Bane (DC Comics)

• 1. Introduction

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  Bane, the DC Comics supervillain, got his name from an insult. At the age of eight, a boy inside the Peña Duro prison on the Caribbean island of Santa Prisca stabbed a criminal who was trying to use him to learn the prison's secrets. It was his first murder. The warden was so horrified that he denounced the child as "a bane to everything that is holy." The warden meant it as a condemnation, but it became the name the boy would one day answer to. How does a child sentenced to live out another man's punishment grow into an enemy that Batman cannot easily beat? Where did his strength, his intellect and his eerie calm come from? And what does a man like that want once he finally leaves the island where he was raised?

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• 2. Doc Savage In A Mask

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  In January 1993, Batman: Vengeance of Bane #1 introduced the character to readers. Chuck Dixon, Doug Moench and Graham Nolan are credited as his creators. Dixon and Nolan shaped him for the Knightfall storyline, working from an initial idea by Batman editor Dennis O'Neil.

  Graham Nolan later explained where the look came from. By his account, "Chuck came up with the idea of an evil Doc Savage," so Nolan began his design there. He then asked what a costume would mean for a man who lived in a prison. His answer was a Mexican Luchador, and in Nolan's words, "that's how that look came up."

  Dennis O'Neil had already laid much of the groundwork in other books. He created Santa Prisca, Bane's birthplace, in The Question. He also created the drug Venom in a storyline of the same name, published in Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #16-20 and later reprinted as a trade paperback. In the pages of Azrael, O'Neil added the idea that Bane saw Venom as both an addiction and the weakness behind his earlier defeats.

  Three henchmen round out the original cast: Trogg, Zombie and Angel Vallelunga, who goes by Bird. Their names come from 1960s rock bands, The Troggs, The Zombies and The Byrds. They also echo three of Doc Savage's assistants, Monk, Ham and Renny. The trio reappears in stories long after Bane's first appearance.

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• 3. Born In Peña Duro

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  Edmund Dorrance, who went by the name King Snake, was a revolutionary who slipped through the court system of Santa Prisca. When Dorrance died, the government decreed that his young son would serve out the life sentence instead. The storyline Guttenberg establishes this origin. As a result, the boy spent his childhood and early adult life behind the walls of the island's prison.

  Inside Peña Duro, the boy built himself an education. He read widely, trained hard in the prison gym and developed his own form of meditation. Fighting in the yard taught him to be dangerous. His mentors ranged from hardened convicts to an elderly Jesuit priest, who gave him a classical education.

  Osito, Spanish for "little bear," was the name he gave to a teddy bear he carried through those years. He considered it his only friend. It also concealed a knife, which he used for protection.

  Bane suffered recurring nightmares of a monstrous bat, and the dreams left him with an intense fear of bats. Over time he rose to dominate Peña Duro. The prison's controllers noticed his strength and forced him into an experiment with a drug called Venom, which had killed every other subject. Bane nearly died too, but he survived and found that the drug greatly increased his strength. The price was addiction. He needed a dose every 12 hours, delivered through tubes attached directly to his brain, or he faced crippling withdrawal.

  When Bane finally escaped, he left with his followers Trogg, Zombie and Bird. Bird told him stories about Gotham City. Bane came to see it as a place ruled by fear, much like his prison, except that here the fear belonged to one man. He became convinced that this man was the bat from his nightmares.

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• 4. Mind And Muscle

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  In the Bane of the Demon storyline, Ra's al Ghul says Bane "has a mind equal to the greatest he has known." Ra's still dismisses the gift as the cunning of an animal rather than the trained, cultured intellect of Batman. The same storyline reveals that Bane has an eidetic memory. Within one year, he is able to work out Batman's secret identity.

  Ten active languages are credited to Bane: Spanish, English, French, German, Russian, Mandarin Chinese, Persian, Dari, Urdu and Latin. He also knows at least four arcane or dead languages. Locked in prison, he taught himself several scientific disciplines until his understanding matched that of leading experts. His body is just as formidable, and he can lift 15 tons.

  Chuck Dixon's early stories give Bane an almost supernatural stillness. Dixon wrote him as a calm, centered warrior who drew strength from meditation and from the spiritual energy of Peña Duro. In prison fights, his opponents were driven by rage and greed, while Bane was not. Scenes in Vengeance of Bane explain that his mastery of meditation "made time and space playthings to him."

  Venom pushes his body to superhuman levels, adding strength and accelerated healing. In most versions, he needs a specialized tank to control how much enters his body. In Vengeance of Bane II, published in 1995, he swore off the drug. Later adaptations sometimes still show him wearing the equipment. Writer Gail Simone addressed the contradiction in Secret Six by explaining that Bane kept the device out of habit. On one occasion, he breaks his vow and uses Venom to save Scandal Savage, whom he treats like a daughter.

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• 5. Breaking The Bat

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  The walls of Arkham Asylum come down in Knightfall, blown apart with stolen munitions. Out spill the Joker, Two-Face, the Riddler, the Scarecrow, the Mad Hatter, the Ventriloquist, Firefly, Poison Ivy, Cornelius Stirk, Film Freak and Victor Zsasz. Bane's plan is to wear Batman down in body and mind. Batman exhausts himself hunting every one of them and returning them to Arkham.

  While Batman is busy, Bane works from the shadows. He kills Film Freak, who had been acting as an assassin under the Mad Hatter's mind control. He captures Robin, who was spying on him, and interrogates the boy without learning anything useful. A rematch with Killer Croc ends in a stalemate, and both men are swept away into Gotham's sewers.

  Wayne Manor is where the trap closes. A drained Batman comes home without knowing that Bane is already waiting. Bane ambushes him and overpowers him in combat. He lifts Batman and breaks his back over one knee, leaving him paraplegic. The moment is known as "Breaking the Bat," and it reappears in The Dark Knight Rises and in Robot Chicken's DC Comics Special. The DC Animated Universe alludes to it many times.

  Bruce Wayne hands the mantle of Batman to Jean-Paul Valley, also known as Azrael. Warned to stay away from Bane, Azrael storms the villain's penthouse suite anyway, wearing a modified batsuit with heavy metal gauntlets that fire sharp projectiles. Bane uses Venom and goads Azrael into fighting recklessly. Bane wins, but he suffers deep lacerations and heavy blood loss.

  Unable to go to a hospital, Bane raises his Venom intake to cope with the injuries. Azrael returns with a combat suit of metal and offensive weaponry. In their last fight, Bane is weakened and on the defensive. Azrael severs the tubes feeding him Venom, and severe withdrawal sets in at once. Commissioner James Gordon, Harvey Bullock and Robin watch Azrael beat Bane while the villain begs for death. Azrael refuses and leaves him for the police. Bane's next stop is Blackgate Prison.

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• 6. The Search For A Father

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  At Blackgate Prison, Bane recovers from his Venom addiction and rebuilds his body to its peak. He later escapes and returns to Gotham, where he teams up with the recovered Batman. Together they dismantle a criminal operation selling a modified Venom to street-level thugs. Bane learns that the operation traces back to the same doctor who operated on him in Peña Duro. Afterward he declares himself "innocent" of his past and urges Batman to stop pursuing him. Then he leaves Gotham to find the father he never knew.

  Back on Santa Prisca, Bane questions the Jesuit priest who educated him. The priest names four possible fathers: a Santa Priscan revolutionary, an American doctor, an English mercenary and a Swiss banker. Bane follows the trail of the Swiss man to Rome. There he meets Talia al Ghul and the League of Assassins. Ra's al Ghul comes to approve of him and picks him to marry Talia and become his heir. Ra's has learned the truth about Bane's father, yet he keeps it to himself.

  In the Legacy storyline, Ra's launches a plague attack on Gotham, and Bane accompanies him under the alias Ubu. Detective Comics #701 gives Bane his rematch with Batman. Batman defeats him in single combat. Disappointed in his protégé, Ra's recounts the failure to Talia and disowns Bane.

  The Tabula Rasa storyline returns to the priest, who now says the father may be an American doctor. Bane concludes that he and Batman share a father in Thomas Wayne, who had spent time in Santa Prisca and knew Bane's mother. He tells Batman and stays at Wayne Manor while waiting for DNA results. During the wait, he fights beside Batman on Gotham's streets. The test shows that Thomas Wayne is not his father. Bane leaves peacefully, with Batman's blessing and financial backing, to follow leads in the snowy mountains of Kangchenjunga.

  The truth arrives in the Veritas Liberat storyline. Bane's father is the mercenary King Snake. Bane joins Batman to stop King Snake from deploying a powerful weapon, and he takes a bullet meant for Batman. The wound is mortal, so Batman lowers him into a Lazarus Pit, which heals him. Bane is left to decide his future without the burden of his past. Not long after, he sets out to destroy those same Lazarus Pits.

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• 7. Villain, Ally, Mercenary

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  A nuclear reactor is the weapon in the 1997 one-shot Batman: Bane, in which Bane tries to destroy Gotham City. Batman intervenes and stops the plot. In the Angel and the Bane storyline, Bane ambushes Azrael, beats him and captures him. He exposes Azrael to an even more potent strain of Venom. Azrael escapes into the jungle with Nomoz, overcomes the addiction through stamina and will, and then outmaneuvers Bane psychologically. He brings Bane back to Gotham, which has been badly damaged by the Cataclysm storyline. During an aftershock, Bane briefly escapes, and Azrael quickly recaptures him.

  Lex Luthor employs Bane as an enforcer in the No Man's Land story arc. Luthor claims to be helping rebuild Gotham while really trying to take control of it. After a brief clash between Bane and the Joker, Batman persuades Bane to leave. Following the fallout with Ra's al Ghul, Bane begins a campaign to destroy every Lazarus Pit in the world. Along the way, he meets Black Canary.

  In Infinite Crisis #7, Bane fights alongside the villains in the Battle of Metropolis. He breaks the back of the hero Judomaster and kills him. The issue gives no motive. The collected edition adds a line in which Bane says, "I finally know who I am. I am 'Bane'. I 'break' people."

  The Hourmen, Rex and Rick Tyler, are the targets in JSA Classified #17-18. Bane tells them he went back to Santa Prisca to overthrow the ruling drug lords. There he found a new, more addictive strain of Venom and was forced to take it, again through implanted tubes. The story is a ruse. He has already killed the drug lords and destroyed the research. He traced both strains of Venom to Rex Tyler's early work on Miraclo. Rick tricks Bane into using Miraclo, which destroys the building. Bane is left buried in the rubble of the same Santa Priscan penitentiary where his story began.

  Santa Prisca itself becomes the next stage. Bane tries to establish democratic elections there. He discovers that Computron, acting on orders from Checkmate, has manipulated them, so he imposes martial law and the country slides into civil war. Thomas Jagger, the son of Judomaster, is sent to the island, and he defeats Bane in combat. Jagger chooses not to kill him. Amanda Waller later recruits Bane for the Suicide Squad in Suicide Squad: Raise the Flag. In Salvation Run, his squad mates betray him and exile him to a prison planet. In Superman/Batman #53-56, he traffics Venom to drug lords worldwide. Batman, temporarily holding Superman's powers, attacks him at home and nearly kills him.

  Secret Six gave Bane a regular role from September 2008. In the first issue, he acts as a stoic devil's advocate and offers Deadshot and Catman other views on love. His fatherlike concern for Scandal Savage is played for laughs at first. The final issue of the first arc shows how deep it runs. When an army of supervillains attacks the Six, he breaks his vow against Venom to save her, though he is near death.

  After Batman is presumed dead, Bane returns to Gotham with Catman and Rag Doll to calm some of the chaos. He shows deep respect for Batman and a painful longing to wear the cowl himself. He tells three rescued citizens to say that Batman saved them. He gives his blessing to Dick Grayson, praying that "God help him." Later he takes over leadership of the Six and pulls Scandal from active duty to keep her safe. In a one-on-one fight, he refuses to hit back until Scandal slashes his throat with her Lamentation Blades.

  The Penguin is kidnapped when Bane's mental state deteriorates. He leads the Six into Gotham to break Batman by killing several of his closest allies, and the Penguin is made to reveal who they are. Bane picks Red Robin, Azrael and Batgirl as his victims. Before the Six can act, the Penguin betrays their location. An army of heroes converges on Gotham, from Green Lantern and the Justice League to the Birds of Prey and Booster Gold. The Six make a desperate last stand but are quickly beaten. Bane is last seen in a Gotham police van, and the ending implies that he plans to escape.

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• 8. Rebooted And Reimagined

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  In September 2011, The New 52 rebooted DC's continuity, and Paul Jenkins and David Finch brought Bane back in Batman: The Dark Knight. Bruce Wayne investigates a breakout at Arkham Asylum and finds criminals dosed with a fear toxin mixed with Venom. It makes them stronger and immune to fear. Bane is behind it, and a new villain called White Rabbit distributes it. She injects Batman and gives the toxin to the Flash. Batman burns it out of both men, defeats Bane and knocks him off an edge, and the tide washes Bane away.

  In Detective Comics vol. 2 #19, in the story "War Council," Bane returns in a vest and cargo pants, commanding an army. A flashback shows that the Court of Owls once stopped him from stealing a nuclear device, because he might interfere with their plans. During Forever Evil, Bane ships Venom to Gotham and orchestrates the release of the Blackgate prisoners. The Penguin tells him that the Arkham fighters do not fear him the way they feared Batman. Bane responds by building a Batsuit of his own. He defeats Killer Croc at Wayne Tower and offers the tower as a haven to Gotham citizens fleeing the Arkham inmates.

  The DC Rebirth continuity opens with Bane back on Santa Prisca. Batman vol. 3 #6 reveals that he has been trading Venom to Professor Hugo Strange for the services of Psycho-Pirate, who is helping him fight his addiction. In issue #10, Batman leads a suicide mission to Santa Prisca to take Psycho-Pirate away from Bane. Bane captures Batman, breaks his back a second time and throws him into the cell where Bane spent his childhood. Batman escapes and sets his own back right. Then he has Catwoman break Bane's back in turn. The humiliation and the loss of Psycho-Pirate make Bane snap and scream for Venom.

  By issue #16, Bane has called back his old henchmen Bird, Trogg and Zombie. He hangs Dick Grayson, Jason Todd and Damian Wayne in the Batcave, though all three survive. At Arkham he easily beats Two-Face, Solomon Grundy, Amygdala, Scarecrow, Firefly and Mad Hatter, among others. Then he fights Batman once more, and a bloodied Batman barely wins. Years later, a clone called Vengeance, created in a laboratory, is revealed to be Bane's daughter in The Joker vol. 2 #8.

  The 12-issue miniseries Bane: Conquest follows him outside Gotham. Bane and his trio investigate mercenaries moving nuclear weapons toward the city. He is captured alongside Bruce Wayne, and the two escape together. They defeat the mercenaries and their leader Dionysus, who is little more than a head and two pairs of limbs. Bane then moves to take over Dionysus' criminal empire and attacks the rival organizations Vor and Kobra. He kidnaps the infant heir to Kobra, but Batman appeals to his humanity, and Bane gives the child up for adoption.

  The Amalgam Comics line mixed Bane with Marvel characters. It produced Bane Simpson, a blend of Bane and Nuke, and the Banisher, a blend of Bane and the Punisher, described as a "gun-toting, drugged up anti-hero who broke Bruce Wayne's back." In Absolute Batman, Bane is the son of a Santa Priscan revolutionary and the Joker's lead enforcer. In Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Shredder mutates him into an elephant. In Batman: White Knight, he is brainwashed.

  Robert Swenson played Bane in the 1997 film Batman & Robin. Tom Hardy played him in the 2012 film The Dark Knight Rises. On television, Shane West took the role in the Fox series Gotham. Henry Silva, Héctor Elizondo, Danny Trejo, Fred Tatasciore and JB Blanc, among others, have voiced him in animation and video games. IGN's list of the Top 100 Comic Book Villains of All Time ranks him at number 34.

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