Some of you probably read the title of this post and thought to yourselves, "
Duh, it's because he saw Joe Chill kill his parents with one!"
Well, you're
wrong. At least, partially long. Because the longer you live, the more you find out about Batman.
Let's head back to the past in downtown
Gotham City, when some mooks are robbing a jewelry store. And there to stop them?
The Shadow!!
Wha...?
Well, that just leads to a hostage situation, just as a certain someone and his father are getting off the elevator:
Then
Thomas Wayne displays the same propensity for
bare-handedly attacking armed thieves that would soon get him killed:
Fortunately,
this time there was a costumed hero to help out:
But poor
Bruce? He was a little bit
traumatized by the gun battle:
And even though the Shadow comforts the boy...
...Bruce's fear of guns is
fully instilled:
So just a few weeks later, Thomas Wayne is less lucky, and the infamous murder merely reinforces that pre-existing fear!!
25 years later,
Batman still doesn't like guns:
But
Stamper has just been released from prison, and he's after the jewels, and revenge against those he blames for his capture. Batman tracks him down...
But being confronted by Stamper and a blasting gun
re-triggers Bruce Wayne's trauma:
Which leaves him helpless:
Fortunately,
someone is watching unseen...
...and that familiar, comforting
(?) laugh restores Batman to his right mind!
Of course, this means that the Shadow must know Batman's identity, right??
And he vanishes, leaving Batman with a case of
unrequited hero worship:
And now you know...
the rest of the story!!Denny O'Neill, Irv Novick & Dick Giordano bring us the real truth about the Caped Crusader in Batman #259 (1974).
3 comments:
I never read that issue, so thanks for the summary of a seminal tale. Really, it's a wonder it isn't referred to every other week.
I must say, the boy genius has good genes, he barely looked a day older.
I wish this were an audio tale, so we could compare the comforting laugh of the Shadow, to the chilling cackle of the Joker.
Man, Gotham City has always been insanely violent. People are robbed at gunpoint a couple of times a month, office building lobbies are routinely scenes of shootouts, and crazed criminals are as recognizable as Derick Jeter. How did the place keep it together long enough for Batman to come of age?
At the time this was new, I took Irv Novick for granted. Now I miss him terribly.
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