Saturday, August 08, 2009

One Little Mugger

Bruce Wayne's origin as Batman. The mugger shooting both his parents. When i asked a couple of months ago, Diamondrock told me that as of Infinite Crisis, Batman knew the mugger was Joe Chill, but he wasn't aware what Chill's specific fate was. And of course since then we've had 52 and Final Crisis, and who knows what those have done.

Here's my question for you: Which version do you prefer? Do you prefer Batman never knew the name of his paretns killer, or that he knew but could never catch him, or that he caught him and brought him to justice, or the Untold Legend version where he reveals to Chill that he's Bruce Wayne, thus Chill created Batman, Chill freaks and runs to other criminals for protection, and they shoot him for creating Batman (before thinking to ask who Batman is, whoops).

When Batman's being written as a jerk, and I find myself disliking him, I prefer that he knows it was Joe Chill, but he could never find him, because Nigh-Omnipotent Bat-Jerk annoys me, and I enjoy it when things don't go well for him. When I'm feeling more charitable, I like the idea that he never learned the killer's identity because he was some random thug, and by the time Bruce was ready to be Batman, there were lots of crimes happening right then to deal with, and now time to focus all his energies on solving a case from (fifteen? twenty?) years earlier. Ultimately, the death of his parents can't be anymore important to him than any other person's death, so he has to operate in the now.

1 comment:

Matthew said...

I think I prefer it when Bruce does not find out the mugger's identity; that way the mugger becomes a stand-in for Crime itself, in all its forms and for all its adherents.