The most recent poster for The Dark Knight Rises has a shadowy figure walking away from Batman's broken cowl. Those who read Batman on a regular basis know that this is Bane, one of the most spectacular villains created in the last twenty years. The image of the broken cowl suggests that Batman is done for.
As soon as this poster hit a good number of people in the press seem to think that the demise of Batman is exactly what director Christopher Nolan and crew have in mind for next summer's blockbuster release.
Which brings to mind, who is Bane? And why does he get to kill Batman when The Joker didn't?
Second question first. The Joker can't kill Batman because there would be no one for him to goof off with any more. The Joker knows that. He needs Batman like the flower needs the rain. He can't kill him. What would happen after he knocked the Caped Crusader out of the picture? Retirement to a beach with a bucket of Coronas to his left? Maybe Skiing in Aspen?
So that leaves Bane, possibly the most powerful villain Batman has ever faced, to do the job. A massive persona in both mind and body, Bane is every bit the perfect match for Batman. While those who see the poster and the photographs that have been taken from the set of the film will marvel at his physique, Bane is no fool. He spent a lot of time honing on his mind, as well as his biceps.
Bane started young. A native of the Caribbean Republic of Santa Prisca, he spent his early years in jail. His father, Sir Edmund Dorrance, is also better known as King Snake. This master of the martial arts made his first appearance in 1991 in Robin #2. One night, while working with local anti-communist rebels in Santa Prisca, his camp was attacked by stooges working for the local government that King Snake was looking to help topple.
While gunfire tore around him he saw looked for the young rebel woman he had been intimate with. When he saw here she appeared to be dead. Thinking the worst, he took off assuming she was dead. As it happens she was not only still living, but pregnant with the Bane.
Seething with anger that King Snake had escaped the local militia, the corrupt government decided to award a life sentence to King Snake in absentia. Lacking Snake himself, they passed that sentence on to that both Bane and his mother. As a result Bane spent a good number of his early years behind bars in a prison cell in Santa Prisca. His mother passed away at age six. The prison officials simply threw the body of his mother into shark-infested waters as he watched. From there, his anger and rage only grew. With the help of a few other prisoners as well as a Jesuit priest who schools him in a more traditional sense, Bane develops his first class mind into a first grade weapon.
At one point Bane served ten years in solitary confinement but this only added to his personal determination and significantly increased his mythic status inside the prison walls. When he came out he was atop the prison hierarchy, so powerful that the other prisoners would follow his word instead of the Warden's.
As the Warden and other officials, watched his rise to the top of prison society, they grew worried and eventually decided that he had to go. They forced him to volunteer for an experimental drug program. The drug they injected him with was called Venom. It had killed every one of its other test subjects and nearly does the same to Bane. But through sheer force of will he survives. Once he begins to regain his health he finds that his muscles now look almost freakish in nature and his stamina is increased as well. While not super-human, he is definitely knocking on the door of that classification.
One unfortunate side effect is that he now needs the drug Venom delivered into his system every twelve hours. To deal with the need he develops a costume, which will feed him the drug in regular intervals. This explains the system of tubes that grace his side as well as the head mask which helps keep him alive.
Bane is the creation of Chuck Dixon, Doug Moench and Graham Nolan. The villain was originally designed along the lines of the pulp hero Doc Savage, if he was viewed through a very dark looking glass. While Bane and Doc shared the qualities of discipline, self-motivation and highly developed skills, Doc used his for good and Bane didn't.
Denny O'Neil is also associated with the creation of Bane, although his input is generally acknowledged to be a bit unclear. What is certain is that he introduced the concept of Venom and the island of Santa Prisca into the DC Universe. The island first appears during an early Question story line and Venom is featured in Legends of the Dark Knight storyline issues #16-20 (which are collected in the TP Venom).
Bane's first appearance was in Batman: Vengeance of the Bane #1 (January 1993). Most famously he is the man who broke Batman's back. Since then, Bane has gone to become fully incorporated into the DC Universe. Eventually he finds out that King Snake is his father, which causes some real problems! Bane also shows up during Infinite Crisis. Recently he encountered Hourman, and during that battle it was revealed that the earliest days of research into Hourman's Miraclo pill allowed for the creation of Venom.
So why does Bane get to kill Batman, if that is in fact what will happen in the film? For our money it has to do with the detailed and very deep characterization created by Dixon, Moench and Nolan.
The character has an origin that is also similar to Batman's. They both found themselves without a father at an early age. Bruce Wayne had the shelter of money and Bane, for better or worse, had the shelter of a prison environment in which they both could grow. Both men were absolutely driven and seem to poses a will of steel. They have trained themselves rigorously for years while honing their intellect and mental skills to the peak of human perfection.
When it comes to fiction they are also from the same gene pool. Doc Savage predates Batman and Superman. A read of any Doc Savage storyline from the early thirties will reveal the influence that the character had on Joe Shuster, Jerry Siegel, Bob Kane and Bill Finger (as well as anyone else creating comics in the late thirties and early forties). Both Bane and Batman are part of the tradition of self-made men driven by something that almost everyone else doesn’t seem to hold in their DNA.
Bane and Batman have both walked the same road. The Joker hasn't. He is a freak. In the grandest themes of most fiction, most men kill themselves. Either through the choices they have made or their own foolish behavior. Batman and Bane are close to being the same man. One of them kills willingly and the other doesn't.
Bane is an amazingly complex villain who matches Batman on almost every single level. The film looks to be every bit as good as the last installment. We won’t know if Batman dies during the course of the film until next July. Until then it is sure going to be fun to speculate what Nolan has in store for us.