The Dark Knight finally confronts the man who made him who he is and how he came to be. From June/July 1948, this is "The Origin of Batman!"
(Originally posted on Channel Awesome on March 21, 2016) The Dark Knight finally confronts the man who made him who he is and how he came to be. From June/July 1948, this is "The Origin of Batman!" One of the essential elements to creating a memorable, enduring hero is a similarly memorable origin story. Part of what I think helps make such an origin work is its simplicity, something that can be tossed out in a succinct sentence or two. A young fosterling named Arthur draws a sword from a stone, revealing his heritage as the rightful High King of Britain. Heracles must complete twelve perilous tasks after a vengeful Hera makes him murder his family. Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei begin their campaign to defend the Han Dynasty with an oath of brotherhood made in a peach garden. Nice, simple, easy to remember. It's the same with comic book superheroes, a new pantheon of gods and monsters for the Twentieth Century and beyond. A lightning bolt grants a police scientist incredible speed. A frail youth volunteers for an experiment that turns him into a mighty super-soldier during World War II. A murdered assassin makes a deal with the Devil to see his wife one last time in exchange for joining the armies of Hell. The origins are sometimes embellished as time goes on, with new details and twists added here and there, but the core of the origin usually remains the same (unless one is willing to risk the wrath of a legion of fans). Batman's own origin is among the most famous comic book hero origins ever - as a boy, Bruce Wayne witnesses his parents' murder and vows to dedicate his life to fighting criminals. At first glance, it's not that unique an origin, as comic book graveyards are filled with murdered relatives, significant others, and mentors. These deaths drive heroes to either use recently acquired special abilities to fight evil, or to acquire said skills and abilities to achieve that end. However, what makes Batman's origin story stand out is that most heroes succeed in apprehending or dispatching the murderers of their loved ones in their debut stories, and then move on to fighting other criminals. John and Mary Grayson, Ben Parker, and Battlin' Jack Murdock were all avenged a few pages after meeting their untimely demise. The mugger who shot and killed Thomas and Martha Wayne, however, was never even identified, let alone confronted by the Caped Crusader, until almost a decade after Batman's origin was first revealed in the pages of Detective Comics #33 (November, 1939). This was a story begging to be told. And in the summer of 1948, it finally was - by none other than writer Bill Finger and artist Bob Kane, the original co-creators of the character, with inks by Charles Paris. One night, Batman and Robin stumble upon a racket to smuggle criminals across state lines. The alleged mastermind behind the racket is a guy named Joe Chill, who keeps his transportation business clean enough that the cops can't prove he's behind anything. When Commissioner Gordon shows Batman a photo of Chill, Batman recognizes him all too well; it's the man that murdered his parents. Naturally, Batman takes the case, asking Robin to sit this one out due to its personal nature. He tries to infiltrate Chill's gang, but Chill doesn't hire anyone he doesn't know. He tries to bring business to Chill by cracking down on Monty Julep's illegal gambling operation, but Chill murders Julep, suspecting a trap, and Chill pleads self-defense when Batman shows up. Finally, Batman sees no other choice. He unmasks before Chill, tells him his origin, and vows to never leave him alone, waiting for him to make a mistake. Batman departs, and Chill naturally freaks the @#$% out. He tells his gang about Batman's threat and how he murdered Batman's parents. The gangsters, all of whom had been sent up the river by Batman previously, don't take this news very well and gun Chill down - conveniently before he has the chance to reveal Batman's identity. This story blew me away when I first read it as a kid (thanks to it being reprinted in the trade paperback The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told), and as an adult, I think it definitely holds up. Even though the story is only thirteen pages, a lot happens without it feeling rushed or thrown together. It's a darker and moodier story than the Batman stories of the prior few years, even the other two stories in this issue. (It was a common practice, back in the Golden Age, for a single issue of a comic book to have multiple stories featuring the title character.) The climactic ending alone, with Batman unmasking before Chill and vowing to bring him down, and Chill being furiously gunned down by his own gang is some of the most dramatic storytelling I've seen in a Golden Age comic. The artwork is solid, making good use of shadows, camera angles, and framing, while lacking the stiffness that Golden Age art could sometimes suffer from. The action scenes are fun, with Batman making clever use of his environment to take down his opponents, using poker chips and roulette wheels in a riverboat casino, or hoses in a garage - Jackie Chan would be proud. The one potentially disappointing aspect about this story is that we don't get any new details about Batman's origin that hadn't already seen print before, other than Bruce memorizing Chill's features as a child. Also, to tone down the violence, this story alters the circumstances of the Waynes' murders slightly, with only Bruce's father getting shot and his mother instantly dying of shock thanks to a weak heart. (In the 1970s, as part of the effort to restore Batman to his darker roots, the original version of both parents dying by gunfire was restored.) Other than that, it's basically the same origin we saw in Detective Comics #33, reprinted in Batman #1, with no new details about the extent of his training or anything like that - those would come decades later. I'm a bit curious as to why they didn't wait until the not-far-off fiftieth issues to print this story, but given the nature of the industry at the time, maybe nobody was thinking that far ahead. Besides, a month later, in Superman #53, Superman's origin would also be told to celebrate the character's tenth anniversary, so maybe there was some kind of internal milestone that was reached. Although everything in "The Origin of Batman" seems to be nicely wrapped up, apparently there was more to be told. In Detective Comics #235 (September, 1956), it was revealed that Joe Chill had been hired by a gangster named Lew Moxon to murder Thomas Wayne as payback for Wayne testifying against him, and Bruce was to be left alive to "prove" that it was a random mugging. However, this all went out the window with the Zero Hour event, a major crossover which further retooled the DC Universe and "fixed" some issues left unresolved by 1986's Crisis on Infinite Earths, extensively rewriting and retconning the history of the DC Universe. Zero Hour established that the Waynes' killer was never identified and never caught, which many fans prefer. Lew Moxon was reintroduced in Batman #591 (July, 2001), and apparently he had history with the Wayne family - and his daughter Mallory was a love interest for Bruce Wayne. However, his involvement in the Waynes' deaths was left ambiguous, and wherever this storyline was going, it ended up derailed by other big events and crossovers. That didn't stop the movie Batman Begins (2005) from making Joe Chill the murderer of the Waynes, adding the twist that he was arrested and murdered by crime lord Carmine Falcone to silence him, denying Bruce Wayne his own vengeance. There have been numerous other retcons and rewrites regarding the Waynes' killer in the comics, and as I'm not that into the New 52, I'm not sure what the current status is (other than the possibility that the Court of Owls might have been somehow involved). Detective Comics #253 - "The First Batman!" If you can get a hold of a reprint of this story, by all means do so. It's a great Batman tale, and an example of how good Golden Age stories could be when writers went the extra mile.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
About the INCspotlightThe INCspotlight, formerly hosted on the website Channel Awesome, now has a new home on my own website! Categories
All
Archives
November 2022
|