DEATH OF THE WAYNES

17 YEARS BEFORE BATMAN
age: eight

the two shots that started it all; thomas & martha wayne died september 19th at 10:47 pm in park row, now called crime alley. bruce would be taken care for by alfred pennyworth, the wayne's trusted butler at the time, & leslie thompkins, a close family friend.

PREPARATION

16-1 YEAR BEFORE BATMAN
age: eight to twenty-five

ever since that harrowing night, bruce was dedicated to finding out what makes crime tick in gotham; he would do anything to stop it. he trained his body to near perfection & mastered nearly all of the world's martial arts/combat styles. he studied under many famous detectives & committed to memory the foundations of various sciences & mathematics.

bruce leaves gotham at the age of fourteen to travel across the world for these studies.

THE BIRTH OF THE BAT

YEAR ONE
age: twenty-six

a large bat-like creature appears on the rooftops of gotham city in the early hours of april 6th. bruce wayne had returned to his home city just a month earlier, well before his birthday. the bat's first target are the powerful crime families of gotham. some gothamites call it a demon, the others don't know what to think. either way, the then police commissioner orders new officer jim gordon to bring in the batman, dead or alive.

THE BIRTH OF ROBIN

YEAR THREE
age: twenty-eight

while putting on a show in haly's circus, john & mary grayson fall to their deaths while their son, dick grayson, looks on in horror. in the audience is bruce & the drake family; batman is quickly on the scene to console the boy. it is here that the bat senses a familiar anger in him & dick is brought to the manor as bruce's ward a few days later.when bruce reveals to dick the cave & the cowl he dons at night, the boy agrees to be a part of the crusade. alfred is not happy about this, but bruce doesn't seem to care.

DANCE WITH A DEMON

YEAR SIX
age: thirty-one

after a series of suspicious encounters with talia al ghul & her father, ra's al ghul, dick is suddenly kidnapped. ra's al ghul asks batman for his help in finding his daughter who was also taken hostage by the same person who took dick. bruce is hesitant with his acceptance, but his desperation to save dick takes precedence over his doubts. he rescues both dick & talia, the latter of who intimately embraces him as a means of reward. ra's later reveals that he was the one who took dick & this was all a ploy to test if the batman truly lived up to his reputation & to see if he'd be a suitable husband for talia. at the time, bruce seems to not acknowledge this.months later, an old foe from ra's & talia's past stirs up a storm in gotham. talia leads bruce to her father & he explains that the man who killed his wife is planning his downfall as well. it would be in both of the men's best interest to work together, something that bruce has great difficulty accepting. though, if they are to join forces, ra's asks bruce to follow through with his marriage to talia. he agrees; they are both in love & it was no small secret. it wasn't long before the happy couple reveals that they were expecting. despite this joyous news, al ghul & wayne were still in the midst of a war. in the middle of a battle, bruce almost dies protecting talia & it here that she realizes he has become uncaring of his own life (if it meant saving hers & their unborn child). in an effort to spare him the worry, talia claims that the stress from the violent encounter caused her to miscarry. this is a lie, but bruce does not know this. he is told to leave & he does so quietly; he does not return after he & ra's defeat their common enemy.

NIGHTLY RENDEZVOUS

YEAR TWO
age: twenty-seven

bruce dates & falls in love with julie madison, a smart & caring law student. he even intends to propose after he brings the mafia bosses of gotham to justice, he thinks this will be enough to clean the city of corruption & he can continue his efforts using wayne enterprises. his daydreams are foiled when julie's father dies & she cannot bear to be in gotham any longer. julie breaks up with bruce & he carries on his crusade lonelier than ever.
years later, paparazzi will ask bruce if he is the father of julie's son. he will not answer.the dark knight meets the man of steel, the first hero of their age, during this time. while it may have been a rocky start to their friendship, reluctantly sharing a bed on a yacht due to a booking mishap, their meeting was no doubt a fateful one.a strange man dressed as a clown threatens to poison gotham's water supply. batman is able to stop him & contemplates dropping him in the same water he soiled. he spares the joker's life & hands him over to the GCPD. this begins the clown's obsession with what he considers to be his shadow self.

THE SMART(ER) BAT

YEAR NINE
age: thirty-four

barbara gordon is tired of her mundane life as a college student in gotham. she's inspired by batman's accomplishments & decides to make a suit of her own. it takes bruce a bit of time to warm up to her & take her under his wing, but dick (with his boyish crush) was willing to help from the get-go. soon, batgirl joins batman & robin.

ONE BIRD, TWO BIRDS

YEAR TEN
age: thirty-five

after deciding to find himself an identity outside of batman's shadow, dick leaves bruce at the age of seventeen. there is no more robin, & the manor grows cold.a few months later, on the anniversary of his parents' death, bruce finds a boy trying to steal the batmobile's tires. after a week of watching him fight the obstacles of orphanhood, bruce decides to take him in instead. the boy's name is jason todd & he becomes the second robin.

THE CROWS GATHER

YEAR THIRTEEN
age: thirty-eight

barbara gordon is shot by the joker, who intended to drive jim gordon mad, & batgirl is no longer a part of batman's crusade.soon, jason todd dies before his sixteenth birthday at the hands of the joker. his death was preceded by a series of misunderstandings & red flags, none of which bruce thought was worthy enough of extreme action. batman blames only himself for the death of his beloved son.bruce has a mental breakdown which consists of him going on a rampage through gotham. he becomes more much violent than he needs to be, he's even careless about his own life. he does not acknowledge the name of his son anymore, he does not rest anymore. to an onlooker, it looks like he's chasing death. to tim drake, it looks like it's finally time to confront him. he saw dick's parents die at the age of three & he's already figured out that bruce wayne is batman & dick grayson was robin. he approaches bruce, alfred, & dick & proposes that batman absolutely needs a robin to function. with great reluctance & after tim proves himself, bruce agrees to train tim to be the third robin.

A NEW FACE

YEAR FIFTEEN
age: forty

while bruce has survived his ordeal, he can no longer be batman for a long while. he asks jean-paul valley to take his place & for tim to watch over him. unfortunately, jean-paul has his own definition of what the batman should be; he is far more violent & ruthless than bruce ever was. instead of the right people being afraid of the bat, now everyone was--- both the innocent & guilty alike.with the help of a shondra kinsolving, a brilliant doctor with supernatural powers, bruce recovers form his severe injuries rather quickly. he has a lot of time to contemplate how far he's come & his mistakes; he considers this a perfect time to redo batman. he also thinks about he might have space in life for romance & he shares a few intimate moments with dr. kinsolving. however, when he hears of what jean-paul has done wearing the cowl, he's forced to reclaim the mantle prematurely. he fights his own replacement & takes back the title. he asks dick to be batman while he goes on another break, & this time, he prepares himself & the city for a new, better guardian.

BOW OF THE HEAD

YEAR FOURTEEN
age: thirty-nine

bane has long since convinced himself that he must defeat batman in order to prove to himself that he fears nothing. when he arrives in gotham with his partners, he slowly watches the bruce work while planning his demise.half of bane's work is already done though, bruce is burning out & he's doing so quickly. knowing that batman had all of his rogue gallery in arkham asylum, he helped stage a mass escape. batman continues to be worn thin as he tries to stop all of his former enemies from wrecking havoc on gotham. he's been awake for days now & when he arrives back to his manor, bane is waiting for him. batman does not fight as back as bane brutally beats him in his own home. claiming that death would be too easy of an escape for him, almost like a reward. bane decides to break bruce's back instead so he can leave with his failure. the bat no longer answers to the bat-signal & gotham now has a new king.

BACK IN BLACK

YEAR SIXTEEN
age: forty-one

the original batman is back & better than ever. bruce dons a new suit, new gear, & a new attitude; he's determined to not let the mistakes of the past haunt him any longer. he is far more mentally sound & experienced than he was before.just a couple of months after his return, a virus that has a 100% fatality rate ravages gotham. tim is infected & bruce races against the clock to retrieve a cure. jean-paul, now known as azrael, delivers before batman does & millions are saved--- along with tim.still scorned from bruce's abrupt disappearance years before, ra's al ghul uses a mutated form of the same fatal virus to reinfect gotham. ra's wishes to eradicate 90% of the earth's population so he can rule it, for it's greater good. batman, robin, catwoman, nightwing, oracle, and huntress all work together to retrieve the cure from ra's. they eventually succeed, but not without another staggering number of casualties in gotham. wayne enteprises is on the brink of bankruptcy after utilizing every avenue to relieve gotham's suffering during the two virus waves.the justice league/avengers crossover would happen here, after the viruses but before the next arc.

it seems like batman cannot find a moment to breathe with all that's happened to gotham, but he's no less determined to protect his city. he works towards lowering the rate of petty crime & poverty yet again; all goes well until an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.6 on the richter scale hits gotham. the only buildings left relatively undamaged are the ones built by wayne enterprises, thanks to bruce insisting that their foundations be rebuilt to withstand even the strongest of quakes. sadly, wayne manor did not undergo this upgrade as it would have compromised bruce identity as batman. both alfred & bruce almost die as the manor & cave collapse on them, respectively.all bridges to gotham from the mainland of new jersey have crumbled & all the inmates of arkham asylum escape their cells once again. many of batman's rogues & other groups stake out territories with what's left of the city. due to the massive destruction & previous disasters within the last two years, the U.S. government declares gotham "no man's land." it is no longer a part of the united states & it receives no government assistance.

bruce leaves gotham in the hands of huntress while he attempts to convince congress & other politicians to save the city & its people. he is denied. no one listens to him on the basis of his "playboy" / "airhead" reputation. he is devastated & he wonders if he should return to gotham at all. but he made a promise, & bruce wayne does not break his promises. his decision to return is also thanks to talia who convinces him that he can still be the batman his city needs.after a series of battles & tragedies, gotham's status as "no man's land" will end after the new year comes around. much to bruce's vitriol, lex luthor is the one that made this happen; he has more hold on the government than bruce did, lexcorp has more money to give to the city than wayne enterprises did. however, luthor plans to own gotham in its entirety & has been forging his name on countless deeds. batman pays him a visit & attempts to scare him off-- it does not work. gotham is saved & is in the process of being rebuilt, but bruce & wayne enterprises is in ruins.

RESTORATION

YEAR NINETEEN
age: forty-four

as if rebuilding one of america's oldest cities wasn't hard enough, there's significant social turmoil in gotham. gothamites who stayed throughout no man's land are now targeting those who left & are just now returning. batman's time is split between trying to calm the masses & help lucius rebuild wayne enterprises.with the death of sarah essen, jim gordon's wife, during no man's land, the police commissioner struggles to cope with his loss on top of his new responsibilities. he's been running headfirst into dangerous cases & comes close to death many times himself. unfortunately, he comes closer than ever one night; he's found bleeding out from a bullet wound & the batman family work together yet again to find the culprit.even in admist a time like this, bruce rekindles his affections with vesper fairchild & soon falls in love. his relationship with vesper forces him to realize that he may have lost touch with his own identity; bruce finds himself questioning who the man in the mirror is.with the past administration's failures, lex luthor's presidential campaign after capitalizing on how he "saved" gotham is a success & he is elected the next president of the united states. he appoints talia head (al ghul) as the new CEO of lexcorp before he takes the white house the following year.

THE MASKS SHATTER

YEAR TWENTY
age: forty-five

while he does his best to rebuild, bruce is very outspoken against luthor's involvement of his own company in gotham's reconstruction. as a man with seemingly zero moral limitations when it comes to his own power, luthor devises a plan to bring bruce down--- along with the batman.

CURRENT MAIN VERSE
more information to come.