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Every hero has his “origins” story, and in Batman's case the story of how Bruce Wayne was orphaned as a boy and how later he took up the secret identity of a masked crusader against crime, is crucial in defining the hero. In the fifty years since the Batman character was first invented, his writers have returned again and again, obsessively, to the shocking scene of the murder of Bruce Wayne's parents.1 Young Bruce and his parents had just seen a movie, and as they were walking home through the dark streets of Gotham City, they were attacked and shot. Bruce Wayne's childhood trauma runs like a hermeneutic thread through the hundreds of adventures that have put Batman in an astonishing variety of situations, and it resonates powerfully as the defining moment in Batman's increasingly complex personal mythology.
Bruce vows that he will avenge the senseless deaths of Thomas and Martha Wayne. At their grave he swears, “I'll dedicate my life and inheritance to bringing your killer to justice … and fighting all criminals! I swear it!” (Batman #47, ). He then spends several years preparing for his destiny: “He mastered scientific criminal investigation! He trained his body to such physical and athletic perfection that he could perform any daredevil feat… Then, one day he was ready for his new role.” Sitting alone in one of Wayne Manor's cavernous rooms, he says to himself, “Criminals are a superstitious, cowardly lot, so I must wear a disguise that will strike terror into their heats! I must be a creature of the night, like a … a …” (”And, as if in answer, a winged creature flew in through the open window!”) “A bat! That's it! It's like an omen! I shall become a bat!” (“Thus was born this weird figure of the shadows … this avenger of evil—THE BATMAN”) (Batman #47, ).