Carmine Falcone
61 years ago - Carmine Falcone is born, heir to the Falcone crime family of Gotham,
46 years ago - 15-year-old Carmine is sent to boarding school in Italy.
40 years ago - 21-year-old Carmine Falcone returns from Europe to rejoin the family.
37 years ago - 24-year-old Carmine Falcone is married
35 years ago - 26-year-old Carmine's girlfriend Marie Kyle has a daughter, Selina Kyle.
34 years ago - 27-year-old Carmine's son Alberto is born.
33 years ago - 28-year-old Carmine is shot by Sal Maroni's father Luigi, starting a war between their families. He is brought to the home of Thomas Wayne, who saves his life. One of the early victims of the war is Carl Zucco, the father of Tony Zucco.
31 years ago - 30-year-old Carmine leaves his girlfriend Marie Kyle. He attends the funeral of Thomas Wayne, where he promises Bruce Wayne one favor.
24 years ago - 37-year-old Carmine pays Oswald Cobblepot to kill Sal Maroni's father Luigi, and pays to send him home to England.
20 years ago - 41-year-old Carmine Falcone's father dies, and he takes over the family. He consolidates his power, and effectively wins the war between the families when Sal Maroni agrees to his truce terms. He rewards Rupert Thorne by elevating him to Mayor of Gotham.
18 years ago - 43-year-old Carmine Falcone's organization finds Julian Gregory Day and keeps him on retainer as an assassin.
15 years ago - 46-year-old Carmine Falcone's dinner party is crashed by Batman, who begins to systematically dismantle his organization. Drury Walker becomes a Falcone errand-boy.
14 years ago - 47-year-old Carmine's DA is brought down on corruption charges by Batman, Harvey Dent, & Lieutenant Gordon. Sal Maroni brings in Roman Sionis as an enforcer, effectively restarting the war between the families.
12 years ago - 49-year-old Carmine begins hiring 'freaks' after Batman burns his secret stores of cash. Secretly agreeing to a non aggression pact with Oswald Cobblepot, He hires the best assassins in the world to compete over a 50 million dollar bounty on his head, including Slade Wilson, Floyd Lawton, Thomas Blake, Nathan Prince, Lester Buchinski, Malcolm Merlyn, Crusher Crock, Lady Elaine Marsh-Morton & Drury Walker.
11 years ago - 50-year-old Carmine contacts Sal Maroni after he is brought in by Batman, offering him protection if he attacks Harvey Dent in the court room. the plan goes through but Dent survives and kills Carmine as Two-Face. His son Alberto is killed by Jonathan Crane & Julian Gregory Day, allowing Oswald Cobblepot to stage his own coup and take over his organization.
If you want to tell a thorough version of the story of Gotham City, Falcone is one of the most important figures in the overall narrative. He's not a long-time character; while Gotham has been depicted as having a robust mafia presense as long as it's existed, they were almost always disposable badguys to punch. The innovation of The Falcone family is that it created a face for that mafia presence.
It's understood that after Batman's appearance Gotham's underworld shifted as only truely insane criminals were able to thrive in that enviornment, but that has always meant that there was an old guard of corruption and criminality in Gotham before he arrived. by crafting an allegory of the Corleones that old guard gets to have a real presence and personality, making even Bruce's early adventures exciting to follow.
It's understood that after Batman's appearance Gotham's underworld shifted as only truely insane criminals were able to thrive in that enviornment, but that has always meant that there was an old guard of corruption and criminality in Gotham before he arrived. by crafting an allegory of the Corleones that old guard gets to have a real presence and personality, making even Bruce's early adventures exciting to follow.
Falcone's Comic History
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Falcone's first appearances was in 1987's Batman: Year One by Frank Miller, and he went on to feature heavily in Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale's 96-97 limited series Batman: The Long Halloween. Both stories were about the early days of Batman's career, when Carmine loomed over the entire city. He was killed in The Long Haloween, although his stolen body was a major factor in Loeb & Sale's follow-up story Batman: Dark Victory.
He's heavily referenced throughout Batman's continuity, most notably in the pages of Catwoman where it's implied that Selena is actually the illigitimate daughter of the criminal kingpin and therefore heir to his empire. There was even a story where she actually embraced the role and became a Gotham crimeboss. I believe there was a suggestion during that storyline that he was actually still alive. Catwoman is actually responsible for the scar on his right cheek. While his actual comic appearances are relatively limited (he was essentially introduced as a character that had already been killed), He is used CONSTANTLY in live action depictions of Gotham. If you're trying to create a believable version of Gotham it becomes almost vital that you depict normal organized crime in the city. The 1989 Tim Burton movie made up it's own crimeboss with Jack Palance's Carl Grissom, but this was only two years after the creation of Falcone in Miller's Year One, and almost a full decade before he would be expanded as a character in Long Halloween. Most modern live-action Batman properties feature Falcone in one form or another. |
Our Falcone StoryWe changed very little in Falcone's story. He has a limited number of appearances so it's actually possible to look at his entire contribution to comics and fine tune it to fit our timeline. We fleshed out his early life a little, taking a lot of cues from the Godfather because... well... that's the right thing to do. We included his possible affair with a woman who MIGHT be Catwoman's mother simply to keep that mystery in play; we actually don't want to know if it's true or not, just that it's possible. We also used the incident where he was shot to encite the war between the Falcone and Maroni families, but also wanted them in a state of uneasy truce by the time Batman shows up: Gotham's criminals should be living fat off the hog when he first explodes his way into Falcone's dining room.
We used a few ideas from some modern Batman stories to flesh out the years after Batman's first appearance; specifically the burning of a massive store of cash actually committed by the Joker in Dark Knight, and the single night of being hounded by the best assassins in the world as depicted in the Batman: Arkham Origins video game. He's also the first casualty in the evening of Two-Face's creation that leads to a massive shift in power... as he should be. |
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