Detective Comics Vol 1 #33, November 1939
“Legend: The Batman And How He Came To Be”
At 7:00am on an August morning in New York, 1974, Frenchman Philippe Petit walked a high wire suspended a quarter of a mile in the air, between the twin towers of the World Trade Centre. Petit was an artist and to do this was the pinnacle of his art, but he was dismayed by the public’s response: “’Why? Why’? A very American, finger-snapping question. I do something magnificent and mysterious, this thing, and I got… ‘Why?’” he explains in the 2008 documentary Man On Wire.
But if you do something like that, people are gonna ask why, and the more interesting, severe or outlandish a thing is, the more people are going to need to know. “The beauty of it is, I didn’t have any why,” shrugs Petit, which seems to have frustrated a lot of people.
Of course, in the world of the Batman, the general public are never party to the why; in fact, to explain himself would be quite damaging. The authors Kane, Finger and Fox have been repeatedly referring to him as an “eerie” or “weird” figure, and it’s sometimes easy to forget, while surveying the brightly coloured panels of these 80-year-old comics, that he would be regarded by the populace as a dark force of the night, an almost supernatural presence. Spoiled socialites discussing the freak over a lavish dinner might vacantly ask, “Who is this guy? Why does he have to wear that mask?” but without it, he’s just another one of them, and that will scare neither petty criminal nor supervillain.
For the readership, however, it’s a different story. What’s happening in the pages of Detective Comics every month is generally fairly far-fetched, and pretty soon, without some fleshing out or history, fans are going to get bored and dismissive: Batman’s just ridiculous – are we supposed to believe a man would or could do all that stuff? If, like Petit, Batman didn’t have any why, people would start getting angry and stop reading.
And this is more than just the usual human nature of demanding answers to questions they might not even be all that invested in. An origin story is needed if Batman is to be more than just a flash in the pan. Any character with any longevity will need a bit of substance to them, but somehow, with the Batman, it’s even more important. His lore, background and origin have become integral to the character over the years and I don’t think we’d be here eight decades later reading about him if that hadn’t happened.
So, we come to Detective Comics #33, and the writers have decided it’s about time they explain a few things. We’re seven issues, and therefore seven months, into the Batman’s story, and it’s high time we’re let in on the “why.” But I also feel like it’s not too soon; if we were given this information in an earlier issue, it might have been a bit too hard to care.
So, before the main bat-feature in Detective Comics #33, we are treated to a short section, barely a page and a half, entitled, “Legend: The Batman And How He Came To Be.”
What impressed me about the first telling of the Batman origin story is how little it has changed over the years. Sure, small details have yet to be embellished, but these vary from retelling to retelling anyway. All the things that are agreed upon in every account are already set in stone here.
Now, nobody really needs me to recite the tale – I think even my mum could tell you Bruce Wayne’s parents are dead – but I will go over the details as they’re presented here, to compare them with the story we’re familiar with eighty years on.
The time-frame is given as “fifteen years ago,” putting the events of the flashback in 1924, and Golden Age Batman’s age at around his early to mid-twenties. Bruce is walking home from a movie with his parents, Thomas Wayne and his as yet unnamed wife. More modern versions say the film they’ve just come from is “The Mark of Zorro,” but it’s not mentioned here. The more famous “The Mark of Zorro” film wasn’t released until after the publication of this issue, but there was a silent film of the same name released in 1920, so it’s not inconceivable that that was the film they’d just seen, if reconciling such details is your inclination.
Some grubby little scumbag in a newsboy cap has taken a fancy to Mrs Wayne’s destined-to-be iconic pearls, and demands them with menaces. As per, Thomas Wayne is shot, heroically trying to protect his wife, then she too is shot in a draconian attempt to silence her cries for the police. Young Bruce can do nothing more than look on tearfully. It’s quite a tough and poignant few frames for a kids’ book.
As you might imagine, these events affect young Bruce quite deeply. He vows to avenge his parents’ deaths by declaring war on all criminals. But, unlike most kids who have madcap ideas about what they’re going to be when they grow up, he actually goes through with it, spending the next fifteen or so years honing his skills until he is ready. (In case you are inspired to try something similar yourself, according to the artist at least, the necessary skills required for a one-man crusade against all evil are mixing noxious potions in test tubes and perfecting the one-arm shoulder press.)
The gunman, however, remains unidentified. When this story is next reprised, nine years later in Batman #47, it is revealed that no one was caught or prosecuted for the murder of the Waynes until Batman recognises the killer whilst investigating a different case. But, for now at least, his fate is left unelaborated.
Now we need some sort of gimmick to give Wayne the means to spend fifteen years lifting weights, and then mysteriously disappear every night as soon as it gets dark. Let’s face it, he’s not going to be able to drive around in a flash car, punching thugs in the wee hours if he’s got to be in the factory at seven every morning in order to feed the kids. We’ve already been told he’s a “wealthy socialite,” and while Wayne Enterprises hasn’t been conceived yet, his sponsorship is summed up thusly: “Dad’s estate left me wealthy.” Fair enough.
Wayne is healthy, wealthy and trained. He realises now that he needs a disguise, an alter-ego. We could spend some time discussing why all superheroes seem to have secret second lives, and indeed which half is the man and which is the masquerade, but let’s not forget that this is a trope yet to be fully established at the time of Detective Comics #33. Superman needs a secret identity because he’s an alien, and well, autopsies rarely end well for the recipient, but other pulp characters have donned masks before the advent of the superhero. Whether or not the young Bruce Wayne has grown up reading about The Scarlet Pimpernel, Zorro, or even The Shadow, he recognises the need to remain hidden so that he can operate as a vigilante without catching too much heat from the law.
He also realises that disguised, he can become more than just a man. In Bruce Wayne’s own words: “Criminals are a superstitious, cowardly lot. So my disguise must be able to strike terror into their hearts. I must be a creature of the night, black, terrible…” As his moment of inspiration is beginning to founder, in flies a bat. That is quite fortuitous; he very nearly could have been Ratman. Or The Bluebottle. He could have had the telly on, and at that divine moment caught a glimpse of the Lurpak butter guy, and gone on to spend his evenings painted yellow, tromboning mob bosses.
There seems to be a current obsession with origin stories and it makes me wonder if this comes from that innate desire to always know why, or whether it’s just because there’s a handful of really good ones like this one, that people demand them of everyone now. And it is a good one: unlike any of the Batman stories so far, nothing really needs changing or translating to bring it up to standard. Okay, it is short and there are gaps, but it’s better to leave room for future expansion. It tells us what we need to know and, given the brief, it does an admirable job of being almost believable.
Most of all, we can stop asking, “why?” and get back to enjoying the Batman performing his art.
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