Thomas Wayne
67 years ago - Thomas Wayne is born in Gotham City, heir to the Wayne Fortune
62 years ago - 5-year-old Thomas's families valet & butler Jarvis Pennyworth's son Alfred Pennyworth is born.
52 years ago - 15-year-old Thomas's parents die in a plane crash, instilling in him a desire to make the Wayne name matter to Gotham City.
49 years ago - 18-year-old Thomas starts studying pre-med at Gotham University.
45 years ago - 22-year-old Thomas graduates. He first meets undergrad Martha Kane, and begins med school.
44 years ago - 23-year-old Thomas starts dating Martha Kane, despite her mother's misgivings. Alfred Pennyworth leaves for England.
41 years ago - 26-year-old Thomas and Martha Kane are married. He finishes med school, and begins his residency at Gotham General.
38 years ago - 29-year-old Thomas completes his residency & begins his surgical fellowship.
37 years ago - 30-year-old Thomas reads the proposed business and technology strategies of Lucius Fox. They meet, and he makes arrangements to hire Fox when he finishes school.
35 years ago - 32-year-old Thomas finishes his fellowship. He meets Leslie Thompkins as she begins her residency.
34 years ago - 33-year-old Thomas brings Lucius Fox onto the Wayne Enterprises board of directors.
33 years ago - 34-year-old Thomas's valet Jarvis Pennyworth passes away. Alfred Pennyworth, Jarvis's son & Thomas's childhood friend, returns from England, meets Thomas's son Bruce Wayne, and chooses to stay on with the family as their butler. Carmine Falcone is brought to Wayne Manor in the middle of the night after being shot. Thomas saves his life.
32 years ago - 35-year-old Thomas & Martha Wayne set up the trusts to fund Leslie Thompkins's clinic.
31 years ago - 36-year-old Thomas's son Bruce Wayne falls through an abandoned well into the cave systems beneath Wayne Manor. While taking him out to the movies to try to deal with his trauma from the event, Thomas & Martha Wayne are gunned down by a mugger.
Thomas and Martha Wayne have certainly gone on to become characters in their own right, as the larger mythology of Batman and his world are constantly examined from every possible angle. Still, it's very important to remember that almost everything we know about them was introduced later on. Originally, in much the same way that all we knew about Jor-El and Lara was that they were alien scientists who put their baby in a rocket, all we knew about Thomas & Martha was that fateful evening under that street lamp.
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Thomas Wayne's Comic HistoryBatman's backstory was first depicted in Detective Comics #33, six issues and as many months after Batman's debut. We see one of the earliest and most famous comic book origin stories ever told... and it is remarkably simple. This origin has of course been rehashed and retold a hundred zillion times to the point where it's essentially become American folklore. Come children, gather round, and let me sing you the tale of Joe Chill, a string of pearls, and the Mark of Zorro.
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Each of those elements, of course, has been added to the very brief little story told in those few panels of that original story. We've had even more extensive stories that have spun out of it over the years. In the Silver Age, we eventually learned that Thomas Wayne had actually worn a version of a Batman costume of his own to a costume party, where he'd helped thwart a robbery, leaving an impression on young Bruce that would influence him in the future. Certain thematic elements were also added to the story of his parents in the 80s post-crisis overhaul to Batman's continuity, like Thomas's brief interaction with Carmine Falcone, and his friendship with Leslie Thompkins.
Modern comics have started to get even more creative with the story of Thomas Wayne. The Earth One continuity, which serves largely as the inspiration for the current Matt Reeves movies, depicts Thomas Wayne as having run for mayor of Gotham and having a certain amount of secrets in his past involving Arkham Asylum. This sort of thing goes way, way further in the Telltale Batman Games and the tie-in comics Sins of the Father... I'm deliberately not getting into this in a rare attempt to avoid spoilers because I really do think these are worth enjoying, but suffice it to say this is a big departure from the classic Thomas Wayne. Of course, if you really want to find a departure for the elder Wayne, look no further than the Flashpoint storyline, where Bruce is killed by the mugger, and Thomas becomes a much grittier, gun-toting, super-edgelord version of Batman. This guy turns up so often, that it's actually hard to find art of Thomas that ISN'T this character. |
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Our Thomas Wayne StoryGiven that the original role of Thomas Wayne is really no more complicated than that three-panel origin back in 1939, literally everything else we've ever known about him is a retcon, so what do we really want our version of Thomas Wayne to be?
I think the core here, really, is that we don't want to set up the Waynes as being heroic or sinister characters with strange stories of their own, we just want them to provide the best building blocks they can to play their part in Bruce's story. For Thomas, that means he needs to be a really decent guy who can impart a sense of compassion and duty in his almost definitely a little-bit-on-the-spectrum son, and who is just a decent person trying to do right in the world, despite being a Billionaire. |
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