Bruce Wayne
Dick Grayson
Jason Todd
Tim Drake
Barbara Gordon
Damian Wayne
Cassandra Cain
Helena Bertenelli
Stephanie Brown
Kathy Kane
Selena Kyle
Alfred
Jean-Paul Valley
Michael Washington Lane
Names you might know, some better than others. All are members of what is often called “The Bat-Family”, which we here today will disassemble and scatter across God’s creation in order to flower the soils of Earth. It is my position that DC Comics thinks, and perhaps thinks rightly, that in order to create characters freshly they must be introduced in titles that people are actually buying and reading so they have a chance at not being stillborn as titles. It is my opinion that there are many many characters I would consider parallel to Batman insofar as their subject matter, aesthetics, and narratives are concerned, and that we can competently and justly distribute almost ALL of Batman’s fantastically bloated supporting cast out to these people and create stories and characters worth reading and thinking about. Batman is a fantastic funnel with which to guide the gelatinous fluid of the modern reader into characters and stories that are interesting and share dramatic circumstance and appeal with Batman, but are traditionally subsumed by Batman titles by sheer weight of published material and reader familiarity.
It must first go without saying I am not a “Bat-Family” guy, I think it violates fundamental parts of Batman which when we compromise we accept losing parts of a great character who deserves no such dilutions when we say that The Batman is capable of cultivating something that we could recognize as a family. The Batman is a fundamentally lonely character, I am all for him having relationships with women like Catwoman and friends like Superman but ultimately they should serve the purpose of showing that Batman simply wants one thing in all the world, which is to avenge the death of his parents, which is impossible. Other people can see this, maybe not at first but after they get to know him and truly understand him they move away from him which drives him farther into his social withdrawal. Batman must ultimately die in battle, not alone, but never truly having shared his life with someone romantically or platonically in the way that would satisfy him more than being The Batman. This is the great tragedy of Alfred, who dedicates his life to Bruce knowing that he is an entirely unique and capable man worthy of a life that was not the tragedy that it is. Alfred admires his will, his drive to succeed at a clearly impossible task, and the compassion of a man who has chosen to mete out brutal justice to wrongdoers in pursuit of the reality that no 8 year old could have their life shattered and forever changed by the act of a carelessly evil man. We must acknowledge that Batman is a psycho of some sort, but not a bad guy. If you have ever met a truly mentally ill person in real life they can be moral, likeable and personable and have hobbies and interests and a job but there are things that you fundamentally cannot connect with them on and these things are often the things they care about the most, and these things start to consume their lives and their time and it becomes impossible to maintain a relationship with them. We can do Batman no more justice than understanding this is the sort of person he is. Not a bad guy, but really genuinely crazy.
First we will address characters that we will NOT be buying a one way ticket out of Gotham. The first is Bruce Wayne. Bruce Wayne is Batman, and shall remain so until Damian Wayne takes up the cape, cowl, and scowl. The second therefore is Damian, who is my one true inheritor to the cowl, the third is Alfred, the fourth and fifth are Jean-Paul Valley and Michael Washington Lane. These characters we will keep in Gotham, but I make no promise that I will not be modifying or adjusting them in some aspect. Thus commenced, lets start our treatment for Gotham’s gout.
Dick Grayson we are not really fundamentally changing as a character other than to say that we are saying that for certain the conflict that drives him and Bruce apart is that Dick realizes that he does not want to be Batman and does not agree with Bruce’s insane schedule, moral approach, or treatment of his allies.
Jason Todd will get his time as Robin. Jason is a hot head, he is never really on program as Robin, always taking risks and getting into spots that Batman explicitly instructs him against, and this is ultimately something that gets him killed by… Bane. Yes, Bane. Bane will set the stage for his appearance as Batman’s… Bane… with the introduction of finding Jason’s mother, abducting her, and killing Jason and her. Leaving them for Batman to find and kick off our very modified version of Knightfall. Jason Todd it must be said will STAY DEAD. There will be no resurrection via magic, Crisis, or Lazarus pit. Jason Todd is dead and it IS Batman’s fault for letting Jason run amok as Robin. Too afraid to correct him and lose him in the spot of the one person (Dick Grayson) in his life that seemed to want to actually be a fellow traveler on his lonely road, he is uniquely ignorant and tolerant of Jason’s antics and attitudes as Robin. Then he dies. Because Batman didn’t drill him enough, didn’t make sure he knew that before everything else, including your own mother- the Mission comes first.
Tim Drake, he is who is perhaps most literally molested by the continuous kerfuffeling of DC editorial, will get what I consider to be Justice. Tim, after the death of Jason Todd, takes up the Robin mantle after sleuthing out the identity of Batman, Huntress, and Oracle and presenting himself at stately Wayne manor. His tenure as Robin is relatively short, but it reinvigorates in Bruce the feeling that he is not alone in the world. These two get some real detective work done. Calendar Man, the Riddler, numerous other villains come and are defeated by this Batman and Robin duo, but Tim ultimately comes to the same conclusion that Dick Grayson did, that Batman- that Bruce is really going to die in that suit, and that fundamentally he is unwell. Tim is also one of the older Robin’s even from the outset, 16 at the time he picks up the domino mask, and upon a chance meeting between the Dynamic Duo and The Blue Beetle, strikes up a good conversation and friendly accord with the Blue Beetle. Tim spends weekends and sometimes more helping Blue Beetle solve his own cases, and meets the eponymous Booster Gold. It comes to be that Tim and Bruce have a frank conversation wherein both come to the conclusion that although there is no bad blood between them, Tim has to go his own way as a man, and goes into the job that has been waiting for him at Kord Industries, where he will apprentice to the Blue Beetle and eventually take up the mantle after Ted’s RETIREMENT as he is NOT shot in the head by his good friend and benefactor Max Lord.
Barbara Gordon, who I am a big fan of, has a role to play in the mix of all these things. Barbara does her initial stint as Batgirl, but does it entirely on her own, inspired by Batman to take down enemies of her father within the GCPD who are working to get him fired or killed that he can do nothing (legal) about. This almost ends disastrously for her, being injured badly in the traditional way we are familiar with (Yes, by the Joker who is revealed to be behind the plot to kill Commissioner Gordon, but only after coercing him into a divorce which does end up happening regardless of Batgirl foiling the assassination plot). Barbara is then recruited by a freshly independent Dick Grayson as Nightwing to be his helping hand in the world of technology and media. She moves to Bludhaven with him and the two set up shop as their own Dynamic Duo, Oracle and Nightwing. Perhaps more on this when I post a full write up on the life and times of the guy who gets more tail than a dog park.
Damian as we discussed will become Batman, he will do so on his 18th birthday when Bruce goes down as all good gunfighters do in a blaze of glory against his old enemy Two Face, and his good friend Harvey Dent. Damian is much like Bruce, but altogether a different Batman. I will leave this cryptic for the time being. Again, more to come in future writings.
Cassandra Cain I feel is a character who was mutated and mutilated from the outset because of the circumstance of the time she was born in. Cassandra Cain for us is still the daughter of David Cain the elite assassin and Lady Shiva, uncontestably the greatest female martial artist in the world. What is different starts deep. In Dennis O’Neill’s run on The Question, Lady Shiva stays behind in the madness of a collapsing Hub City in order to find some peace in the chaos. It is in this Chaos that she meets David Cain, a sociopath assassin taking advantage of the bedlam to hone his skills as a killer. The two find each other as though drawn by magnets and duke it out- Shiva easily defeats him but comments that he lasted far longer than most would. The two step aside into a Hub City motel as the city burns, and conceive Cassandra. They will have little to no contact after this for many years. The Question, Vic Sage for those unawares, returns to Hub City after a few short years abroad in South America and sees that although it has burned to the ground and been rebuilt, Hub is just as nasty as it ever was. Corruption, poverty, moral decay and decided ignorance drown the populace in a pornographic news cycle of violence and indolent high minded scholarship on how well the city has recovered since the great fire. Vic Sage returns to the news as a beat reporter, exposing the rotting underbelly of the city and The Question returns as the faceless detective and martial arts savant. Several years of this pass- a relationship with the Huntress of Gotham comes and goes, brief exposure to Green Arrow and Blue Beetle and Batman socialize the Question somewhat to the greater crime fighting sphere and he even meets Robin (Tim Drake at the time). It is at this critical point that Lady Shiva returns to Vic’s life to inform him that his mentor Richard Dragon is dying in the Nanda Parbat because of the malfeasant works of Ras Al Ghul who seeks to appoint his own champion as the greatest martial artist alive. Vic goes to the Nanda Parbat with Lady Shiva and sees Dragon dying. Together, the three of them defeat the threat of the League of Assassins and at the end it is revealed to Vic that Shiva has a child, Cassandra. Shiva had heard that Vic was back as the Question, and thought that he might not be as strong morally or physically as he once had been, but she understands now after this long test that he is as righteous and strong as ever. She pushes Cassandra into Vic’s arms, who initially protests, there’s no way he could raise a child, but a still dying, now more quickly fading Richard Dragon informs Vic that it is his wish that this child is not raised in the ruins of the Nanda Parbat and the shadow of the League of Assassins. Vic takes Cassandra, and returns to Hub City. Cassandra quickly proves herself Vic’s equal in martial arts even at the tender age of 10, and he can do little but allow her to come onto the scene as Orphan. Her father, David Cain, and his return as a leader of a cohort of League of Assassins splinter factions to Hub City is the main antagonist to her and the Question.
Helena Bertenelli is quite frankly a character I could almost do without. I am a fan of keeping Earth 1 and Earth 2 separate for the most part, and I enjoy Helena Wayne as the Huntress. However, I am a big Birds of Prey believer and I watched too much JLU as a kid to really discount her. Helena Bertenelli much in the traditional style, becomes the Huntress after swearing revenge on the mobsters who killed her family in a mafia-conflict. As the Huntress she is barely able to restrain her desire to kill criminals, something that Batman absolutely cannot abide. Huntress would find some comfort with Oracle who invites her to join her and Nightwing in Bludhaven, where she undergoes a course correction under Nightwing’s influence. Like all the members of the Birds of Prey, she will shift her place of operations to Hub City after Bludhaven is devastated by a nuclear explosion that claims the life of Nightwing.
I am not a huge Stephanie Brown enjoyer, however, I think that with the lucrative reinvention (Thank you Based Chuck Dixon) of Tim Drake as the Blue Beetle 2, we have fertile ground for The Spoiler to have a life outside of Batgirl. Cluemaster, ever the clever criminal, transitions his operations from Gotham to Ivy Town, where The Blue Beetle calls home after his first defeat at the hands of Batman (and his daughter) his daughter follows him to Ivy Town where The Spoiler assists Blue Beetle (At the moment actually Tim Drake subbing in for Ted as Ted is at an event for Kord Industries) in stopping him. The two get along famously, and start a romance. Spoiler and Cardinal (work in progress hero name for Tim in his interim, I hate Red Robin with all my heart) start taking on villains on their own in the area around Ivy Town until Tim takes on the Blue Beetle title, at which point the two are married happily, and live thereafter in eachothers crimefighting company.
Kathy Kane and not Kate Kane, I am not a Kate Kane enjoyer I don’t think there is alot of value added with that character, I know it was a big gay thing I’m really just not into it- as I think is clear by now I think there are too many Cowboys and not enough Indians in Gotham. I am also not a Renee Montoya enjoyer as a Question fan. I think Montoya should have stayed a GCPD cop, to me it would be far more interesting to see her perspective than to have her try to supplant a character she has a completely invented connection to. Kathy Kane to me is most interesting as Bruce Wayne’s spy aunt. We don’t have to do the whole thing where they have a romance on the backdrop of their dubious familial relations, but her as a spy has legs to me. I would not ever actually make her Batwoman. She has legs to stand on as a spy, someone that is related to Bruce Wayne and happens to more or less be in the family business and could be connected to organizations like Spyral (I am not a Grayson 2016 enjoyer), Argus, Checkmate, Cadmus, the Suicide Squad or whatever parallel government agency elements you might dream of.
The Catwoman should be the eternal push-pull of romance in Batman’s life. Perhaps the only person who is consistently willing to meet him on his terms as Batman, and connects to him as Batman before him as Bruce Wayne. The two can never be together because Bruce as we have discussed is fundamentally a nutcase who must see crime punished, and Selena sees her lifestyle as an attractive sideshow which provides her with the means to live comfortably, and has no long term interest in being a superhero, or the type of violence and suffering that entails. This is ultimately a loss for both of them. I think Selena can do some time on the Birds of Prey to test the waters with the whole hero thing before deciding ultimately it isn’t for her- sadly she is struck down by Bronze Tiger on her last mission with the Birds of Prey. The life of superheroes is too often a certain ordeal of beating bad guys and certainly doomed odds, too little are we exposed to the beautiful and fragile being broken by forces they should never have confronted in ways they were not accustomed to.
Alfred I do not intend to touch too much. I, like I think all Batman fans am an Alfred-enjoyer. I like him being ex-SAS and hired by the Wayne’s as a bodyman and butler second, and he blames himself at some level for the thing that is Batman. He sticks by Bruce stolidly for his entire life, dying years before Bruce does, in Damian’s first year as Robin. This is the first death that Damian sees he feels is truly undeserved, as Alfred dies of old age and illness despite the best care available to man, Damian comes to understand that Death is a thing that only takes, and to dish it out is to take and take from a world that does not have enough men like Alfred in it already.
Michael Washington Lane and Jean Paul Valley are together a character I very much love called Azrael. They are different Azraels, and though I like some of the Michael Washington Lane stuff, I really am going to only use Jean Paul Valley as Azrael, with Michael Washington Lane’s version of the suit of sorrows. Azrael was for a long time really a core cast member in Gotham, and we will keep him there in perpetuity, all the way to Damian becoming Batman in fact. JP Valley will be a key consultant to Damian and one of very few people Damian respects as combatants, men, and crimefighters. Valley is still the part monkey test tube baby brain washed by a hypersecretive Catholic sect we know and love. His successor, a Checkmate agent who will be called to God’s service through his interactions with Damian Wayne as Batman, will be the second Azrael of Gotham and a partner to Damian Wayne as Batman.
This has been a fun exercise in headcanon writing, I love Batman and Gotham and many of these characters and flexing this particular muscle is lots of fun for me. If there are things that are unclear or characters and events you cannot clearly understand by using Grok, feel free to ask and I will expound at length about my thought process and any other snippets of information I may have left out.