Printable View
I've read the 1st mini-series and I didn't really enjoy that much & don't want to read the rest but do you ever find out who Bruce's wife/mother to his kid is in the 2nd/3rd series? If you do know could you not tell me who it is but just if you find out or not so I can read it for myself.
[QUOTE=jump;95447]I've read the 1st mini-series and I didn't really enjoy that much & don't want to read the rest but do you ever find out who Bruce's wife/mother to his kid is in the 2nd/3rd series? If you do know could you not tell me who it is but just if you find out or not so I can read it for myself.[/QUOTE]
I can sympathize. I remember reading the first miniseries (when it came out) and being [I]annoyed[/I] by the lack of information about "Mrs. Wayne."
Even after I later read the second mini, and eventually the third, I [i]still didn't know[/i] what Mrs. Wayne's maiden name had been! (That answers part of your question -- it's never spelled out for us in dialogue in the sequels!)
Some years ago, though, I got curious about it all over again, and I did some online research. Here's what I learned from various online resources:
1. John Byrne allegedly intended all along that "Mrs. Bruce Wayne" was actually [b]Kathy Kane,[/b] who in the official Batman comics of the late 1950s and early 1960s was better known as [b]Batwoman,[/b] an occasional guest-star in Batman's stories.
2. This makes a certain amount of sense, because in a few "noncanonical" Silver Age stories which were justified in terms of "Alfred Pennyworth is amusing himself by doing some [I]creative writing[/I] about what [I]might[/I] happen in the lives of Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson [I]a couple of decades[/I] in the future," the premise was that Bruce had in fact eventually married Kathy, and "now" their son Bruce Jr. was old enough to be the second Robin, while Bruce had retired from "Batman" and his original protege, Dick Grayson, was a grown man who was called "Batman II" (or just "Batman" for short). Since John Byrne was deliberately recycling the ideas of "Dick grew up to take over as Batman, and his sidekick was the original Batman's own son by Kathy," it makes sense to think that Bruce Junior's mommy was the same as in those old Silver Age stories.
3. However! Byrne felt sort of guilty about the whole thing, because Bruce Wayne is already married in the scenes set in 1949 in the first "Superman/Batman: Generations" miniseries, and yet Kathy Kane/Batwoman did not "exist" (in the original DC continuity) until several years later when she was invented at DC and made her debut onstage. This is why Byrne deliberately [b]never[/b] revealed, in any scenes happening within his Elseworlds stuff, exactly what Mrs. Wayne's first name was, nor even what her [I]natural hair color[/I] had been when she was a young woman. But eventually, in an interview or something, he admitted that [I]in his mind[/I] Mrs. Wayne had "always been Kathy Kane."
I felt I had better explain all that since it was never going to be explained in any comic book. But if you prefer, you can take comfort in the thought that when you reread the first mini, and/or read the others if you decide to do so, you can tell yourself that "Mrs. Wayne" is just about anyone you care to name -- since there's nothing [i]within any of the stories[/i] to "prove" who it really was.
Thanks for that! I was guessing it was gonna be someone like Silver St Cloud from the anti-bat talk.
[COLOR="#B22222"]In my mind, Mrs. Bruce Wayne was Julie Madison since they were set up to be engaged in the 1939 segment.
I've always thought that the reason why they kept it a secret was because it was a reference to an old Silver Age story involving the sons of Batman and Superman who are friends. The wives of the heroes were kept secret and we didn't see their faces. I remember the story being horrible and frankly unreadable. However, there were multiple stories involving Bruce settling down (usually with Kathy Kane) and having a child named Bruce Wayne Jr. who becomes Robin and later becomes Batman.
There were several other clever allusions to the comics being published depending on the decade the story takes place in. Lex Luthor's (or you know who) explanation on how to travel back in time is basically him saying; "I passed electricity through orange juice to travel through time". Which in itself is another Silver Age reference, specifically this one:
[url]http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/12/120267/3557197-3704009372-31570.jpg[/url]
Superman/Batman Generations Vol 1 was one of my first comics and I loved it. It's what got me into loving DC history and the legacy. John Byrne's art was great and I used to look and try to copy his figures as a kid.
[/COLOR]