Bruce Wayne was the millionaire son of Thomas and Martha Wayne, who used their wealth for charitable purposes such as opening up free family planning clinics throughout the country.
History[]
Flying Fox
In 1920, while the Waynes were on their way to dedicate such a clinic in the county seat of the Smallville area, Bruce was kidnapped by the Ultra-Humanite and held for ransom. Managing to free himself from his bonds, Bruce disguised himself as the hero called the Flying Fox and helped the young Superboy take down the Ultra-Humanite and his thugs before he was safely reunited with his parents.
At the age of ten, Bruce saw his parents brutally gunned down as they were walking home from a Douglas Fairbanks movie. From that point on, Bruce dedicated his life to protecting people from criminals and bringing the guilty to justice. To that end, he trained his body to physical perfection and trained his mind in the areas of criminal science. He inherited his father's fortune and doubled its value, using the wealth to create charities to fight poverty and ignorance in Gotham City. He also became the owner of the Gotham Gazette, with which he hopes to "build an impenetrable shield around the good people of the city" such as through sponsoring essay contests, one of which were won by Clark Kent and Lois Lane whom he met at a journalist junket in 1929.
Robin
When Lex Luthor attacked Gotham City using a robot and captured Lois Lane with it, Bruce Wayne decided to make his debut as a superhero, wearing a colorful costume and giving Superboy a hand in defeating Luthor and his robot. Lois referred to Bruce's costumed identity as "Robin Red-Breast", which he accepted as a suitable name by shortening it to Robin. After Lois was freed from the claw, she joined Superboy and Robin in investigating where the robot came from, and they tracked it to the lab of Dr. Erwin Stanislaus, who turned out to be Luthor in disguise. He tried to take off with Lois again with a portable helipack, this time holding Superboy at bay with a piece of Kryptonite until it was knocked out of his hand by a curved piece of metal thrown at him by Robin. Superboy cut off Luthor's escape and turned him over to the authorities before he and Robin departed.
In 1939 Bruce Wayne showed up at the Metropolis World's Fair with his girlfriend at the time Julie Madison, when the Electrox robot went berserk and almost killed Julie. That was where he first met Superman, as he stopped the rampaging robot by crushing him into a metal ball and throwing him into the river. Later on at the Electrox display building, Lois Lane was investigating the Electrox robot case with Clark Kent when they came across Batman at the display building. He took the piece of evidence Lois had found while Clark made it look like Batman had knocked him down, though he was impervious to the blow itself. Bruce went back into the display building the day after, looking for more evidence when Lois was abducted by the Ultra-Humanite's henchmen. He tried to fight them off, but was soon knocked unconscious and dragged outside by the henchmen. A young circus acrobat named Dick Grayson rescued Bruce Wayne, who later thanked the boy, saying he'll never forget him.
Later on, as Batman, he took one of the Ultra-Humanite's henchmen and threatened him to tell where his hideout is by making the man fall off the side of the Hyperglobe, who was immediately rescued by Superman only to discover Batman was interrogating him. From the henchman, Batman and Superman discovered the hideout was right inside the Hyperglobe and soon came to Lois' rescue while stopping the Ultra-Humanite from escaping.
Bruce eventually adopted Dick Grayson as his legal ward and trained him to be his crimefighting partner Robin. The circumstances by which Bruce adopted Dick are not explicitly stated. But, it can be assumed that they are the same as the mainstream comics counterpart. Alfred made a comment that Dick helped "damp down his demons". In 1949, Dick Grayson was ready to go off to college to study law and retire his Robin identity when he and Bruce were called to the case of the Joker stealing a sample of Gold Kryptonite and using it to expose Superman to its radiation to make him lose his powers while he and Lex Luthor held Superman's wife Lois Lane (pregnant with Joel Perry Kent at the time) hostage. Bruce went in first disguised as Superman to distract the two villains, but was nearly shot to death had it not been for Superman being able to disintegrate the bullet with his heat vision while Bruce played dead. Robin went in afterward disguised as Superman to further distract the villains long enough for Superman to melt the box containing the Gold Kryptonite with his heat vision. Batman revived and got the drop on the Joker before he and Robin got Superman and his wife out of Luthor's hideout prior to its destruction. However, Superman discovered that his unborn son had been prenatally exposed to Gold Kryptonite, causing him to be born a normal human, so he and Lois vowed that they would never reveal to him that Superman was his father.
After Dick went off to college, Bruce Wayne married and fathered a son named Bruce Wayne Jr., who idolized both his father and Dick Grayson in their costumed identities to the point where he wore his uncle Dick's Robin costume at age nine while training himself in the Batcave. His mother, however, told Bruce Jr. that she didn't want him to become Robin until he was at least eighteen. Nevertheless, Bruce himself continued to work as Batman until the 1960s, when he passed the mantle onto his former partner Dick Grayson, serving in the role of a mentor to both Dick and Bruce Jr., who became Dick's partner Robin against his mother's wishes. In 1967, Bruce's butler Alfred passed away, and in 1969, Bruce Jr. decided he was going to end his partnership as Robin and become an enlisted soldier fighting in the Vietnam War. Before doing so, Bruce Jr. and Dick with the help of Bruce solved the case of the "Joker Junior" who turned out to be the original Joker disguising himself as his successor, though it resulted in Dick's death. Realizing that Bruce Jr. couldn't go off to fight the Vietnam War and be Batman at the same time, Bruce used his influence to keep his son out of the war.
In 1979, Bruce went climbing in the Himalayan Mountains to find the hideout of his mysterious nemesis Ra's al Ghul when he collapsed at its entrance, only to be taken inside by his goons and awakened with his hands tied behind his back. Ra's told Bruce that he considered his adversary to be a worthy heir as being the "Head of the Demon" and took him to the room where inside was the Lazarus Pit, which kept Ra's alive for years but at the price of suffering madness, to make a proposal: they will both go into the Pit together, which will result in one of them perishing and the other becoming immortal. Since Ra's cannot guarantee which one of them will survive, he offers it as a chance for Bruce to defeat his adversary. Seeing that the only alternative was to be killed by Ra's' henchmen or his daughter Talia, Bruce accepted the challenge and entered the Pit with Ra's, physically preventing his adversary from escaping. Soon both men disappear as they are immersed in the Pit's fluids. After several long moments, Talia raised the platform and found that only one body remained. It is that of Bruce Wayne, who was now made young again at his prime.
Between then and 1999, Bruce took over as the Demon's Head, manipulating Ra's' secret underground empire so that in time it was shipping food and medications to needy countries instead of drugs. His son Bruce Jr. as Batman found Bruce in Ra's hideout, though at first he assumed it was Ra's he found because Bruce was wearing the mask of the Demon's Head. He removed his mask to reveal himself as Bruce and then showed his son how he changed Ra's' empire into a totally humanitarian organization and then passed all control over it to Bruce Jr. for the simple desire of becoming Batman again.
As he was patrolling the streets of Gotham City as Batman, enjoying the sensation of his now-youthful adult body being pushed to the limits as he takes down a low-life criminal with ease, he goes over to Bruce Jr.'s penthouse apartment and freed Superman from his ten-year sentence in the Phantom Zone, giving him some time off for "good behavior". With the assistance of Kal-El's grandson Clark Wayne, who now adopted the identity of Knight-Wing, and Kyle Rayner, Alan Scott's successor as Green Lantern, Bruce took Superman to the Ultra-Humanite's metallic fortress to help him find the cure the villain had created for restoring Kryptonian powers lost to Gold Kryptonite exposure. Upon finding the cure, Superman's powers returned, enabling him to recreate the same formula so that his grandson can also have the same powers, though on a lesser scale. Bruce and Clark Wayne watched on a rooftop as Kal-El departed into the unknown reaches of space, realizing that there are countless worlds that will need his help.
In 2019, Bruce Wayne received a message from Kal-El's foster father Jonathan Kent through the Kryptonian artifact called the Chronoscope, revealing to Bruce that his parents, even though they were warned about their impending death in 1920, chose not to avert their fate but instead to accept it for the sake of their son becoming Batman. Though at first Bruce found that revelation hard to accept, he came to realize that his parents' sacrifice brought about a greater good by his becoming Batman, touching the lives of Dick, Barbara, Bruce Jr., Clark, and countless others.
In 2919, Bruce Wayne met with a now elderly yet still vital Superman in regards of what they hope to do now that they made most of the known universe peaceful. During this meeting, Bruce met Superman's second wife Lana Lang, who through her sorceries also made herself immortal.
Powers and Abilities[]
- Immortality: Gained immortality from the Lazarus Pit by a fusion of his soul with Ra's al Ghul's; restored to the prime of life in 1979 at over sixty years old, by 2919, he had determined that he was physically only aging a year for every century.
- Hand-to-Hand Combat (Advanced)
- Martial Arts
- Acrobatics
Paraphernalia[]
Equipment[]
- Utility Belt with Grappling Hooks
- Batarangs