Bruce Wayne

Bruce Wayne was the CEO of Wayne Enterprises, heir of the Wayne family fortune, and the creator of the superhero identity of Batman. As Batman, he patrolled Gotham City in a war on crime and participated in world-changing crises from 1939 to his death in 1954.

Childhood and Adolescence (1916-1934)
Bruce Wayne was born on February 19, 1916 into the Wayne family, one of the oldest and richest in Gotham City. His father, Dr. Thomas Wayne, was an esteemed physician and surgeon who inherited the industrial corporation Wayne Enterprises, and his mother, Martha Wayne (née Kane) was the heiress to the Kane Chemical fortune, a relative of newspaper mogul Charles Foster Kane, and a famous socialite. Both were renowned for their philanthropic efforts, stemming from a deep-seated belief that the upper classes should use their wealth to improve the lives of the lower classes. Thomas and Martha loved and indulged their only child.

On June 26, 1924, the Wayne family caught an evening screening of the George Valentin swashbuckler ''The Mark of Zorro. '' Shortly after leaving the theater, a mugger, later identified as Joe Chill, leaped out of an alley and demanded Martha Wayne's pearl necklace. Chill shot Thomas when he tried to defend her, killing him instantly; he then shot Martha when she screamed for help, and she perished from blood loss exacerbated by a weak heart. Chill, himself a father, left Bruce alive and escaped. The child was then placed in the care of Alfred J. Pennyworth, the family butler.

In the days after the double murder, Bruce proved to be inconsolable. As a veteran of the Boxer Rebellion living in a time before treatment for psychological trauma became common, Pennyworth took a traditionalist view of Bruce's suffering and chose to let the child learn to live with his grief. One night, Bruce privately dedicated his life to fighting crime as a way of avenging his parents. To this end, he committed himself to intensive studying on a myriad of eclectic subjects, especially in the sciences, and developed an extraordinary intellect by the time he was a teenager. He also took up athletics and bodybuilding with similar excellent results. Pennyworth encouraged Bruce, and trained him in combat and medic skills, which he learned in his time as a Royal Marine, and in the art of acting, based on his brief stage career in London under the stage name Alfred Beagle. Due to his outstanding intellect, and with some help from his notable inheritance, Bruce was able to attend college at a younger age than normal and earned a Diploma of Law from Yale University's satellite campus in Gotham City in May 1934.

Travels and Training (1934-1939)
Bruce Wayne considered embarking on a career in law or law enforcement, but concluded that Gotham City's legal institutions and police force were both corrupted by mob influence. He came to believe that the only way one could exact justice without a fair justice system was to work outside it, which spurred him to travel the world for several years to develop his skills and find a different approach.

Perhaps not surprisingly, he Initially desired to be a traditional detective. He had admired world-famous detective Sherlock Holmes since childhood and sought to receive training in private investigation from him - despite Holmes being 80 years old, retired, and in hiding. Though his whereabouts were unknown to the public in 1934, Wayne still commissioned aerial adventurer Jock Lindsey to ferry him to London by biplane. There, he spoke with Harry Dickson, the detective then residing in 221B Baker Street, and Dr. John Watson, former assistant and biographer of Holmes. He eventually tracked Holmes to his remote beachside apiary in East Sussex, only to be received by Mary Russell, Holmes's partner and later wife in an unpublicized second phase of his career. She stated that her husband did not want uninvited admirers, sparking an argument loud enough that Holmes, supporting himself on two canes, hobbled to the door and demanded an apology from Wayne. Holmes proclaimed that Wayne was emotionally stunted and too entitled from his bourgeois upbringing, and demanded that he never seek him again.

The first person to give Wayne training was Henri Ducard, renowned on both sides of the law in France as a expert manhunter. In exchange for a large cash sum, he allowed Wayne to assist him and his son Morgan in ongoing cases. Wayne developed the skills of deduction, detection, intimidation, and capturing targets. Ducard also trained him to apply his athletics proficiency to urban environments using the "méthode naturelle" of Georges Hébert. While Wayne learned much from Ducard, they often argued about the morality of their actions - Ducard did freelance work for anyone who could afford his services. Their relationship ended in 1935, after Wayne successfully tracked his first super-criminal, the master of disguise known as Tigris. Leon Rude, the client who commissioned them, insisted that the criminal was too dangerous to keep alive, and when Wayne insisted that he be tried in a court of law, Morgan Ducard killed Tigris himself.

Wayne also received training from a ninjutsu master known only as Kirigi. The Japanese-born martial arts master came to Korea with the occupation and established a dojo somewhere in the northern end of the Taebaek Mountains. Despite his hatred of Westerners, Kirigi accepted Wayne as a student and trained him in ninjutsu. Despite only arriving at the peninsula to learn more about the masked resistance fighter Gaksital, Wayne stayed at the dojo for two years, achieving peak physical form and becoming skilled in espionage, intimidation, and guerilla battle tactics.

Throughout his global travels, Wayne also encountered, spoke at length with, and/or developed other skills from many other people. These include: (NOTE: This article is still under construction.)
 * Percy Blakeney, British athlete and aristocrat who became Wayne's frequent companion in London following his rejection from Holmes. He was the great-great-grandson of Percy Blakeney, who resisted the Reign of Terror under the alias of "The Scarlet Pimpernel." Wayne was fascinated with Blakeney's methods of feigning ineptitude in daily life to throw off suspicions; and leaving calling cards to strike fear in his enemies.
 * Pierre Dupin, then a medical student and descendant of 19th-century sleuth C. Auguste Dupin. He was a neighbor of Wayne in the Faubourg Saint-Germain neighborhood in Paris, and he allowed Wayne to learn more advanced medical and forensic techniques through his own coursework.
 * Philippe Guérande, a journalist known for working with the masked vigilante Judex in a campaign against the infamous apache gang known as "Les Vampires" in 1916. With Wayne's assistance, they tracked the long-unseen vigilante's base of operations to a castle near Paris called "Le Chateau Rouge" (formerly known as "Le Chateau Bleu" for its owner, the aristocrat Bluebeard, and renamed by locals after they discovered his homicidal record). There, they discovered what remained of a secret underground lair with technologically-advanced gadgetry, space for a getaway vehicle, and a windowless interrogation room with a viewing screen outside.
 * Jerôme Fandor, a journalist associate of Guérande whose obsession with the supercriminal Fantômas made him an expert on France's costumed characters. Fandor told Wayne about the notorious Fantômas, who had eluded authorities for thirty years; Belphégor, a masked thief caught in the Louvre seeking a "Treasure of the Kings of France" (which she claimed lay under the Cour de Napoléon); and Nyctalope, a superhuman who used his artificial heart, night vision, and superhuman strength in service of the French government. Wayne never met any of these figures - according to journalist Raymond Rambert (a relation of Fandor), Nyctalope was putting down a rebellion in the Morocco colony at the time.

Additional Notes
