Batman (Bruce Wayne)

## History

Batman is the vigilante protector of Gotham City. Real name Bruce Wayne, he dresses as a bat and fights crime on the streets, striking fear into criminals everywhere. His secret identity is a multi-billionaire industrialist and playboy. He is one of the smartest people in the world, which makes up for having no superpowers. His amazing fighting skills and smarts make him a worthy opponent for nearly anybody, and Batman is a founding member of the Justice League.

### Early Life

Bruce was born to the wealthy Martha Kane and Thomas Wayne, members of the prestigious Kane and Wayne families in Gotham. When Bruce was very young, a second baby was expected, but a car crash planned by the Court of Owls caused Martha to go into premature birth and lose the baby.

As Bruce grew up, he started sneaking out of school to visit Gotham. On one trip, he encountered Jim Gordon, who returned him to his parents. Bruce's parents took him to see a movie, where they were shot by a panicked mugger, Joe Chill. At the age of 18, he used his relationship with the daughter of an Irish mob to track down Joe, who it turned out had no idea that his parents were the Waynes and that he just wanted his mother's pearl necklace to buy alcohol.

### Travels and Training

Bruce, fueled by his parents' death, started taking martial arts and sword-fighting. After he learned the truth of Joe Chill, he traveled the world, learning stunt-driving, intimidation, and invention. Bruce traveled to the Himalayas, where a teacher taught him to embrace his dark side and to never make personal ties. After a personal experience with that in the same household, Bruce took the lesson to heart and returned to Gotham as **Batman** after a three-year absence.

### The Zero Year

Bruce's uncle took over Wayne Industries and started selling weapons, and hired scientist Edward Nygma, who advised to have Bruce killed if he would not have part in the operation. Bruce still refused and attempted to infiltrate and destroy the Red Hood Gang. Edward further advised having Bruce killed, which resulted in the Red Hood Gang actually attempting to kill him. Bruce, injured, crawled back to Wayne Manor and made the batsuit.

Bruce took his outing as an advantage and held a meeting at the ACE Chemical Plant, which the Red Hood Gang attempted to infiltrate. Bruce caused a blackout and made the debut of his new batsuit. Through blackmail, Philip, Bruce's uncle, attempted to kill Batman. When he failed, he was shot dead. Bruce beat Red Hood One in fighting, and knocked him into a chemical vat. Though Nygma won the fight, he detonated an EMP and left the whole city in the dark.

Commissioner Loeb declared **Batman** a vigilante, while Bruce investigated a series of murders committed by a Waynetech employee. Bruce grudgingly partnered with Jim Gordon, who helped him to discover that the employee was one of Riddler's pawns. Their plan to defeat the pawn and **Riddler**failed, causing Riddler to destroy Bruce's jammer to prevent another EMP attack. This resulted in Riddler having full control and once again shutting off power when it finally came back on.

In the following nights, the Riddler challenged citizens to riddle contests. Riddler always won. Bruce found Riddler at the place where they had first met and managed to take him down after besting him in a battle of wits.

### Cross Worlds

**Batman** and **Superman** met early in their career, where Superman was investigating a series of murders of Wayne Enterprise employees. The whole thing was a ruse of Kaiyo the Trickster's to explain that Darkseid was a large threat and a Crystal Shard, being held by Bruce, was the only thing that could save the world. In the end, Kaiyo revealed that after sending Bruce and Clark to a different Earth, Bruce and Clark's world would be the only one to survive. Kaiyo sent Bruce and Clark back home and wiped their memories.

### The Justice League

While investigating the appearance of Parademons, Bruce met **Green Lantern**, with whom he allied and sought answers from Superman, believing that the Parademons were aliens. When **Superman**mistook them for a threat, Hal was forced to call on**Flash**to come help them until Superman realized they weren't a threat. Joined by **Wonder Woman, Cyborg,**and **Aquaman,**in fighting off the Parademon attack, they won and realized that the person behind it was Darkseid from Apokolips. Batman insisted that the group remain a team for public support.

### Early Adventures

Batman attempted to rid Gotham of the Falcone crime family, and when the leader left, **Penguin**was able to fill the power vacuume. Bane was running Batman rugged, and broke his back. Some time later, Ra's al Ghul attempted to eradicate Gotham's population with a virus.

### The Batman Family

Jim Gordon took the risk of placing the Bat symbol on the roof of the GCPD building. Future members of the Batman Family everywhere looked up and saw it the first night it was lit.

Bruce took in young Dick Grayson after watching his parents get killed by Tony Zucco. Reminded of himself, Bruce watched over him in his manor. Every night, Dick snuck out to hunt down Zucco, but **Batman**  was always there to protect him. When Bruce revealed his secret indentity to Dick, Dick said that he had already deduced his watcher's dual-identity, and took on the identity of **Robin**to fight crime beside him.

Within another year, Barbara Gordon put on a prototype batsuit in order to protect her little brother from a criminal. Her actions caught the attention of the real Batman, aka Bruce. She ingratiated herself with him and became **Batgirl.**After just a year, she quit being Batgirl in order to focus on her studies. However, her fathers' identity still made her a shot and she was eventually shot and paralyzed by the Joker.

Following Barbara's injury, Dick decided to strike out on his own as **Nightwing.**Following that, Bruce found Jason Todd attempting to steal the wheels from the Batmobile and took him in as the new Robin. However, Jason was lured into an alleyway chasing a woman he believed to be his mother. However, it was a scheme by Joker, who ended up killing Todd before Bruce could do anything to save him.

Bruce learned of Tim Drake, a young gymnast who was obsessed with finding out Batman's secret identity. In hopes of garnering Batman's attention, Tim started electronically removing funding from Penguin. This caused Tim's home to be attacked, and his family taken into protection by Batman. Batman begrudgingly allowed Tim to be Robin, but Tim chose to be **Red Robin** due to what happened to Jason.

Having encountered the League of Assasins many years prior, and fallen in love with Ra's al Ghul's daughter, Talia came to Gotham in order to introduce Bruce to their *son*, Damian Wayne. Not long after taking in Damian, Bruce seemingly died, but was actually sent back in time. While Nightwing took on the role of Batman in his stead, with Damian as his Robin.

### The Court of Owls

During Joker's emergence, Joker had killed more than 100 people and was sent to Arkham Asylum. There, he aspired to have Dollmaker remove his face and escape. The blame was cast on Batman, and a group of vigil supporters met up to hope Joker was still alive. Meanwhile, Bruce announced he was publicly funding improvements to Gotham City, and became a target of the Court of Owls. Bruce refused to believe it as he learned to doubt the Owls' existence when he searched for them when he believed they were responsible for his parents' murder, but found nothing. However, his relative had previously been killed by a Talon and beared the same markings as another murder victim of the supposed Court of Owls. Bruce was forced to kill a Talon, who appeared upon him when he went back to the Batcave. Bruce discovered that the Talons were actually undead warriors, this one being a ancestor of Dick Grayson's, who was expected to also become a Talon.

### City of Owls

Angered by **Batman**'s interference, the Court of Owls revived all of their undead assasins from centuries in order to take over full control of Gotham. Hundreds attacked Bruce at his manor, but Bruce learned that you could render their regenerative powers useless at a temperature under sub-zero. Bruce was able to spread this information out to other allies in Gotham who helped him to defeat the undead assasins.

Meanwhile, Talia placed a $500,000,000 bounty on her son in order to distract Batman and Robin from intervening in her criminal events. Ra's al Ghul urged Talia to revoke her war on Gotham, which caused Talia to wrestle control of the League of Assasins from Ra's.

### Death in the Family

After having been in hiding for nearly a year, Joker  resurfaced and killed three GCPD officers to signal to Batman that he was back, as well as to steal his face back from the evidence lockers. Realizing Joker was recreating his past crimes, Bruce went to ACE Chemicals, where he was distracted by Harley Quinn while Joker infiltrated Wayne Manor and kidnapped as well as tortured Alfred.

Joker insisted that he knew Batman's identity, as well as everybody elses. Joker threatened to kill and remove the faces of all of Batman's allies within 72 hours. Bruce insisted that Joker didn't know his identity, despite finding a Joker card in the Batcave. He hid all of his allies in the Batcave. When Bruce chased Joker down after a series of terrible dreams induced by him, Joker jumped into a chasm, not wanting to ruin the suspense by having either his or Batman's identity revealed.

### The Demon Star & Gotham's Most Wanted

**Batman** recruited the remaining Batman, Inc. members to help him take on the world's 30 best assasins, sent by Talia al Ghul. Though victorious, Bruce knew Damian would have to go back to Talia or there would be dire consequences.

Talia hired the Heretic to kill Damian when Bruce didn't hand him over. Damian attempted to fight him off, but the Heretic was much too strong for Damian and the battle ended with Damian dying.

When Batman and Talia faced off, Talia said she would have to choose between killing her and saving his life, or saving his city and losing his life. However, as a distraction, Wingman bidded something Talia wanted while the headmistress of Spyral shot her in the head. Talia's secret to the whole thing was that hshe had actually already poisoned Batman. In the aftermath, the poison did little, and though Bruce was arrested, charges were dropped. The graves of Talia and Damian were later dug up by an unknown.

Damian's death had left Bruce a train wreck. Bruce refused to admit that Damian was gone, and Alfred had to task Red Robin to stop Bruce from reverse-engineering Frankenstein's immortality on Damian. Batman confronted Red Hood on how he had come back to life, which only ended out poorly. After similar encounters with Batgirl, Nightwing, Catwoman, and other allies, Bruce was forced to see that they were right about Damian being gone and that Alfred, too, had been going through terrible pain and been blaming himself for the death.

### Robin Rises

Eventually, Bruce decided to search for Ra's al Ghul and find the corpses of Damian and Talia. He teamed up with **Aquaman**to search the island Damian was raised on, and though they were there, Ra's escaped with their sarcophagi. Damian's sarcophagus was later stolen and taken to Apokolips. Against the rest of the Justice League's advice, Batman went to Apokolips in search of his son.

Darkseid was aroused by Batman's appearance on Apokolips, and challenged him. Though neither won, Batman managed to steal Damian's body and a crystal shard, which he shoved into Damian's chest, reviving him. Batman escaped through Cyborg's boomtube. Batman later discovered that the event had given Damian superpowers.

Batman believed the powers were not permanent, and that Damian received pain, but could not feel it. He took Damian on a bogus Justice League mission, where his powers depleted. The next morning, Damian woke up without his powers.

### Endgame

Batman was attacked by the rest of the Justice League, shortly after recovering from an attack by Scarecrow. Batman realized that the attack was engineered by Joker, who put a strain of Joker Venom in each League member. Batman held his own until Superman came, when he only emerged victorious thanks to Kryptonite gum. Batman travelled to Arkham Asylum for clues, where he discovered that his employee Eric Border had been Joker the whole time in disguise. He promised to release a virus on the city, and to ensure Batman saw it, he poisoned him with a toxic gas.

Batman seeked patient zero in order to stop the virus, only to discover the virus had already started spreading and that patient-zero was Joe Chill, murderer of his parents. In the meantime, Jim Gordon was attacked by Joker. Joker was alive, but infected. Dick Grayson gave Batman a strand of Joker's DNA, only to find it was similar to the Lazarus Pit, but stronger. He realized that Joker could not be killed. Batman had an encounter with Dr. Paul Dekker, who claimed that Joker was an immortal who had actually been alive for centuries before he encountered Batman. He sought answers from the Court of Owls, who confirmed that they had seen a very strong version of the chemical Joker was dipped in by Batman previously before.

Batman returned to the Batcave to find that several trophies had been stolen, and that Alfred had been attacked and gotten his hand chopped. Joker later held a parade using these objects to capture Batman's attention. Batman realized that Joker wasn't immortal, but had a healing pool of the chemical he was dipped in under the city. Batman sent Dick dressed as Batman as a distraction while Bruce collapsed the tunnel that held Joker's healing pool. Joker realized the scheme and fought Bruce until they were both near death. Batman collapsed the tunnels, appearing to have killed Joker as well as himself.

### Superheavy

Bruce's body was found three weeks later, apparently alive thanks to the Dionesium in the cave. Alfred discovered that Bruce essentially had his brain rebuilt with no memories of his past life. A different company had already bought out all of his companies and tasked Jim Gordon as Batman. Bruce encountered Joker at one point, though neither recognized eachother thanks to the amnesia. When put in a life-threatening situation, Bruce recalled his skills and that he was Batman. He bust into his manor and demanded that Alfred take him to the Batcave.

## Power and Abilities

### Abilities

* **Acrobatics**
* **Aviation**
* **Business**
* **Management**
* **Disguise**
* **Driving**
* **Genius**
* **Level**
* **Intellect**
* **Interrogation**
* **Intimidation**
* **Investigation**
* **Martial Arts**
* **Stealth**
* **Tactical Analysis**
* **Throwing**
* **Tracking**

### ​Equipment

* **Batsuit**
* **Utility Belt**

### **​**Transportation

* **Batmobile**
* **Batboat**
* **Batcycle**
* **Batplane**