This week we continue the saga of Batman in DC’s Zero Issue month. Today, we’re looking at another title that details the story of The Dark Knight, simply titled Batman: Dark Knight, which gives us a much more interesting look at the incident that transformed young and naïve Bruce Wayne into the cold-hearted and world-weary Batman.
Batman is so well known in the public eye by now that even people who have never set foot in a comic book store or a movie theater can tell you how the Dark Knight came to be.
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However, in several adaptations of Batman, writers and directors often like to play around with and put their own spin on the tale of Batman’s parents getting gunned down before his very eyes.
Particularly, these creative minds like to include the man who killed Batman’s parents, Joe Chill. Little is concrete about this individual character, which allows writers plenty of creative possibilities.
In some versions of his origin, Joe Chill was never caught, in others he was caught right away.
Sometimes, like in Chris Nolan’s Batman trilogy, Chill is just a desperate low life who needed a quick buck. Other times Chill is shown as a washed up crime lord who killed a lot of people in his day.
The most unique depiction came in Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman film, in which Joe Chill was scrapped altogether and replaced with a psychotic murderer named Jack Napier, who years later would fall into a vat of chemicals and emerge as The Joker.
Today’s outing takes a look at the version of Chill as seen in Nolan’s films and plays with Bruce’s own psyche as he tries to make sense of this horrible tragedy. As you’d expect, we start with the part everyone already knows about, but fortunately it’s quickly glanced over so we can get right to the meat of the story.
Young Bruce is distraught, and with good reason; he, being so young, now knows that he will never see his parents again.
He’s trying to make sense of everything, remembering how his father once taught him that everything happens for a reason. But what reason could there be for this? Bruce needs to find out. He returns to the alley and spots a homeless man who witnessed the murder and claims he can identify the man who did the deed.
In exchange for the information, the man demands Bruce’s watch, which once belonged to his father. Naively, Bruce gives up the watch, only to have the man attack him and leave. Bruce is still determined to learn why his parents had to die, and perhaps make the guilty party pay for their crimes.
Despite being a kind philanthropist in life, Bruce’s father still made a great deal of enemies in the corporate world; perhaps it was an assassination, or maybe it was someone looking to take control of his company. However, with all of his leads dried up, Bruce has no choice but to go on with his life.
But even as he graduates high school, he never stops wondering. When Bruce comes of age, he tracks down the homeless man from before. He threatens the man until he gives up the name, Joe Chill. Bruce leaves the man alone, but not before taking back his watch.
Bruce tracks Chill to a run-down old apartment and finds, not some master assassin, but a drunken mess of a man who didn’t even know who Bruce’s parents were until he read the paper the next day. In this moment, Bruce’s solid belief that everything happens for a reason is turned completely around.
His parents were killed for no reason other than some lowlife wanting his mother’s pearl necklace to sell for a bottle of booze. Bruce is so shaken by this that he cannot bring himself to kill this man. In this moment, Bruce Wayne’s childhood has officially ended.
He has now seen the world for what it truly is, and he must find a way to fight the evils of it. This is a heart-wrenching story that keeps the reader’s interest the entire time.
In the back of their minds, I think the reader knows what awaits Bruce at the end of his journey, and you worry about how he will react when he learns the truth.
I have read Batman’s origin story countless times in countless comics, and this was the best one I’ve read thus far. There is one art related moment worth mentioning here. After Bruce leaves Chills’ apartment, he passes a graffiti painting of a clown.
It starts to rain and the paint starts to run, and the painting begins to resemble The Joker. This scene represents Batman’s first brush with the true evils of the world, and this bit of foreshadowing shows that there is far worse yet to come.
Overall:
5/5
Wes Serafine can be contacted at
wserafine@keene-equinox.com