Batman’s childhood days are seldom seen, but Batman: the Knight portrays formative moments that would later prove integral to the character’s core.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Batman: The Knight #1, available now.
There is so much to Batman’s story that is crystallized in the pop culture psyche. As a result, fans seldom think about what takes place between the iconic moments of his origin story. Most are familiar with his wealthy upbringing, the traumatic death of his parents, and his subsequent return to Gotham after honing himself body and mind to the task of becoming Batman. What fewer fans think about are the days before Batman became Batman, which is the central focus of the new comic Batman: The Knight. Focused on Bruce Wayne’s childhood following the trauma of his origin, one of the first issue’s most inspired moments comes in showing how Batman was really born on the schoolyard.
The comic picks up on Bruce Wayne’s formative years, showing the early stages of the orphan processing his grief, his urge for vengeance against those like his parents’ murderer, and the lessons he learns that will eventually lead to his adopting the mantle of Batman. As told by Chip Zdarsky, Carmine Di Giandomenico, Ivan Plascencia, and Pat Brosseau, even the more relatable moments of the young Bruce’s life become imbued with significance as readers see the events that would shape the hero he would become.
Perhaps one of the most rife with significance is an early schoolyard fight where Bruce intervenes between Mitch, a bully at Gotham Academy, and a fellow student. When the fight gets broken up, Alfred expresses disappointment. Demanding Bruce hone his mind rather than his fighting skills, he starts Bruce on a path of self-study and academia that by the time he is 17 shapes him into a genius autodidact. But it turns out that the studies did not distract Bruce from his thirst for justice. In conversation with a classmate, the reader learns that Bruce eventually exorcised the bully Mitch from Gotham Academy through a campaign of psychological warfare.
Rather than directly fighting the bully, Bruce apparently dealt with Mitch in secret. One day Mitch found himself locked in a boiler room, while the next he discovered that the towel he used for gym class was treated with ground up poison ivy. Mitch is seen briefly, leaving school and crying as his parents come to collect him. The issue’s contextual backstory proves particularly powerful because of how much of the future Batman’s identity is already apparent from an young age.
Famous depictions of Batman’s early days as a crime fighter, such as Batman: Year One and Batman Begins, show how part of what distinguishes Batman from most superheroes is that he absorbs and embodies the darkest parts of his enemies in order to better fight them. He learns the value of fear and superstition in intimidating his opponents, and studies with criminals and assassins in order to best understand their methods. He may draw the line at killing, but psychologically traumatizing or even physically maiming criminals problematizes his position as a moral paragon. If those methods are justifiable given the degree of his victim’s crimes, then do they remain justifiable even when his victim is a schoolyard bully?
In a sense, the young Bruce’s torment of Mitch made him arguably as bad or worse than Mitch himself. Alfred’s attempts to point him toward academics were meant to distract him from that fate but ultimately resulted in empowering him to be even more effective, methodical, and brutal in the application of justice.
The schoolyard fight may not make for as iconic an origin point to Batman’s story as the alleyway murder of his parents or the glass-shattering entrance of a bat flying into his study. But Bruce’s battle with Mitch has all the hallmarks for the man Batman would become, and all of the moral questions his fans would debate across the decades that unfold.
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