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I was not reading comics when the Knightfall saga came out in 1993, so I thankfully missed Bane's introduction as the Ultimate Evil d'-Jour.
My first exposure to the character really was printed some ten years late, three issues of Gotham Knights 33-36, the "Tabula Rasa" storyline. I thank God every day that it was the first thing I read about Bane.
Here was a character that I knew vaguely as clever, intelligent, and incredibly dangerous, one of the few people who had really done damage to the Batman, but unlike the rest of the Rogues Gallery, he had moved on. Bane and Batman hated each other, yeah, but they were getting on with their lives, not stuck in a pointless and repetitive cycle of revenge. I wasn't really aware of Bane's backstory except that he was truly dangerous for reasons that are all too human.
But he wasn't being a huge monstrous threat in "Tabula Rasa." Bane's personal quest to find his father (never mind that he could much more easily have found information about his never named in comics mother, and been thereafter proud to be the son of a revolutionary woman) was just that- personal. It involved Batman, but it also made Bane introspective: though a self-driven character who almost never appears without a personal motive, he did not really know why he was drawn to Gotham and to Batman. He needed a goal, and that one served well enough in the depths of Peña Duro, but why Gotham and not Metropolis? Why the Bat? "What happened between us... the violence. Perhaps I was drawn to you because I knew." Bane muses while the paternity test is being run.
Throughout the whole story, there was a build-up of tension that really worked with Bane's character. Bane was shown as dangerous and amoral, but also anxious: finding his family was a potential turning point for the character. Bane wanted to know who he was, what his identity could be, aside from the 'Man who broke the Bat.' If he was a Wayne, heir to the male side of the fortune and brother of the Batman, there really was a tense, unspoken hope held out that he might have changed. The hint of redemption just worked with Bane's character: he's shown so often as so brilliant and driven, much like Batman himself, that the possibility of him working for something better than his own self interest held real potential for good, while the process of getting him there after a lifetime of struggle and being victimized by powers beyond his control would have been fascinating. Bane started out from tabula rasa, a blank slate, and made himself into the threat that he is; what if he decided to make himself something different?
Of course, one could see from the beginning of the story that it would never happen. The legacy of Thomas Wayne, perfect father, husband and philanthropist, remained unbesmirched. Batman is still without a family. Bane still gets the short end of the stick. But the end of the story remained true to the weak hope expressed therein: that Bane could be something more than the brute and mob boss that he had always aimed to be. "What else is there?" Bane asks at the end of the story, "We are not brothers and we are not friends." And Batman, bleeding on a rooftop, tells him. "Make your life count for something good and noble just once."
I'm not gonna lie: this gets me. I love this storyline and I will always love it till I die. It's about character and family and history and change, and it's lovingly handled. This is how I see Bane.
So you can imagine that when I see him in Countdown, years later, having found and killed his criminal genius father, finally free of the shadow of prison, drug addiction, and his accursed family, with a two panel appearance where he snaps the back of a hero Judomaster (of whom I have never even heard) while proclaiming (as if it were the solution to all the twisty, complicated character development he'd gone through in the last fifteen years of comic books) "I finally know who I am. I am Bane, and I break people," that maybe I will lose a little bit of my cool.
But that seems to be the case with Bane. There are lots of his appearances that are amazingly well thought-out. Bane looks amoral and self-serving, but also brilliant, driven, and looking for a level of personal connection that he's never had. (Don't even get me started on the whole Thalia, Raz al Ghul thing- premade family, immortality, andworld domination? Don't mind if I do!) His goals are not always evil, although the way he goes about fulfilling them is generally not G-rated. His recent appearance alongside Hourman in JSA Classified 17-18 was very much in character for Bane, and also highlighted the current take on the Miraclo drug as an actual addiction. Nice and morally ambiguous motivation, nasty follow-through. Very Bane. The Checkmate appearance, which I can really only call a cameo of Bane, shows him getting on with his life semi-villainously, but also finding a place for himself of both power and respect, as well as returning to his roots.
But the Bane that shows up in the Suicide Squad in Outsiders # 50 is just stupid. Really. His dialogue, which good writers portray as precise and intelligent from years of reading, but also nonidiomatic, since English is not Bane's first language, in this example just fails. I can imagine any henchman and many big baddies that Batman has fought speaking these lines, except for Bane. Not to mention what the leader of a reform political party which just won its first democratic elections after the results were tampered with by a foreign power would be doing on the damned Suicide Squad?? Bane's not even supposed to be in the US, much less in need of a plea bargain (which, hi, he's been shown in the past not to take under any circumstances).
I am afraid. I am afraid that a really cool character, into which much time and thought were put, will be wiped from the face of continuity, only to be replaced by a slangy, boring thug, to be whipped out whenever we need someone big and tough to punch. And that's not what Bane should be. Bane should be the Taskmaster of the DCU, not the Rhino.
My first exposure to the character really was printed some ten years late, three issues of Gotham Knights 33-36, the "Tabula Rasa" storyline. I thank God every day that it was the first thing I read about Bane.
Here was a character that I knew vaguely as clever, intelligent, and incredibly dangerous, one of the few people who had really done damage to the Batman, but unlike the rest of the Rogues Gallery, he had moved on. Bane and Batman hated each other, yeah, but they were getting on with their lives, not stuck in a pointless and repetitive cycle of revenge. I wasn't really aware of Bane's backstory except that he was truly dangerous for reasons that are all too human.
But he wasn't being a huge monstrous threat in "Tabula Rasa." Bane's personal quest to find his father (never mind that he could much more easily have found information about his never named in comics mother, and been thereafter proud to be the son of a revolutionary woman) was just that- personal. It involved Batman, but it also made Bane introspective: though a self-driven character who almost never appears without a personal motive, he did not really know why he was drawn to Gotham and to Batman. He needed a goal, and that one served well enough in the depths of Peña Duro, but why Gotham and not Metropolis? Why the Bat? "What happened between us... the violence. Perhaps I was drawn to you because I knew." Bane muses while the paternity test is being run.
Throughout the whole story, there was a build-up of tension that really worked with Bane's character. Bane was shown as dangerous and amoral, but also anxious: finding his family was a potential turning point for the character. Bane wanted to know who he was, what his identity could be, aside from the 'Man who broke the Bat.' If he was a Wayne, heir to the male side of the fortune and brother of the Batman, there really was a tense, unspoken hope held out that he might have changed. The hint of redemption just worked with Bane's character: he's shown so often as so brilliant and driven, much like Batman himself, that the possibility of him working for something better than his own self interest held real potential for good, while the process of getting him there after a lifetime of struggle and being victimized by powers beyond his control would have been fascinating. Bane started out from tabula rasa, a blank slate, and made himself into the threat that he is; what if he decided to make himself something different?
Of course, one could see from the beginning of the story that it would never happen. The legacy of Thomas Wayne, perfect father, husband and philanthropist, remained unbesmirched. Batman is still without a family. Bane still gets the short end of the stick. But the end of the story remained true to the weak hope expressed therein: that Bane could be something more than the brute and mob boss that he had always aimed to be. "What else is there?" Bane asks at the end of the story, "We are not brothers and we are not friends." And Batman, bleeding on a rooftop, tells him. "Make your life count for something good and noble just once."
I'm not gonna lie: this gets me. I love this storyline and I will always love it till I die. It's about character and family and history and change, and it's lovingly handled. This is how I see Bane.
So you can imagine that when I see him in Countdown, years later, having found and killed his criminal genius father, finally free of the shadow of prison, drug addiction, and his accursed family, with a two panel appearance where he snaps the back of a hero Judomaster (of whom I have never even heard) while proclaiming (as if it were the solution to all the twisty, complicated character development he'd gone through in the last fifteen years of comic books) "I finally know who I am. I am Bane, and I break people," that maybe I will lose a little bit of my cool.
But that seems to be the case with Bane. There are lots of his appearances that are amazingly well thought-out. Bane looks amoral and self-serving, but also brilliant, driven, and looking for a level of personal connection that he's never had. (Don't even get me started on the whole Thalia, Raz al Ghul thing- premade family, immortality, andworld domination? Don't mind if I do!) His goals are not always evil, although the way he goes about fulfilling them is generally not G-rated. His recent appearance alongside Hourman in JSA Classified 17-18 was very much in character for Bane, and also highlighted the current take on the Miraclo drug as an actual addiction. Nice and morally ambiguous motivation, nasty follow-through. Very Bane. The Checkmate appearance, which I can really only call a cameo of Bane, shows him getting on with his life semi-villainously, but also finding a place for himself of both power and respect, as well as returning to his roots.
But the Bane that shows up in the Suicide Squad in Outsiders # 50 is just stupid. Really. His dialogue, which good writers portray as precise and intelligent from years of reading, but also nonidiomatic, since English is not Bane's first language, in this example just fails. I can imagine any henchman and many big baddies that Batman has fought speaking these lines, except for Bane. Not to mention what the leader of a reform political party which just won its first democratic elections after the results were tampered with by a foreign power would be doing on the damned Suicide Squad?? Bane's not even supposed to be in the US, much less in need of a plea bargain (which, hi, he's been shown in the past not to take under any circumstances).
I am afraid. I am afraid that a really cool character, into which much time and thought were put, will be wiped from the face of continuity, only to be replaced by a slangy, boring thug, to be whipped out whenever we need someone big and tough to punch. And that's not what Bane should be. Bane should be the Taskmaster of the DCU, not the Rhino.
