Today, we learn how Martha Wayne’s investigation into an international child sex ring might have led to her and Thomas Wayne’s murder.
In every installment of “If I Pass This Way Again,” we look at comic book plot points that were rarely (sometimes NEVER!) mentioned again after they were first introduced.
Recently, I did a piece on how the reasons for the murders of Thomas and Martha Wayne had changed over the years in the official DC Universe continuity. My friend, Loren Collins, noted to me that there was another comic book that came out with its own distinct reason for their murders and it was actually a piece I had meant to write a while ago, when the writer who inspired the comic, Andrew Vachss, passed away back in November (I really should have done an obituary for Vachss at CBR, honestly).
So let’s take a look at the revelations made in Vachss work, while first discussing a little bit about the idea of continuity itself.
WHEN IS A COMIC BOOK “IN” CONTINUITY?
Yesterday, I wrote about a fascinating post by Tom King on his Substack about where DC’s Black Label books exist within DC continuity. King noted that most of his work he views as being sort of “next” to DC continuity, in the sense that he is not saying that it is or is not part of DC Universe continuity, but he will let that be decided by other DC writers in the future if they choose to adapt his stories or not. King referenced The Killing Joke as an example of this, as a story that COULD have been ignored, continuity-wise, but that other DC writers decided to write into the DC Universe “officially.” In the case of The Killing Joke, though, the comic was intended to be part of continuity when it was published, as I detailed in an old Comic Book Legends Revealed, but the basic point certainly holds true, which is that it is essentially like the whole “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Similarly, if a comic book makes a major change and everyone ignores it, did it actually make a major change? That is sort of the whole point of this feature, really, me spotlighting examples of comic book plots that were introduced and then quickly ignored by everyone else. Like, for instance, the most recent entry in this column, where I wrote about Supergirl apparently being married before she died in Crisis on Infinite Earths, but no one has referenced that marriage ever again, so it’s like it never happened. So that is sort of what King is alluding to in his essay, that, say, his Strange Adventures comic book (with Mitch Gerads and Doc Shaner). If no one ever references it in a DC Universe comic, then I guess that means that Strange Adventures was set outside of continuity. If people DO reference it, then I guess it WAS set in the DC Universe.
that is the same world that Batman: The Ultimate Evil lived in.
HOW DID BATMAN: THE ULTIMATE EVIL CHANGE BATMAN’S HISTORY?
Andrew Vachss was a lifelong advocate for children who used the money that he made from his hit novels to fund even MORE protection for children. In a 1996 interview with The Onion, Vachss explained why he worked his stories of child trafficking into his fiction and what the deal was with his 1995 novel starring Batman, The Ultimate Evil:
O: What made you decide to channel your work into fiction?
AV: My first book was a textbook about juvenile violence. And it got wonderful reviews and lousy sales, and I realized there isn’t much point in writing for “the [legal] profession,” because I wasn’t reaching that giant jury, you know, the jury much bigger than I’d ever find at the courthouse. So I switched to fiction, with the idea that as you digest the entertainment, you get the rest of it as well. It was an ambitious idea, and it succeeded far more than I’d ever imagined. But that was the idea from the beginning.
O: And you use the money from your novels to help fund your law firm, right?
AV: Well, my clients are all children, so it’s not a very lucrative career. [Laughs.] But the really unexpected money from the writing has enabled me not just to fund the practice, but to also do things I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to do with it.
O: You wrote a Batman story [Batman: The Ultimate Evil] for DC Comics, and a lot of people were shocked at some of the things you put into it. What did DC think about that?
AV: Well, you’d have to ask DC. I think their reaction varied pretty radically, but the bottom line was I wrote the book and they could either take it as is or pass. I didn’t submit to any bad editing on it.
O: Not to trivialize what you do or anything, but you’re kind of like Batman, with the glamorous writing life providing money to fund your practice.
AV: Well, I don’t really see much of a similarity, frankly, because the point I was trying to make with the Batman book was that there’s a difference between fighting child abuse and fighting child abusers. And we don’t have a knockout punch for child abuse, my friend. We just don’t possess one. I mean, would that there was some sort of pyramid model, some hierarchy with a king at the top where if you knocked him off, that would do it. We don’t have that. This is swimming in the horizon, and all of us who are engaged in it know they’re going to drown before they reach it. You know, we’re counting on the next wave and the wave after that. So far from being any sort of superhero, I’m just a soldier. I don’t have a role; I’m a player in a really big game, and I probably get more credit than I deserve for changes that have been made, because I’m more visible than others. But remember, I was at this for a hell of a long time before there were any books. I was a federal investigator in sexually transmitted diseases, I was a social case worker, I was in Biafra during that insane war, I was a juvenile probation officer, I ran a re-entry center for ex-convicts. But the last thing I did before I went to law school was I ran a maximum-security prison for so-called violent aggressive youth, and that’s when I saw, as clearly as if it were a neon billboard, the connection between abuse and violence, and I realized that if we wanted to interdict the great beast, we had to do it much earlier than we were trying to do it.
Batman: The Ultimate Evil was adapted into two-issue prestige format series in 1995 by Neal Barrett, Jr., Denys Cowan and Prentis Rollins.
In the story, Batman meets a child services agent and she opens his eyes to the damage done by child abuse and when Batman mentions it to Alfred that night, Alfred reveals a secret…
Martha Wayne, it seems, had been investigating an international child sex trafficking ring before her death…
Batman is shocked to learn that his own mother was a secret crimefighter, too…
And as it turns out, her investigation was what led to her murder…
Batman sets his sight on the only member of the ring who is still alive and still operating his sex ring. He is doing so in Asia, and so Batman travels there and teams up with a local group who want revenge on the villain for, well, you know, trafficking in children. Batman and the armed soldiers finally find him…
And Batman does nothing as the villain is murdered…
Batman struggles a bit with letting the guy be murdered, but he comes to terms with it and he feels good knowing that his mother would be proud of his work against these, the “ultimate evil.” At the end of the issue, Batman interrupts a child sex video and notes that he is doing all of this in the name of his mother now…
But The Ultimate Evil was never adopted into DC Universe continuity, so this was as far as it went.
Thanks to my pal Loren Collins for suggesting this one! If anyone else has a suggestion for a future If I Pass This Way Again, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com
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