed to reach the present. Disoriented and suffering from amnesia, Bruce traveled through various different eras and confronted the historical origins of both the Black Glove and his own identity, until he finally reached the present. There, he was prevented from exploding and destroying the world by his comrades in the Justice League and his most recent partner Tim, who had now taken on his own identity as Red Robin.
Upon first returning, he kept his identity hidden from most people in Gotham, instead using power armor utilizing technology from the future and the code name "Insider." In this guise, he observed his Gothamite allies, and began to recognize the skill and teamwork they had gained in his absence. He revealed himself to each of them, and got their renewed agreement to help him with his cause. Everything was looking up. Just in time for him to be yanked out of the world entirely.
PERSONALITY:
Bruce Wayne is a man who lives two lives, one as a fickle, idealistic billionaire playboy and philanthropist, the other as a dark, all-seeing vigilante crime-fighter. The question often raised by those who know his two identities is which one of those is the true persona and which the façade. For those who know him best, there is little debate. In the worst of times, Batman has functioned without Bruce Wayne. The reverse is seldom the case for long. For every attempted retirement or vacation from the cowl, there comes some event or enemy that only he can handle, and the greater good must be served. These days, he still has to try to play at being Bruce Wayne, to use a lighter voice, to smile, to laugh. Being Batman comes naturally.
Still, even as Batman, he is a creature of contradictory views and morals. On one hand, he is suspicious and cynical, constantly appraising every situation for how it could go wrong, who could betray him. He has carefully planned contingencies for how to disable and defeat even his closest allies, and allows almost no one truly close to him emotionally. He has secrets even Alfred, Dick and Tim don’t know. He knows that the war against crime is a war that can never truly be won, and that in Gotham, he’s too often losing ground. On the other hand, he truly believes in the fundamental goodness of humanity. He is almost always willing to give people a second chance, to choose rehabilitation over mere imprisonment. Time and time again, he has poured his fortune into Gotham and its causes, worked himself ragged not just fighting, but serving in other ways, especially in the wake of the various cataclysms that have rocked the city over the years.
Bruce, though a fantastic leader and motivator who is (as Bruce Wayne, at least) excellent in social situations, is still an introvert who prefers to keep his own council, and certainly doesn’t want to depend on anyone else. Except that he does depend on others far more than he’s willing to admit, not only for the help they give him, but for anchoring him to Bruce Wayne and to humanity. If it wasn’t for that handful of people he cares about, it would be too easy to become nothing but a crime-fighting machine without conscience or heart. His strongest and most lasting relationship, and the one he is most reliant on, is the one with Alfred Pennyworth. Alfred is family to him and one of the few people who needs Bruce Wayne as much as Batman. Alfred has also, on occasion, been the only person who could give Bruce a wake-up call when his actions as Batman have gone too far. Without Alfred at his side, he’s more likely to lose himself behind the mask… and also to show how bad he is at living as a normal person who doesn’t have billions of dollars at his disposal and someone to wait on his every need. More complicated relationships are those he shares with his two adopted sons and (now former) sidekicks, Dick Grayson and Tim Drake-Wayne. As Robin, each of them served not only as a partner (though not, despite their respective ages at taking the position, a mere “boy sidekick”) but as a symbol of Bruce’s humanity, a reminder that he had something to protect, something he cared about, a reason both to pull his punches and to watch his back. He still cares about them and admires the men they are becoming, but still wonders whether taking them under his wing was the right thing to do, and hopes that they can be better people than he believes their mentor is. His biological son, Damian Wayne, is more of a challenge, and a problem he hadn’t solved at the time of his disappearance, though he returned to find the boy much improved by Dick’s influence. Since he’s returned from being stranded in time (and entrusted Dick, now also donning Batman’s cape and cowl, with the main part of Gotham’s protection), he has opened up a bit more to the rest of the Batfamily, and begun to realize that he can extend his reach even further if he delegates. Whether he will actually manage to sit at the center of the web without having to micro-manage everything is debatable.
Rather less successful in the long term are Bruce’s romances, of which there have been many, most limited to one side of his life or the other, generally (but not always) the Bruce Wayne side. He tends to see actual love as a liability, and himself as something less-than-capable of the affection and devotion it requires. It’s unlikely that he’s going to find the woman who can convince him otherwise, if only because he (rightly?) believes that Batman in love would be less effective. Bruce Wayne, on the other hand, will continue to have glorious flings and regularly leave his dates stranded and wondering where he disappeared to.
Though Bruce Wayne can radiate charm, Batman is simply intimidating, even to the people on his side. He’s a hard taskmaster, mostly because the person he drives hardest is himself. He strives for perfection in everything he does, and while he’s lenient toward others’ failures if they’ve given an honest try, he has a hard time admitting that he too is human and subject to human limitations. His reaction to tension or stress is generally to push himself even harder. He is a workaholic in one of the most dangerous lines of work, and when he's deep into a case, he often forgets to sleep, eat, or make his token appearances as Bruce Wayne. It often falls on his associates to remind him.
Batman operates detached from his emotions whenever possible, choosing logic and cool decision-making even over his personal desires. Yet this involves him suppressing all anger, fear, frustration, and guilt, sublimating them into focused violence. This detachment and his calm temperament, make him slow to anger. When he does anger, it’s usually controlled and barely visible. He drops his voice rather than raise it, and tends to terrify whoever it’s directed at. The rare exception is when he has been pushed completely over the edge and actually resorts to violence in anger, a sight rarely seen but frequently near-fatal for whoever manages it.
Batman is, at the core, driven by guilt over his failures. The first (most obvious) of these is his parents' death, which shouldn't have happened, but wasn't prevented by the justice system in place at the time. It was that frustration at having been unable to do anything then, and unable to prevent similar things from happening in the future, which drove him to become Batman to begin with. The second failure which shaped him in different ways and still haunts him to this day is the death of Jason Todd. His inability to save his young partner killed some small part of the humanity left in him and forced him to close himself off even further from other people. Tim Drake was able to pull him out of that darkness to some extent, but his interactions even with Robin took on a shade of tortured desperation that has never entirely faded.
POWER:
Bat command
(Non-canon) The ability to telepathically communicate with and control bats. It takes him little effort to send or receive simple messages in the form of images or ideas, and he can give them limited direction in this manner. With concentration, he can actually slip into the animal's mind and sense exactly what it sense, or even "remote control" it, though this requires such extensive mental effort that he is barely aware of his own body, and therefore vulnerable. This kind of direct control only works with one bat at a time, and if that bat is killed, his consciousness snaps back to his own body in an extremely disorienting way.
CHARACTER NAME: Bruce Wayne, Batman
SERIES: DC Comics, Batman
CHRONOLOGY: After Bruce Wayne: the Road Home, before Batman Incorporated #1. (December 2010)
CLASS: Vigilante
BACKGROUND:
Bruce Wayne was born in Gotham City, New Jersey, a city plagued by misfortune and organized crime. He was the only child of Thomas and Martha Wayne, both from wealthy families. In addition to being a surgeon of great skill, Thomas was also the owner and chief officer of Wayne Industries, one of the keystones of Gotham’s economy. When Bruce was a young child, his parents were murdered before his eyes by a mugger in a back alley as they were walking home from the Monarch Theater in downtown Gotham. Bruce was traumatized by the experience, and, angry and haunted by the implications, vowed that he would find some way to stop crime in his city and avenge his parents’ deaths. Raising Bruce fell to the family’s immensely capable valet, Alfred Pennyworth, and though he did his best, Bruce made few friends, and threw himself both into conventional schooling and into training himself to become better able to combat criminals. He began to travel, seeking out the greatest minds in fields from forensics to fencing. He enrolled at some of the best schools in the world, but then often dropped out after a semester when he learned what he was looking for or lost interest. He also sought martial artists and other masters of trades outside the academic spectrum, training under Japanese ninja, African bushmen, Nepalese monks, even ventriloquists, acrobats and other performers.
When he felt the world had taught him all that it could, he returned to Gotham, intent on taking his fight to the streets. While his skills and knowledge were top notch, something was still lacking. When a surveillance mission went bad, leaving him critically injured and on the run from both criminals and cops, he barely made it back to Wayne Manor. There, broken both physically and mentally, he struggled to figure out what he could do, what was missing. In Thomas Wayne’s former study, he pled for his father help him with his war on crime… and that was when a bat crashed through the window and landed on his father’s bust, giving the half-delirious Bruce the inspiration he needed—he would become a bat.
With the help of ever-loyal Alfred, he set out to turn himself into something more than human, a symbol of fear, an agent of justice. He created a costume that would both protect his identity and inspire fear, combining black body armor with a bat-like cowl and cape. For a base of operations, he delved into the cave system beneath his house (the source of the bats) and built passages linking it to the mansion. He also poured his fortune into buying and developing advanced equipment, from climbing equipment that allowed him to scale buildings and move across rooftops to custom vehicles to an arsenal of nonlethal weapons.
“The Batman,” as he came to be called, was a great success against Gotham’s organized crime, and while he was often at odds with the (often corrupt) police, he also found allies within the system, namely police James Gordon and assistant district attorney Harvey Dent. But even as he took down the more conventional criminals plaguing Gotham, a new breed of villain began to appear, using the same tactics of showmanship, anonymity and fear that Bruce himself did. None paralleled him as closely as Catwoman, aka Selina Kyle, a jewel thief who sometimes worked with him, sometimes against him, and with whom he shared a great deal of sexual tension. Also in this period, he first confronted the Joker, a demented, brilliant serial killer who dressed as a clown. When it became obvious that some enemies, such as the Joker, required Batman’s intervention, Bruce gave Gordon a special spotlight on the roof of the police headquarters which could be used to signal him, though as the police refuse to officially acknowledge the Batman’s existence, it officially exists only to use the “urban legend” to terrify Gotham’s criminals.
Tides turned for the worse when a serial killer with a holiday theme appeared, targeting members of Gotham's organized crime families, drawing enemies from all sides, and forging an alliance between the Falcone crime syndicate and the "costumed freaks" against both the Batman and this new threat. Then Harvey Dent was attacked, half of his face severely ruined by acid smuggled into the courtroom during the trial of one of the prominent crime bosses. But when Dent escaped from the hospital, having stabbed his own surgeon and fled, it became obvious that Gotham's golden boy, one of the few people Batman trusted, was tarnished, and was suspected to have been living a double life as the Holiday Killer, though a lesser son of the Falcone family eventually took the rap. Now, cracked even further, Dent emerged as the villain Two-Face, and was interned at Arkham Asylum, a high-security mental health facility quickly becoming the chosen place to keep the cabal of irredeemable characters that Batman captured.
About a year after the Holiday case was wrapped up, a new string of killings began, still occurring on holidays, but these victims were police officers, and found hung, a game of "hangman" pinned to each of their chests, written on Dent's personal files. Through all of this, Bruce-sans-costume attempted romance with Selina Kyle, both of them oblivious to the other's secret identity. While they worked wonderfully together, she, like every woman Bruce tried to date long-term, grew frustrated with his distraction and inconsistencies, and eventually broke it off and left town. Bruce was left with a pair of tickets to the circus, which he had intended to attend with Selina, and was convinced by Alfred to attend by himself rather than let them go to waste. There, he witnessed the tragic sabotage of the main act--a family of acrobats known as the Flying Graysons--which killed a young boy's parents before his eyes, much like his own parents had been taken from him. Recognizing the boy's pain, Bruce took the boy, a twelve-year-old named Dick, in. Late one night, he--as Batman--found Dick on the roof of Wayne Manor, both of them having returned from investigating the circus, and having both come to the conclusion that the Falcones were involved. Dick begged to help, but Bruce brushed him off.
Things grew increasingly tense between them, as Bruce Wayne was still not good at opening up, or finding time for others. He could buy Dick anything, but the boy still felt isolated and alone, and Bruce was too preoccupied with the continuing murders and escalating supervillain activity to understand why. After Bruce caught Dick at the circus again, this time trying to take on the gangsters who had caused his parents' death all by himself, he finally understood what he had to do. He revealed his identity to Dick, and, because he was obviously going to go out and attempt to avenge his parents whether Bruce allowed it or not, to train him for that purpose in an attempt to at least keep him safer.
Dick brought a new perspective to Bruce's work as Batman, helping him successfully track down the Hangman (the supposedly-crippled woman who now led the Falcone family), but an alliance of his super-criminal enemies managed to murder most of the heads of Gotham's mob, but then to infiltrate Batman's home base which had been left unguarded... except for Dick, who had been training in the Batcave daily. The young acrobat swung to the rescue clothed in a costume of his own devising, and helped to delay the criminals until Batman could arrive and deal with the intrusion. After that incident, Dick insisted that he could and would work beside Bruce, even in his "night job," and took the name "Robin" after a nickname his mother had given him.
Batman and Robin were far more efficient than Batman alone had been, not only for the help that another pair of eyes and fighting hands could bring to the table, but because Dick gave Bruce something to fight for, something to keep him grounded, something to break him out of the dark tunnel-vision that he tended to fall into when working alone. For Dick, the entire thing was an adventure for about a year, until he misjudged a trap Two-Face had set for Batman and the new D.A., leading to the D.A.'s accidental death, and Robin's being beaten within an inch of his life, all of which Bruce was forced to watch helplessly while he struggled to escape. Angry at both himself and the boy for allowing harm to come to both Dick and a civilian, he sidelined Robin, forcing him to hang up his cape until he could prove himself more responsible. Dick did eventually win back the right to wear his green scaly panties, but also began to undertake more solo missions, and to work with the newly-formed Teen Titans. He also had independence out of costume, and left Gotham to attend Hudson University.
It was while Dick was away at college that Bruce met what would be one of his greatest nemeses, Ra’s al Ghul. Dick had gone missing, and Batman had received a message stating Robin had been kidnapped by the mysterious League of Assassins. He rushed back to the Batcave... only to find that someone was waiting for him, someone who knew him not only as Batman, but as Bruce Wayne. Ra’s had deduced his identity by tracking purchases for equipment he knew that Batman possessed, but now was seeking his help because his daughter--Talia--had also been kidnapped. As Bruce rushed around the world following a trail of bizarre clues, it became eventually clear that the entire thing was engineered by Ra’s himself, the true leader of the League of Assassins, to test Bruce's skills, and worthiness as a successor and consort for his daughter. Bruce, though fascinated by Talia, rejected the offer outright.
About three years after Robin swung into Gotham, another young person began helping the Dark Knight. Commissioner Gordon's teenage daughter Barbara took up the mantle of "Batgirl." She originally created the costume for a masquerade ball to annoy her father, but it became all too real when an actual villain attacked. Bruce was initially dismissive, and slow to warm up to Barbara as a hero, even though Dick was instantly infatuated, and far more encouraging.
At some point in his early career, Batman also began involvement with some of the world’s other costumed heroes, most of whom had superhuman powers, and became a founding member of the Justice League, a group seeking to protect the entire world from powerful threats. Though his main focus generally remained on Gotham, his skills and resources made him indispensable to the team. Bruce, however, didn't entirely trust the superhumans who he worked with, and continued to be as standoffish with his teammates as he was with almost everyone else. He also researched other heroes extensively, and to this day keeps updated files on their capabilities, along with contingency plans in case they should be compromised or go rogue. His conflicts with the League reached a head when they refused to help him rescue Lucius Fox--one of the leaders of Wayne Enterprises--from a foreign villain due to political reasons. Wanting a group who could move outside the bounds of the law like he himself, Batman founded the Outsiders, a new black-ops team who could operate where the Justice League could not.
Back in Gotham, while Bruce Wayne began an affair with the beautiful reporter Vicki Vale (a strong critic of the Batman), the Batman had a bigger problem: Robin. When Dick was shot in the shoulder by the Joker and fell off a rooftop, the watching media wondered if Robin had died.. and Bruce vowed to let them think that he had, forcing Dick out of the job--this time for good. Dick didn't stay out of the game for long, though. Instead, he moved across the bay to the city of Bludhaven, where he donned the identity of "Nightwing," and began his solo career with his own city to protect.
But only weeks after Bruce fired Dick, while patrolling Crime Alley on the anniversary of his parents' death, he returned to his car to find something quite unexpected--someone had stolen the front tires off of the Batmobile. And then, even more, the teenage boy who'd done it returned to finish the job while Batman was still there inspecting the damage. Instead of confessing when confronted, the boy fought back. He followed the boy back to his crash space in an attempt to get his tires back, and discovered that the boy was living alone, practicaly an orphan himself, with an absent criminal father and deceased mother. The teen introduced himself as Jason Todd, and Bruce tried to make his life better, enrolling him at a scool for boys that had opened up on Crime Alley, but which wasn't what it seemed. Batman encountered Jason again a short while later, again stealing tires from cars. At this meeting, Bruce learns that the school where he had enrolled the boy was actually a front for a school of crime. Investigating further, he stopped the students and proprietor from stealing a diamond necklace for the Joker, with the unexpected help of Jason himself. Impressed with how the boy handled himself, Bruce offered him a position as the new Robin.
In affairs outside of Gotham, Batman took command of some of the lesser-known heroes to form a splinter League, and convinced the United Nations to grant them an international charter, forming the Justice League International. Meanwhile, in part because of Dick's shooting, things between Batman and the Joker escalated, their mutual obsession coming to a head when the Joker escaped from Arkham and took control of a decrepit carnival outside of Gotham. He invaded the Gordon home and shot Barbara in the spine, crippling her, then kidnapped Commissioner Gordon and forced him to watch video they had taken of his daughter being sexually abused. Batman was able to free Gordon and apprehend the Joker, resisting his need to punish the man, and forcing himself to do it by the book, to capture him and allow the court system to do its work, but it was an unforgivable act which tainted Bruce's view of his job, and made him realize just how many people were potentially collateral damage.
Robin—Jason—was growing more violent, aggressive, and disobedient. This grew worse when, while digging through old files of his father’s, he discovered that the mother who he had known, who had died when he was young, was actually his step-mother, and his real mother was someone else entirely, someone who had left Gotham when he was a baby. While Bruce headed to the Middle East in search of the escaped Joker, Jason also traveled to that region, following leads on the possible identity of his biological mother. Bruce was furious with him for having so blatantly disregarded his orders, but agreed to try and help Jason when he could. After several false leads, they finally located Jason’s mother, Dr. Sheila Haywood, but the reunion was soured by the fact that she was being blackmailed by the very villain Bruce was hunting. The Joker planned to steal the region’s medical supplies and replace them with deadly laughing gas. They tracked the supplies to the warehouse where they were being kept, but learned that a shipment of tainted supplies had already gone out. Batman rushed to stop the shipment, while Jason stayed behind, on strict orders not to confront the Joker if he appeared, no matter what happened. Orders he disobeyed when Dr. Haywood was in danger. The Joker easily overwhelmed the teenager, and beat him within an inch of his life with a crowbar before leaving him and his mother tied up in the warehouse, which he rigged with explosives and locked. He attempted to free himself and his mother, but was not able to get to safety before the bombs went off. Bruce saw the warehouse explode from afar, but couldn’t reach it in time. He found Jason’s broken body in the wreckage, but it was already too late. Horrified and guilt-stricken, Bruce returned to Gotham to arrange the funeral… but learned that during his distraction, the Joker had taken a position as the U.N. ambassador from Iran and had complete diplomatic immunity. Furious and determined to put an end to the Joker’s madness once and for all, Bruce traveled to Washington, with Superman accompanying him in an attempt to prevent him from doing anything regrettable. Together, they stop the Joker’s plot to murder the other U.N. delegates, but they were unable to apprehend the Joker himself.
Following Jason’s death, Bruce grew more withdrawn and violent, tackling crime with single-minded fury, and taking his frustrations out on everyone around him. Without someone to balance and ground him, with so much hate and anger turned inward, he was becoming increasingly destructive, both to himself and others. All of this was observed by a teen named Tim Drake, who had deduced Batman’s secret identity. Tim realized that Batman needed Robin to keep his darkness in check, and tracked down Dick, begging him to go back to Bruce. Instead, Dick took Tim to Bruce, and suggested that he become the new Robin. Bruce disagreed, not willing to put someone else in danger. But when Batman and Nightwing were caught in a death-trap orchestrated by Two-Face, Tim took the Robin costume and came to rescue them, disobeying orders. He succeeded, and though Bruce was furious and continued to insist he didn’t need a side-kick, he eventually did agree to start training Tim and take him on as the third Robin.
Though Tim helped to pull him back to himself, Bruce still struggled more than he had before, especially as crime within continued to escalate with the return of gang-leader Black Mask and others. Much of this was due to his own inability to take the advice of others and rest, or delegate responsibilities to the others who worked with him. While in Switzerland investigating the mysterious death of a Gothamite, Bruce encountered a young man named Jean-Paul Valley who had been unknowingly conditioned from before birth by a fanatical religious order to take on the mantle of the holy crusader Azrael. Bruce convinced Valley to put aside the zealotry of the Order who created him and adopt his own non-lethal system of working more within society’s legal system. And, in light of Bruce’s own recent failings, began to train him (with Tim’s help) as a potential replacement as Batman, in case something should happen.
That came sooner than intended when Bane came to Gotham City. Bane was a brilliant tactician who had trained his body to physical perfection and beyond in part because of a chemical treatment known as Venom, which he had been a test subject for and become dependent upon. Bane engineered a massive breakout from Arkham Asylum, and forced Batman to confront many of its worst denizens in quick succession. Though Tim begged Bruce to let him help, Bruce still would not allow the boy to put himself in danger, feeling that he should be capable enough alone. All of this took its toll, as Bruce was worn down physically and mentally by the onslaught. After a final fight in which he faced both the Joker and the Scarecrow, Bane confronted Bruce in his own home, having, like Tim, deduced Batman’s identity. The fight was short and quick… and ended with Bane breaking Bruce over his knee, fracturing his spine and leaving Bruce mostly paralyzed.
While Bruce tried to physically recover with the help of psychic Dr. Shondra Kinsolving (who he also developed a romantic interest in), he asked Jean-Paul Valley to don Batman’s costume so that Gotham wouldn’t be without its protector. Tim, having worked badly with Valley, argued that Dick should be Batman in the interim, but in actuality, Bruce was attempting to protect Dick from Bane, as he knew that Dick wouldn’t be able to resist confronting the man who had crippled his mentor. While Bruce and Alfred traveled outside the country in an attempt to track down Kinsolving and Tim’s father who had been kidnapped, things in Gotham weren’t going well. Jean-Paul wasn’t Bruce, and that was obvious to those who interacted with him as Batman, especially after an encounter with the Scarecrow’s fear gas caused his Azrael programming to reassert its control. Azrael defeated Bane and allowed him to go to prison instead of killing him, but continued to grow increasingly unstable. In England, Bruce located Shondra, but a psychic battle between she and her adopted brother healed his spine, but left Dr. Kinsolving herself broken, her mind reduced to that of a child. Bruce reluctantly placed her in a mental institution and returned to Gotham, but Alfred remained in England, not willing to watch Bruce hurt himself further.
At first, Bruce was willing to let Jean-Paul remain Batman, but Tim told him about an instance of Azrael intentionally allowing a killer AND his to hostage die. Bruce sneaked into the Batcave and demanded Jean-Paul step down, but Jean-Paul refused, and threatened to kill Bruce if he returned. Not able to fight Jean-Paul in his current condition, Bruce sought retraining from the assassin Lady Shiva, who had been one of his few real rivals in combat, though her intent was to try and make Bruce break his vow not to kill. When he felt he had achieved peak condition once more, Bruce donned the original Batman costume and tracked down Jean-Paul, eventually culminating in a battle between the two Batmen in the caverns beneath Wayne Manor, with Jean-Paul finally surrendering and leaving Gotham. His lesson learned from his defeat by Bane, Bruce decided to step back for a while to re-evaluate what it would take to restore Batman’s reputation as an invincible force of Justice. In the meantime, he reaffirmed his need for and relationship with Tim, but passed the mantle of the Bat temporarily to Dick Grayson.
Bruce finally returned to the streets of Gotham as Batman once more with updated equipment and a new sense of duty. He saved Gotham from a communist plot involving a nuclear device the size and shape of a baseball, then, in a fight against Doctor Destiny, joined with other heroes to re-establish the Justice League of America. Together, they fought a new team of heroes, the Hyperclan, who were revealed to actually be White Martians, whose invasion plans the JLA halted. Much to everyone’s relief, Alfred Pennyworth returned, Dick having convinced him that he was needed at home.
The return to the familiar didn’t last long. Bruce was alerted by Azrael of an apocalyptic Ebola-based plague being tested by the Order he had been created by…and that an infected individual was on their way to Gotham. While Batman tried to track down a cure through the military, Robin looked for the carrier. Unfortunately, it was too late, and they learned that a cure could only come from a survivor. As both disease and civil unrest set in, the fight became even more personal when Tim fell ill. Finally, when it looked like all was lost, it was Azrael who came through with a cure, discovered in the Order’s files. Tim—and Gotham—were saved. While tracking the origins of the plague in the middle east, Bruce found that the perpetrator had been none other than his nemesis Ra’s al Ghul, now aided by the man who had broken him--Bane. Though with the help of the rest of the Bat-family, the remaining threat of the plague is eliminated and all of the villains are defeated, none are captured. However, the plague would be quickly forgotten, overshadowed by a much greater catastrophe. Only a few months later, Gotham City was almost completely destroyed by a magnitude 7.6 earthquake.
Bruce himself was trapped inside of the Batcave, and nearly killed by falling rocks. His car crushed and normal escape routes completely closed, he was forced to escape through underground streams into the harbor, where he saw his city in flames. The only properties not destroyed were those owned by Wayne Enterprises, which had recently been retrofitted to be earthquake-resistant. Though there had been a break-out from Blackgate Prison, Batman was still able to put down much of the rioting, and to, with his enemy the Penguin’s help, enlist some local gangsters into the rescue effort. Despite all of this, over a hundred thousand people had died in the initial earthquake, and they were forced to turn to mass graves to stymie the spread of disease. Bruce Wayne, as one of Gotham’s most prominent citizens, went to Washington D.C. to ask for federal assistance… but was opposed by a corrupt senator and the charismatic rock star and cult leader Nicholas Scratch, who argued that Gotham, crime-ridden as it was, was not worth saving. Congress arrived at the conclusion that Gotham’s negative elements would have to be isolated before they got out of control. Everyone within the city limits was given 48 hours to evacuate, excluding those with connections to any known criminal element. After that, the bridges leading into the city were destroyed and the National Guard posted to prevent anyone from getting in or out. The government had declared Gotham City a “no man’s land.”
The city was quickly carved up by gangs and supervillains, and the most loyal members of Gotham’s police force, led by Jim Gordon, were forced to adopt gang-like tactics in an attempt to hold territory of their own. Batman was nowhere to be seen, as Bruce had still been outside the city from his attempts to lobby for Gotham’s future when the quarantine had gone into effect. When he finally made it back in, he worked separately from the police, though both he and Gordon had a similar tactic of conquering Gotham back from the gangs piece by piece. Superman’s long-time enemy Lex Luthor attempted to take over the city by laying claim to properties with lost deeds, but Lucius Fox of Wayne Enterprises prevented this from happening. Eventually, Gotham was re-taken and allowed to re-join the United States.
Batman’s relations with the JLA were soured when Talia al Ghul broke into the Batcave and stole his contingency plans from his computer. Her father then began using those methods to incapacitate each member of the League, meanwhile distracting Bruce himself by stealing his parents’ corpses and threatening to lower them into a Lazarus Pit, which would bring them back to life as twisted versions of themselves. While confronting Ra’s, Bruce realized that his plans had been stolen and was able to warn the rest of the Justice League. After Ra’s and Talia were defeated, the JLA voted to dismiss Batman from the League, believing he could no longer be trusted. At Superman’s urging, Bruce attempted to regain their trust by revealing his secret identity to the rest of his allies on the team.
The trust of the rest of the Bat-family was tested, as well, when Bruce found his ex-girlfriend Vesper Fairchild murdered in Wayne Manor only minutes before the police barged in, alerted by an anonymous tip. He was incarcerated, but unable to establish an alibi or prove his innocence without endangering his identity as Batman. He escaped from prison and announced to the team his plans to cease using the identity of Bruce Wayne entirely, and be Batman full time. Finally, he and his allies learned that the man behind the entire fiasco was then-President Lex Luthor, angry at having been humiliated during the “No Man’s Land” incident. With new evidence they were able to clear Bruce’s name, and he again returned to his double-life.
The next threat came when, while chasing Catwoman after a fight with Killer Croc, Batman’s line was cut, letting him fall stories to the ground, where he was knocked unconscious. He was rescued by allies and taken back to the Batcave, but there was little even Alfred’s impressive medical skills could do for a severe skull fracture. Though barely conscious, Bruce was able to request the aid of one of his few childhood friends, Thomas Elliot, now a brilliant neurosurgeon. Dr. Elliot was summoned, Alfred had Dick wreck one of Bruce’s sports cars for an alibi, and the operation was a success, with Bruce being released. While investigating the circumstances around his fall, he uncovered a strange conspiracy among his enemies, in which they were being manipulated by unknown forces. He tracked Poison Ivy to Metropolis, where he was forced to fight Superman, who Ivy had enthralled. With Catwoman’s help, he freed Superman, and was able to apprehend Ivy. Later, at the opera with Selina, Tommy Elliot, and Leslie Thompkins, they were attacked by Harley Quinn, the Joker’s sometime-sidekick, and in the alley outside, he found Elliot murdered, seemingly by the Joker. Bruce, as Batman, flew into a murderous rage, and had to be restrained by Catwoman before he killed the Joker with his bare hands. Later, encouraged by Dick, Batman finally revealed his secret identity to Selina. Even more conflicts arise between the Bat-family and many of Bruce’s most prominent adversaries, all of the strings leading back to a man called “Hush.” When Batman finally confronts him, Hush captures Robin… and reveals himself to be none other than Jason Todd. Robin is rescued by Catwoman, while Bruce fights Jason, who confesses that he was the one who cut Bruce’s line. But during the confrontation, Bruce begins to suspect that this isn’t actually Jason, which is confirmed when Jason’s features dissolve, revealing that it was actually the shapeshifting villain Clayface. In the end, after further investigation, it’s discovered that Hush had actually learned all of Batman’s secrets via monitoring equipment in the Batcave… and that Hush’s true identity was none other than Tommy Elliot, who sought revenge on the Wayne family after Bruce’s father had foiled his attempt to kill his parents and take his inheritance early. The confrontation ended when Jim Gordon and a (rehabilitated) Harvey Dent arrived on the scene. Dent then shot, sending his body into the bay and forcing Gordon to arrest him. Later, tying up the loose ends, it was discovered that the Riddler had been pulling strings the entire time, and had told Hush of Bruce’s identity in the first place, though Bruce convinced him not to share the information further.
Not long after, Tim was briefly forced to resign as Robin when his father discovered his identity. Stephanie Brown, a teen girl known as Spoiler, sought to replace him in the position, and Bruce agreed, though he fired her shortly after for disobeying him in a fight. Trying to impress him, she then sought to activate one of her own contingency plans and upend Gotham’s underworld of organized crime, but her plan went wrong, resulting in a large-scale gang war, and from the resulting power vacuum, Black Mask rose to take control of the city once more.
But perhaps the hardest conflict Bruce had ever faced came with the emergence of a new criminal who went by the name “Red Hood,” a moniker first used by the criminal who would become the Joker, before the accident that turned him into what he is. He was ruthless… and familiar. Bruce was troubled by the suspicion that he might actually be Jason Todd, somehow returned from the grave—a suspicion that his magically-inclined allies confirmed could in fact be true. In a climactic battle, the Red Hood revealed that he was in fact Jason, and had returned to Gotham to do what Bruce couldn’t—to save the many by killing the few. They clashed repeatedly, but Bruce failed to either apprehend Jason or convince him to come back to the fold.
When someone began attacking the families of Justice League members, Bruce used his detective skills to help… but not before his partner Tim’s father, Jack Drake, was attacked and killed by Captain Boomerang, one of the Flash’s foes. Bruce was horrified that he hadn’t been able to prevent Tim from also being forced to witness a parent’s death and become an orphan, and filled with suspicious rage as the story unfolded further and he learned that in the past, the League had agreed to let the sorceress Zatanna use her powers to wipe the memories of those who had discovered their secret identities… and worse, had wiped Bruce’s own memory of the event when he protested. Because of this, he grew increasingly suspicious of other heroes, especially those with superhuman powers, leading him to create the “Brother Eye” satellite to monitor superhuman activity.
When, during another Crisis, the satellite was taken over and helped to incite a worldwide conflict, Bruce’s reputation was severely damaged… but he didn’t realize how far he had fallen until he feared that Alexander Luthor had killed Dick, and in his rage, picked up a gun and nearly killed him with it… almost violating his most sacred rule. Shaken, Bruce withdrew from the public eye, and along with Dick and Tim went on a journey around the world, retracing the steps he’d taken while training to become Batman and trying to reconnect with the core of who he—Batman—was.
It worked, and he returned to Gotham with a renewed vitality and drive with which he cleaned up nearly all super-crime in his city, until Alfred pointed out to him that he was once more over-focusing on Batman and neglecting Bruce Wayne. This time, Bruce listened, and took a trip overseas. At a charity ball in London, he met supermodel Jezebel Jet, who he immediately fell for. But he couldn’t entirely escape from Batman, as he was attacked by the League of Assassins, and confronted by Talia al Ghul, who revealed to him that ten years before, she had become pregnant from a liaison they’d had while Bruce was drugged, and given birth to a boy, Damian. Bruce somewhat reluctantly took Damian in, but he turned out to be incredibly difficult to work with. Though Talia attempted to bring them together and win Bruce for herself once more, it failed again, and she declared war on him.
Back in Gotham, Bruce was haunted by a mysterious secret society known as the Black Glove, who attempted many different ways to break Batman through psychological means, including helping the returned Hush, who had undergone plastic surgery to look identical to Bruce himself. He survived, but was worn down, so that when the cosmic villain Darkseid attempted to wrest control of the universe using the Anti-Life equation, he was able to be captured, though he was able to break free and confront Darkseid face-to-face, striking down the dark godlike being… but not before Darkseid was able to retaliate, seemingly killing Batman as well.
While everyone (with the exception of Tim Drake) believed him to have been killed, as Superman recovered a charred corpse that matched his DNA, Bruce had actually been flung far back in time, turned by Darkseid into a living “time bomb” that would destroy reality itself if allowed to reach the present. Disoriented and suffering from amnesia, Bruce traveled through various different eras and confronted the historical origins of both the Black Glove and his own identity, until he finally reached the present. There, he was prevented from exploding and destroying the world by his comrades in the Justice League and his most recent partner Tim, who had now taken on his own identity as Red Robin.
Upon first returning, he kept his identity hidden from most people in Gotham, instead using power armor utilizing technology from the future and the code name "Insider." In this guise, he observed his Gothamite allies, and began to recognize the skill and teamwork they had gained in his absence. He revealed himself to each of them, and got their renewed agreement to help him with his cause. Everything was looking up. Just in time for him to be yanked out of the world entirely.
PERSONALITY:
Bruce Wayne is a man who lives two lives, one as a fickle, idealistic billionaire playboy and philanthropist, the other as a dark, all-seeing vigilante crime-fighter. The question often raised by those who know his two identities is which one of those is the true persona and which the façade. For those who know him best, there is little debate. In the worst of times, Batman has functioned without Bruce Wayne. The reverse is seldom the case for long. For every attempted retirement or vacation from the cowl, there comes some event or enemy that only he can handle, and the greater good must be served. These days, he still has to try to play at being Bruce Wayne, to use a lighter voice, to smile, to laugh. Being Batman comes naturally.
Still, even as Batman, he is a creature of contradictory views and morals. On one hand, he is suspicious and cynical, constantly appraising every situation for how it could go wrong, who could betray him. He has carefully planned contingencies for how to disable and defeat even his closest allies, and allows almost no one truly close to him emotionally. He has secrets even Alfred, Dick and Tim don’t know. He knows that the war against crime is a war that can never truly be won, and that in Gotham, he’s too often losing ground. On the other hand, he truly believes in the fundamental goodness of humanity. He is almost always willing to give people a second chance, to choose rehabilitation over mere imprisonment. Time and time again, he has poured his fortune into Gotham and its causes, worked himself ragged not just fighting, but serving in other ways, especially in the wake of the various cataclysms that have rocked the city over the years.
Bruce, though a fantastic leader and motivator who is (as Bruce Wayne, at least) excellent in social situations, is still an introvert who prefers to keep his own council, and certainly doesn’t want to depend on anyone else. Except that he does depend on others far more than he’s willing to admit, not only for the help they give him, but for anchoring him to Bruce Wayne and to humanity. If it wasn’t for that handful of people he cares about, it would be too easy to become nothing but a crime-fighting machine without conscience or heart. His strongest and most lasting relationship, and the one he is most reliant on, is the one with Alfred Pennyworth. Alfred is family to him and one of the few people who needs Bruce Wayne as much as Batman. Alfred has also, on occasion, been the only person who could give Bruce a wake-up call when his actions as Batman have gone too far. Without Alfred at his side, he’s more likely to lose himself behind the mask… and also to show how bad he is at living as a normal person who doesn’t have billions of dollars at his disposal and someone to wait on his every need. More complicated relationships are those he shares with his two adopted sons and (now former) sidekicks, Dick Grayson and Tim Drake-Wayne. As Robin, each of them served not only as a partner (though not, despite their respective ages at taking the position, a mere “boy sidekick”) but as a symbol of Bruce’s humanity, a reminder that he had something to protect, something he cared about, a reason both to pull his punches and to watch his back. He still cares about them and admires the men they are becoming, but still wonders whether taking them under his wing was the right thing to do, and hopes that they can be better people than he believes their mentor is. His biological son, Damian Wayne, is more of a challenge, and a problem he hadn’t solved at the time of his disappearance, though he returned to find the boy much improved by Dick’s influence. Since he’s returned from being stranded in time (and entrusted Dick, now also donning Batman’s cape and cowl, with the main part of Gotham’s protection), he has opened up a bit more to the rest of the Batfamily, and begun to realize that he can extend his reach even further if he delegates. Whether he will actually manage to sit at the center of the web without having to micro-manage everything is debatable.
Rather less successful in the long term are Bruce’s romances, of which there have been many, most limited to one side of his life or the other, generally (but not always) the Bruce Wayne side. He tends to see actual love as a liability, and himself as something less-than-capable of the affection and devotion it requires. It’s unlikely that he’s going to find the woman who can convince him otherwise, if only because he (rightly?) believes that Batman in love would be less effective. Bruce Wayne, on the other hand, will continue to have glorious flings and regularly leave his dates stranded and wondering where he disappeared to.
Though Bruce Wayne can radiate charm, Batman is simply intimidating, even to the people on his side. He’s a hard taskmaster, mostly because the person he drives hardest is himself. He strives for perfection in everything he does, and while he’s lenient toward others’ failures if they’ve given an honest try, he has a hard time admitting that he too is human and subject to human limitations. His reaction to tension or stress is generally to push himself even harder. He is a workaholic in one of the most dangerous lines of work, and when he's deep into a case, he often forgets to sleep, eat, or make his token appearances as Bruce Wayne. It often falls on his associates to remind him.
Batman operates detached from his emotions whenever possible, choosing logic and cool decision-making even over his personal desires. Yet this involves him suppressing all anger, fear, frustration, and guilt, sublimating them into focused violence. This detachment and his calm temperament, make him slow to anger. When he does anger, it’s usually controlled and barely visible. He drops his voice rather than raise it, and tends to terrify whoever it’s directed at. The rare exception is when he has been pushed completely over the edge and actually resorts to violence in anger, a sight rarely seen but frequently near-fatal for whoever manages it.
Batman is, at the core, driven by guilt over his failures. The first (most obvious) of these is his parents' death, which shouldn't have happened, but wasn't prevented by the justice system in place at the time. It was that frustration at having been unable to do anything then, and unable to prevent similar things from happening in the future, which drove him to become Batman to begin with. The second failure which shaped him in different ways and still haunts him to this day is the death of Jason Todd. His inability to save his young partner killed some small part of the humanity left in him and forced him to close himself off even further from other people. Tim Drake was able to pull him out of that darkness to some extent, but his interactions even with Robin took on a shade of tortured desperation that has never entirely faded.
POWER:
Bat command
(Non-canon) The ability to telepathically communicate with and control bats. It takes him little effort to send or receive simple messages in the form of images or ideas, and he can give them limited direction in this manner. With concentration, he can actually slip into the animal's mind and sense exactly what it sense, or even "remote control" it, though this requires such extensive mental effort that he is barely aware of his own body, and therefore vulnerable. This kind of direct control only works with one bat at a time, and if that bat is killed, his consciousness snaps back to his own body in an extremely disorienting way.
