Slam Bradley
55 years ago - Sam Bradley is born in Chicago.
45 years ago - 10-year-old Sam fights three other boys to stop them from bullying his brother, staying in the fight despite three broken ribs and an ocular hyphema until they are all incapacitated. He earns the lifelong nickname Slam Bradley.
41 years ago - 14-year-old Slam Bradley starts working with the local mob as a runner, getting a dangerous reputation.
38 years ago - 17-year-old Slam enlists in the army to avoid becoming a mob hitter.
34 years ago - 21-year-old Slam finishes his tour with the army and returns to Chicago, where mob enforcers attempt to force him to start working hits. He refuses, hospitalizing them, and enrolls in the police academy, joining the Chicago PD.
30 years ago - 25-year-old Slam's son Samuel is born.
26 years ago - 29-year-old Slam is promoted to sergeant in the Chicago PD but is forced to leave the city when a hit is put on him. He transfers to the GCPD
23 years ago - 32-year-old Slam refuses to accept a bribe, knocking out Lieutenant Harvey Bullock & leaving the GCPD. He becomes a private investigator in Gotham's East End.
18 years ago - 37-year-old Slam takes a job tracking missing dock workers, coming up against the new operations of Oswald Cobblepot. He is unable to prove anything and has to let the case go.
12 years ago - 43-year-old Slam is hired by mayor Rupert Thorne to find Catwoman. Selina Kyle finds him, revealing that she has taken evidence of his corruption from his office to use as leverage for her own safety. Slam walks away from the job choosing to trust Selina.
9 years ago - 47-year-old Slam discovers that Selina Kyle has returned to Gotham's East End. He convinces her she can help protect the people there.
7 years ago - 48-year-old Slam takes apart the street gang trying to recruit Holly Robinson. He and Selina Kyle become closer.
5 years ago - 49-year-old Slam is hunted by Roman Sionis's men, kidnapped, tortured, and nearly killed before he is saved by Holly Robinson.
4 years ago - 51-year-old Slam helps Selina Kyle collect information about the mysterious changes with Batman.
3 years ago - 52-year-old Slam begrudgingly stays in Gotham when Selina Kyle leaves for Europe to raise her daughter, promising to help Holly Robinson.
This character is a DEEP cut. We'll get into just how deep but suffice it to say that we are actually getting into the proto-DC at this point, watching shuffling of narrative chomosomes that will one day become the comic book superhero. There's really no way to get into Slam Bradley without talking about the role he plays in the evolution of comics as a whole.
Still, it also pays just to put that aside, because there is an unmistakable appeal to characters whose premise is delivered entirely in the name. Slam Bradley. You're smiling right now just because you read that.
Still, it also pays just to put that aside, because there is an unmistakable appeal to characters whose premise is delivered entirely in the name. Slam Bradley. You're smiling right now just because you read that.
Slam Bradley's Comic HistoryThe first appearance of Slam Bradley is a pretty important comic: Detective Comics #1, from 1937. He was an invention of Superman creators Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster, but notably a full year before their most popular creation debuted over in Action Comics. That's right; Slam Bradley predates even Superman himself.
While Detective Comics would of course go on to become the home of a certain nocturnal crimefighter, at the time it was much more of what it said on the tin; an anthology book featuring stories about Detectives. Knowing what we know now, about how Siegel & Shuster were going to go on and create Superman, drawing influences from characters like Hugo Danner & Doc Savage, it's fun to see them drawing on those same influences here; particularly in Slam Bradley's penchant for getting his shirt ripped. His main motivation seemed to be getting into brawls. We should also acknowledge here just how unbelievably racist comics were at this time in history. Bradley's first fight was with a crowd of offensive Asian stereotypes... but of course, this is Detective Comics #1 we're talking about. |
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Detective Comics became one of DC's most popular books, thanks in no small part to one specific character introduced in issue #27 who I'm given to understand has become pretty popular even today. Slam Bradley stories continued to appear as backups for the rest of the decade, with the character continuing to use the fact that he was a private eye as an excuse to get into fights, until his last appearance in issue #151 in 1949.
Slam wasn't fully forgotten from DC history, however. He appeared in a fun throwback story in Detective Comics #500 in 1981 featuring a gathering of classic characters from across the history of the book, all working together on one case, and a version of Slam Bradley (later explained to be his son, Slam Bradley, Jr) was seen working in the Metropolis PD in the 90s. His big return, however, came in the pages of Ed Brubaker & Darwyn Cooke's "Trail of the Catwoman" in Detective Comics #759-762, where Slam, now in his 50s, investigates the disappearance of Catwoman. The redesigned version of Bradley became one of the main supporting cast members of their ongoing and groundbreaking run on Catwoman, where his son is apparently even the father of Selina's daughter, Helena Kyle. It's really this role that makes Slam a character that needs to be included in our timeline, although we'll have to get a little bit creative with how we use him. |
Our Slam Bradley StoryFirst of all, this is 100% the Darwyn Cooke version of Slam Bradley. We are all huge fans of the classic Raymond Chandler hard-boiled detective, and the closer any story can get to featuring Phillip Marloe as played by Humphrey Bogart, the more onboard we are. This should absolutely be the vibe of Slam Bradley. (We're going to just politely skip over the torn-shirt, racist streetfight version of the character.) To that end we really worked to set up his history in Chicago, his interaction with the mob there, and his move to Gotham.
We tried to give a sense that he is working a long career in Gotham, particularly in a pre-Batman Gotham, navigating the murky, morally grey, crime-ridden back alleys as a private investigator trying to make an honest buck in a town that stopped printing them years ago, but tough enough that he still manages to be a part of that landscape. We also made a small change here. Your mileage may vary on this, but we think it works just fine. Bradley is going to be a romantic partner for Selina as he works with her in the East End. I appreciate that their age difference might be a lot, but everyone here is an adult, and this felt right for both of their stories. When Selina takes her daughter and leaves for Europe, we made a point of mentioning that Slam doesn't particularly approve... |
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