Batman (New 52)

### Affiliation

Batman Family, Justice League, Outsiders · formerly Batman Inc. (disbanded), Justice League International (disbanded), Justice League of America (disbanded), Gotham Knights (disbanded)

### Base of Opperation

Batcave, Wayne Manor, Gotham City, New Jersey

## History

Batman is the superhero protector of Gotham City, a man dressed like a bat who fights against evil and strikes terror into the hearts of criminals everywhere. In his secret identity he is Bruce Wayne, billionaire industrialist and notorious playboy. Although he has no superhuman powers, he is one of the world's smartest men and greatest fighters. His physical prowess and technical ingenuity make him an incredibly dangerous opponent. He is also a founding member of the Justice League.

### Early Life

Bruce Wayne was born to the wealthy doctor Thomas Wayne and his wife Martha, who were themselves members of the prestigious Wayne and Kane families of Gotham City, respectively.When he was very young, Bruce's mother Martha was expecting a second child to be named Thomas Wayne, Jr. However, because of her intent to found a school for the underprivileged in Gotham, she was targeted by the manipulative Court of Owls, who arranged for her to get into a car accident. She and Bruce survived, but the accident forced Martha into premature labour, and the baby was lost.While on vacation to forget about these events, the Wayne Family butler, Jarvis Pennyworth was killed by one of the Court of Owls' Talons. A letter he'd written to his son Alfred, warning him away from the beleaguered Wayne family, was never delivered. As such, Alfred - who had been an actor at the Globe Theatre at the time and a military medic before that, travelled to Gotham City to take up his father's place, serving the Waynes as butler.As he grew older, his family's reputation made Bruce restless, and he began sneaking out of school to visit Gotham City, where he wouldn't be so easily recognized.On one such outing, when he was ten years old, he was picked up by Officer Jim Gordon and his partner on their patrol. En route back to the station, Bruce witnessed Jim accepting a trenchcoat as a bribe from a tailor - though neither realized it was a bribe at the time - but Bruce would remember it as an indicator of Jim's character. After his parents came to retrieve him, the Waynes went to see The Mark of Zorro at the Monarch Theater. After the film, a mugger named Joe Chill attempted to rob them at gunpoint, and panicked, shooting both Thomas and Martha dead.
After their deaths, Bruce became obsessed with the search for meaning in their loss. He thought perhaps the mythical Court of Owls was responsible, but he never found anything to prove it.

### Travels and Training

Fuelled by the loss of his parents, Bruce began training in martial arts and sword-fighting.After he learned the truth about Joe Chill, Bruce began travelling the world, learning the arts of stunt-driving,invention,and intimidation.Near the end of his travels, Bruce went to the Himalayas to train with Shihan Matsuda, who taught him to fight with the katana. He soon struck up a romance with the sword-sharpener's daughter, Mio. Matsuda warned him against creating personal ties with others, and to embrace his darker side. Matsuda's wife, though encouraged it, and because of Bruce's feelings for her, he inadvertently let an assassin into the Matsuda household. In the following course of events, Bruce discovered that Mio had been hired by Matsuda's wife to seduce him and then kill Matsuda. Both women and Matsuda himself were gravely injured, but before he died, Matsuda warned him that death is what would come of fostering close personal relationships. Taking this lesson to heart, and after three long years of absence, Bruce finally returned to Gotham.

### The Zero Year

With only his mission in mind and no care for his legacy as a Wayne, Bruce moved himself out of Wayne Manor and into a brownstone on Park Row from which he based his early attempts to infiltrate the Red Hood Gang after only six weeks back.Despite trying to remain off the grid, Bruce's uncle Philip Kane had kept tabs on him and had also gained control of Wayne Enterprises in Bruce's absence, hiring strategist Edward Nygma, who advised him to have Bruce killed if he wouldn't play ball.Philip outed Bruce's return to the media. When Bruce refused to return to the company while his uncle was selling weapons, Nygma advised Philip to have Bruce killed, and the Red Hood Gang soon attempted just that by blowing up Bruce's brownstone with him inside.Injured, Bruce crawled back to Wayne Manor and, in his father's study, decided to take on the appearance of a bat.Using the fact that he was outed to his advantage, Bruce called a press conference outside the ACE Chemical plant to expose the Red Hood Gang's plans to the media. The gang attempted to disrupt it, and inside the plant, Bruce used a blackout to debut the Batsuit. Through blackmail, Philip was recruited into the Red Hood Gang, and when he failed to kill the Batman, he was shot dead. In fighting with Red Hood One, Batman knocked the man into a vat of chemicals, and he was thought dead. Despite having won that battle, Nygma returned to detonate an EMP blast that left the entire city in the dark.Commissioner Loeb declared the Batman a vigilante criminal as Bruce began investigating a series of murders committed by a disgruntled Waynetech employee, while building a jammer to prevent another EMP attack when power was restored.The ex-employee, Dr. Karl Helfern was challenging enough that Batman allied himself begrudgingly with Jim Gordon, and together they learned that Helfern was the Riddler's pawn.

### Justice Leauge

While investigating the appearance of Parademons, Batman encountered Hal Jordan for the first time, and the two teamed up. Believing them to be aliens, the pair sought Superman for answers,and he attacked them, thinking they were a threat, prompting Lantern to call on Flash for help until Superman was convinced of their good intentions.

### War of Jokes and Riddles

Not long after the Zero Year, Batman had his first confrontation with the resurfaced Red Hood One, now going by the name "the Joker". The clown had attempted to poison the Gotham Reservoir, only to be stopped by the Bat.Having created a prototypical version of it during the Zero Year, Jim Gordon took the risk of placing a Bat-Signal on the roof of the GCPD precinct.Batman for awhile worked closely with Jim Gordon and Harvey Dent in a war on organized crime until Dent was scarred with acid by the criminal Erin McKillen.pproximately a year after Zero Year, the Riddler broke out of prison and spurred a war between himself and the Joker, who had lost the ability to laugh, in what would be called "the War of Jokes and Riddles".With each side recruiting all the villains they could to fight for them, the city was turned into a war zone for weeks, forcing Batman to choose a side to work with in order for the casualties to stop. Batman begrudgingly chose the Riddler and meticulously took out all of Joker's forces until only the clown was left. When Batman predictably betrayed the Riddler, Nygma surrendered and revealed that he orchestrated the entire war in an attempt to solve the riddle of how to make the Joker laugh again. Furious Riddler caused the deaths of so many innocent people for something so trivial, Batman lost control and attempted to stab Nygma in the face with a kitchen knife, only to be stopped by the Joker himself - this event becoming one of Batman's greatest failures.Around this time, Bruce took in young Dick Grayson after his parents were murdered by Tony Zucco. Without knowing Bruce's secret, Dick would sneak out at night, hunting Zucco, and the Batman would be there to protect him every time. Eventually, he allowed Dick to see the Batcave, and Dick revealed that he'd already deduced his warden's dual identity. With the common goal of justice, the pair began fighting crime as Batman and Robin.

### Court of the Owls

While Bruce Wayne revealed plans to revolutionize the city of Gotham, the GCPD uncovered a body with ties to the legend of the Court of Owls and a warning of an attempt against Bruce's life.atman believed the Court of Owls were just a legend, but after taking a meeting with an interested business partner in Lincoln March, Bruce was nearly killed by an assassin dressed like an owl in Wayne Tower.While investigating the assassination attempt, Batman became trapped in an underground labyrinth where the very much real Court of Owls held him for eight days and attempted to drive him insane. Despite this, he managed to break his way into an underground portion of the Gotham River and was found and revived from cardiac arrest by Harper Row.Urged on by Batman's interference, the Court of Owls elected to resurrect all of their undead Talons from over a century of assassinations, in order to kill off several prominent Gothamites and regain full control of Gotham City.A swarm of assassins attacked Bruce Wayne at his home, but he was able to fend them off using an emergency robot-suit in the Batcave.