Even though this is part four of the “The Zoo” of Absolute Batman, we’re taking a little break from the main plot of the Party Animals and the deal they offered Bruce Wayne in issue #3. For issue #4, this is an origin story giving us a bigger glimpse into why Bruce became Batman.
The Loss of Thomas Wayne
Long before he ever puts on a cowl, a young Bruce Wayne enters the Young Engineers Competition at the Gotham Zoo. The goal is to design a bridge for a struggling neighborhood based on an animal.
Bruce chooses a bat because bats are scary, so his model is built like a fortress with tall walls and heavy gates. His dad, elementary school-teacher Thomas, wonders if intimidation is really what a hurting neighborhood needs. He still tells Bruce he is proud of him, but the model isn’t good enough anymore.
Bruce takes the feedback to heart and builds a second version. He realizes that bats survive everywhere because they adapt, using echolocation to map out their surroundings and adjust. This new bridge has rotating decks and extendable girders. His dad loves it. Bruce asks if it’s good enough to win. Thomas reminds him that what matters is that Bruce feels it’s his best and that it shows what’s special about a bat “at its core.” Bruce asks how you know what anything is “at its core.”
To answer that question, Thomas shares a personal story. He originally wanted to be a heart surgeon after watching his own father die of a sudden heart attack at Amusement Mile. He was about to apply to med school when Bruce’s mom got pregnant. He realized his wish to be a doctor was really about preventing other kids from feeling what he felt that morning. As a teacher, he can make kids feel safe by preparing them for the world. “Maybe in some other life I am a doctor,” Thomas says in a subtle nod to his profession in other continuities. “But in this one, teaching gives me a way of doing that core thing.”
Eventually, Bruce creates a third version of the bridge that combines elements of his previous designs.
It’s lightweight, foldable, it can be dropped from a plane and parachuted down, with setup instructions printed on a flap. It has hidden buzzsaws and more importantly, residents can assemble it themselves, so it’s theirs for aid and defense.
The new design helps Bruce win the class trip to the Gotham Zoo. It’s the happiest day of his life… until a shooter named Joe Chill attacks the zoo, and kills Thomas Wayne.
Facing Joe Chill
Sometime after the shooting, a visibly angry Bruce is standing at a courtroom podium. Due to the “extraordinary nature” of the case, the judge allows Bruce to share a few words before Joe Chill can give his official statement.
Looking Chill dead in the eyes as tears stream from his, the boy does not hold back. “You killed that happiness, Mr. Chill. Forever. I don’t care what made you do what you did. I just need you to know that I hate you.”
Sometime later, an adult Bruce visits Chill in prison. Sitting across from his father’s murderer, Bruce mulls over whether to speak. He then raises a fist to the glass before picking up the red phone. “Well? You had something you wanted to say?” Bruce asks. Unfortunately, the issue never shows us what these two could have talked about, which is frustrating but okay.
Batman’s Early, Brutal Beginnings
It’s hard to gauge where Bruce’s talk with Joe Chill fits into the timeline. One thing that’s clear as day is that losing his father has changed Bruce. Now he wants to fight back against the crime that cost his father his life.
One night on a rooftop in Park Row, also known as Crime Alley, a gang called the Ten Thieves tries to extort “protection” money from local residents. When a mother of three named Mrs. Nguyen refuses to pay, the gang’s leader named Simon pushes her off the roof. Yet somehow, Mrs. Nguyen is able to pull herself up back on the rooftop.
Before the gang members can make sense of what happened, a monstrous winged silhouette with red eyes crouches on a nearby ledge.
Batman leaps off the ledge, shrieking as a voice distorter alters his voice. He bites one thing on the neck with silicone fangs laced with a paralytic. When Simon opens fire, Batman strikes him with his fist, takes his pistol and aims it at the gang leader. But he doesn’t shoot. He realizes he is standing on a roof holding a pistol, acting just like the thugs he is fighting.
He leaves and heads back to his workshop where he burns the fangs, the paint, and the gun. Scaring low-level street crooks isn’t working because new ones just take their place.
Going After the Supply Chain
Bruce decides he needs to stop playing dress-up and go after the people actually flooding Gotham with weapons. He leaves the city on his motorcycle to clear his head, passing through struggling towns full of closed factories and angry protesters. Seeing a cloud of bats in a canyon reminds him of his dad’s advice about adapting and empowering people.
He decides to investigate where the guns and pills come from. The pipeline is called the Orange Blossom Special (OBS) and runs up from Florida, where gun and pharma laws are looser. About 80% of illegal weapons enter Gotham this way, and Row gangs get nearly all their guns and pills from it. The trucks sneak past checkpoints run by the Maroni and Falcone crime families, who move the hot point monthly to dodge raids they know are coming. Bruce watches the Maronis and Falcones operate out in the open. They have deals with a dozen Gotham companies and at least three banks. “They’re just too damn large to take down,” Bruce states to himself.
Instead of fighting the whole syndicate head-on, Bruce builds a cheap trap for under a thousand dollars: a black remote-controlled car loaded with a bottle jack. He stands in the middle of a tunnel blocking an incoming smuggling truck and rolls the RC car right under its front tires, triggering the jack. The truck flips and crashes, spilling crates of assault rifles everywhere. Batman then knocks out the drivers before they can escape.
Targeting Gotham’s Elite
With the street pipeline disrupted, Batman goes straight to the top. He watches the “Dance for a Better Gotham” charity ball from a skylight, where Gotham’s elite sponsor youth dance competitions.
He’s there for Randal Powers, the billionaire who owns the trucking conglomerate the Maronis and Falcones used. Publicly, Powers vowed to support new regulations. But Batman overhears him lobbying Max Mooney of the G.D.O.T. against tighter transit laws, promising money. He also hears EPA chief Jackson Ellis back-dealing with polluter William Acme. Meanwhile, a politician who vowed to bring back factory jobs is begging an automation giant for donations.
He’s disgusted with how the people who are supposed to protect Gotham have stripped it until there’s nothing but bones. He triggers a thermal coil hidden beneath the gold dance floor, heating it up to 150 degrees so the elites are forced to literally dance for their lives.
A Gotham police helicopter spots him on the roof and orders him to surrender. Batman just leaps off the edge and swings away through the searchlights.
