From the official police records of James Gordon, Police Commissioner of Gotham City

Case No: HS 06/15/39/5434

Incident: Hostage Situation

Reporting Officer: Lt. James Gordon Date: Jun. 15, 1939

At 0820 hrs on June 15th, 1939, I arrived at Gotham City Police Headquarters for my first day on the job and was met by my new tour guide, Detective Arnold Flass. The office was in complete disarray, but something told me this wasn’t out of the ordinary here. The phones were ringing off the hook, and I could tell something rather big was afoot, as Flass named off people in mock greeting while we toured down the hall to Commissioner Gillian Loeb’s office. We didn’t so much as sit down to go through our orientation proceedings when the racket outside got the best of him, and our superior demanded to know what was going on. As it turned out, there was a hostage situation taking place in the belly of downtown. Some psychotic character holding up an orphanage. The only name given was “Zsasz”.

I only mention all these extra details to make it clear that I was NOT given proper procedural rundowns (which had been planned for that morning), nor was I adequately briefed with information on the suspect or given any filework the department had on him. I know now - there were plenty of previous offenses to speak of.

On the way to the crime scene, Flass offhandedly remarked that “The Falcones must have big business going down tonight,” and then tried changing the subject when I asked what he meant. I eventually got an answer from him. He said, “Whenever one of these crazies get outta Blackgate, it’s ‘cause the major crime syndicates have something going down and they want the department’s attention focused elsewhere.” Apparently, Gotham’s primary penitentiary is so full of crooked faculty members that the mob bosses are able to plan and direct the “escapes” of the very criminals it houses. I couldn’t believe what he was telling me, and in such a dismissive way. As if it was no big deal.

We arrived at the scene at 1843 hrs, just outside of the orphanage. I counted 8 police cars and a bunch of lazy cops standing around doing nothing. Some of them carried on a series of conversations completely unrelated to the case at hand. I asked around to see what the situation was while Flass leaned against our car and lit up a smoke. “It’s Zsasz again, talking crazy and threatening the usual.”

Turns out the ‘usual’ meant slitting throats. These were CHILDREN we’re talking about here! His full name was Victor Zsasz, an apparent paranoid schizophrenic who made it his mission to ‘free his victims from the world of zombies’ by sending them into the next life. He would then carve a tally of his kills into his own skin. He occasionally escapes from the psych ward of the penitentiary and wreaks havoc on randomly picked, unsuspecting victims, but more and more he seems to create hostage situations and make incoherent demands when the authorities arrive. They said he targets women more frequently, as they’re easier to overpower. Given these facts, I was terrified for the lives of the children inside the building. No one, and I mean NO ONE else on the scene seemed worried. To them, it seemed already a done deal.

After a time of nothing happening, I took it upon myself to try and take control of the situation. I yelled up to the top (fourth floor), “Victor! This is Lieutenant James Gordon! I wanna talk to you!”

At that point, the perpetrator stuck his head out the window to look down at me. He then came out more fully, and I could see in one arm he held a little girl (probably 11 or 12 years old) in one arm, and a knife firmly placed to her throat. I aimed my gun at him, but couldn’t get a clear enough shot. He yelled down some obscenities, coupled with demands I couldn’t quite make any sense of.

“Victor, how many people are in there with you?” I yelled. He said there weren’t many ‘anymore’.

“Wasting your time, there, Jimbo,” Flass put his hand on my arm and lowered my gun. “You’re just another one of them zombies to him. We’re gonna hafta go in.”

“Then why isn’t anyone doing anything?!?” I erupted.

“Merkel’s figuring the best way in now,” he pointed over to an officer’s car. Inside, Officer Stanley Merkel (as I was later introduced to him) sat in the driver’s seat, fumbling through what I assumed to be blueprints of the place.

I couldn’t sit by any longer. This was NOT how things were done in Chicago, bad as it may have been at times. Despite a bunch of cops shouting at me to stand down, I ran into the orphanage and then up several sets of stairs. I quietly made my way through the hallways of the fourth floor. They were littered with dead kids, a couple of adults as well. I could hear the muffled voice of Victor as I made my way to the furthest room, blithering some sermon-like schlock about being set free for the first time and living amongst the angels. The door was firmly closed, so I decided I had to take him by surprise and kicked the door down. There were more bodies on the ground, and through my peripherals I could see a congregation of kids of differing ages and sizes huddled close together in the corner.

Victor had his back to me, but the motion he made was unmistakable - even from my vantagepoint. I shot him three times, though I knew it was three times too late. He stumbled and fell through the window, the lifeless body of the girl he’d been holding crumpling to the floor in front of me. I rustled up the remaining children and assured them they were safe now.

Many of the men in blue were quick to blame me when I got back down to the street. They blamed me for the girl’s death, but I ask you, how many of the other children were killed while the rest of the squad waited around for all that time? From where I’m standing, things could have gone a lot better had we all been properly briefed on how this criminal operates, and had solid measures been in place for dealing with him. This wasn’t a hostage situation at all, it was a slaughter. A slaughter that the GCPD could have cut down by a LOT.

Victor survived the gunshots. A cop car broke his fall and they were able to get him medical attention in time to save him. I won’t give my two cents on that. I’ll just say that locking him back up in a compromised facility (in a ward where psychopaths get a free pass from the death penalty) is utter nonsense. 13 kids died tonight. 6 adults too. My first day on the force after my transfer.

I stand by what I did. Let me know what the ‘proper procedures’ should have been and I’ll tell you exactly where you shove them.

From the confessions of Bruce Wayne

From the years 1925 to 1934, I lived under the tutelage of one Mister Alfred Pennyworth. Alfred was a man of England, and had been working under my parents as the family butler since the Great War. You see, Wayne Enterprises was a multifaceted business, and one of the things it dealt in was military-grade weaponry, especially during the Great War. Alfred had been one of the generals involved in overseeing the purchasing and giving approvals of new military weapons technologies for the British ranks. During that time, he and my father struck up a lasting friendship, and when the war had come to an end Alfred had determined he would prefer to stay in America. It was then that my parents took him in and granted him the responsibilities of looking after their home and - when they were too occupied with their business ventures - their only child. Upon their untimely deaths, Alfred became my sole guardian and caretaker. This is also why my manner of writing and speaking are somewhat filled with an English dialectal and British colloquialisms, as many have pointed out to me over the years.

During those early days, Alfred took it upon himself to ensure I was provided the absolute finest education possible. One might even consider he had gone too far in these endeavors, working with my family’s partners to invest a significant amount of my inheritance towards the employ of the world’s leading minds in various subjects. As, ironically, many of those top minds came out of Germany (the former enemy), he had also enrolled me in courses to master the German language so that I might better communicate with my renowned tutors. I also learned French and some Swedish for the very same reason. Some of these prized professors included, but were not limited to: Marie Curie, in the field of Chemistry, as well as a host of top German prodigies; Albert Einstein in the field of Physics, as well as many leading Frenchmen on the subject; Nikola Tesla in the field of Engineering; and in the field of Psychiatry - a subject I was emphatically entranced with - I had the privilege of studying under such legends as Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud.

My training was not limited to that of academia, however. As I was entirely schooled in-home, I had very little chance to engage in team sports. As such, I took a liking to a more self-practiced physical education, mainly that of the martial arts. Alfred flew in a host of leading experts in that field as well, predominantly so that I would at last shut up about it.

On that end, I trained under Barney Ross, an American who grew up in the mean streets of Chicago and had been a 1933 two-division world champion in the discipline of boxing. He had won in the lightweight, light welterweight, and welterweight divisions. For fencing, I studied under Ndo Nadi, the famed Italian gold medal Olympian. In the Japanese empty-handed arts of Karate, my sensei had been one Gichin Funakoshi (as well as a few of his top disciples) in the forms of Shōrei-ryū and Shōrin-ryū. I learned to wrestle under Ed Lewis, the 1920 world heavyweight champion (because at the time, I had not yet grown enough to know what class of man I would blossom into). Grand Master Lau Bun taught me in the Chinese martial arts of Kung Fu. In Judo - a close-combat form dealing with locks and grips - my master was Mitsuyo Maeda, a figure who played a fundamental part in spreading the form to Brazil (where it has thrived and evolved ever since). Master Maeda had won over 2000 fights and had traveled the world to teach the sacred discipline through his many tours. Lastly, in the form of kickboxing, I had various tutors in the system of Muay Thai, which had been gaining in popularity ever since the war.

In 1935, when I was 23 years of age, I left home to travel the world. The 1930s had been a decade known for the Great Depression, and it seemed no amount of my philanthropic efforts were doing any good for the citizens of Gotham. I had none of the answers to the economic oppression that plagued the city. And what was more, the criminal underworld had successfully sunk its claws into every facet of government and law enforcement. Rather than continue the fight, I sought to get away, much to the delight of Alfred, who merely wanted a semblance of peace to permeate in my adult years. I meandered about, continuing my studies as I went, and reconnected with past instructors at my leisure. Alas, the world was too big, and as ragged and tattered as Gotham had been, it was at last where I felt I belonged. I possessed a certain sense of duty and responsibility to return and to continue the fight I had abandoned in my time of weakness. I vowed to never again sway from this path, as I couldn’t bear the thought of what happened to me reoccurring to another child.

Upon my return in the early months of 1939, very little had changed in Gotham. In fact, the situation had become significantly worse. I couldn’t help but imagine that this had been a result of my own selfish behavior, as the Wayne Foundation (the philanthropic entity created in honor of my parents) failed to stay the course during my travels, and its charitable work had been all but abandoned.

Of the day I returned home, I cannot remember much. In fact, many of these early instances are blurred. Certain conversations stand out, but nothing more. It is not until the night I first struck out as my alter-ego that the memories assume a more concrete form within my mind. I shall delve more into that later, however.

From what I can remember, I arrived at Wayne Manor, my humble abode, and knocked on the door uneasily, as if I were a stranger. Perspiration exuding from my palms, I waited to no avail, and in the end, was left with no choice but to ring the doorbell, feeling a proper nitwit as I did so. Alfred opened the door, and I sensed a cold strain overtake him. He was at once filled with an utter shock, and I daresay, not a pleasant one.

“Master Wayne…! Is it really you?”

“I’ve returned, old chap. It is good to see you again.”

A tear materialized in his eye, and in an attempt to conceal his loss of composure he gathered me into a welcoming embrace. I returned his hug, but as I was still deep in a bout of depression, I felt no such spilling over of emotions. I was too exhausted, and too jaded to receive the warm welcome as intended. Breaking from our hold, he clasped my shoulders and looked me over speculatively, both eyes now sparkling. I still cannot know whether his tears were summoned by happiness at seeing me once again, or sadness for the hopes and dreams he’d had for me seemingly being all at once crushed.

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He had changed quite a bit, physically, in my short absence. His hairline, already decreased to the uppermost point of his skull when I’d first met him, had been further decimated to the very back of his head. He was never a stalky fellow, but he appeared to me now almost sickly thin. Indeed, as a man of sixty years, he appeared much older to me. One thing that had not changed was his attire, as the man prided himself on being dressed impeccably no matter the occasion. His suits were of the finest materials, his ties plain of color but dignified and well knotted.

“It’s been a while, young sir.”

“It has. I’m home to stay, Alfred. The world was too big and too grandiose for the likes of me, I’m afraid.”

“Well… if that’s your decision, then I suppose I’ll just have to live with it.” He smiled solemnly, wiping at his eyes and removing himself from my path inside.

The honest butler, bless his heart, could not for the life of him understand why I had returned. Instead of opposing me on my decision, however, he pledged his loyalty in doing whatever it took to help me achieve my aims. I am sure, to this day, there was a part of him that always knew this would ultimately mean aiding me in my plot for revenge, as it had consumed my younger years through frequent fits of rage and a general preference for isolation. Those first few days upon my return were marked with a peculiar sense of mourning on his part.

Be that as it may, our morning ritual remained mostly the same as it had been before my years away. I would wake up early and complete the first of my daily workout routines, and then retire to the kitchen area where I would find the old man engrossed in his newspaper stories. There is one morn in particular that stands out to me, however, as it may well have been the first step in reigniting my quest for vengeance.

“The bloody press is eating that poor bugger alive, I tells ye. First hour on the job, and he’s the only one who did any lick ‘o good, as far as I can gather.” Alfred tapped angrily at his newspaper then, speaking to no one in particular.

“What the devil are you on about now? And aren’t I the one who’s supposed to be sitting lazily at the breakfast table?”

“Lazily, me arse. I been cookin’ fer ye all morning, you’re very welcome. S’on the table.”

I had been back only a few weeks then. It was early morning on a Tuesday, and it was nary a rare occasion for my caretaker to be in such a foul mood and at such an early hour. I managed to catch a passing glance over his shoulder at his reading material. It read: Hero Lieutenant From Chicago Proves A Bad Fit For Gotham. The good butler turned his head to look upon me scornfully.

“That crazy bastard, Victor Szasz, went on another rampage. Took an orphanage hostage, he did. While these nancies stood around outside, this new fellow runs in and rightfully shoots the bugger! And now here the press is hanging him out to dry. Blaming all the deaths on him. No justice, Master Wayne, no justice at all.” He stood up then and slammed the paper on the table.

I sat down in his place and skimmed through the article for myself. It was a terrible tragedy involving children in an orphanage. A psychotic murderer by the name of Victor Zsasz had unleashed utter mayhem upon the place, it was simply awful. The man Alfred had been speaking of, however, went by the name of Jim Gordon. Much of the writings rambled on about his failures to follow protocol, and so on. What gained my attention the most, however, were the details provided about the man’s history. He had been hailed as one of Chicago’s finest men in blue, a hero who played a significant part in cleaning up the streets over the last decade. He had recently made the difficult decision to return to the town he grew up in, in hopes of lending the experience he’d garnered towards making an impactful difference in a place he used to call home. His aims were eerily similar to my own, it had seemed.

“Ye’d think he was completely mad fer wanting to return to this city and clean things up fer such bloody ingrates.”

“Was that not the same reason I gave you when I walked back through the front door last month?” I placed the paper back upon the table and began nibbling away at the meal he’d placed before me.

“Exactly. Bloody imbecile, ye ask me. He should just go on back to where he’s appreciated.”

The idea struck me then. It only made sense that one would require an ally within the GCPD if they were wanting to bring about real change. What better person to begin with than an outsider, someone who had yet to be tempted or perverted by the crooked political constructs of the town? That was the moment I had determined I needed to investigate this Chicago Lieutenant - a task that would bleed into the coming months ahead.

“So what’s on the schedule for today, Alfred?”

“Ye’ve another meeting with Lucius at ten. I don’t like ye spending so much time with him though. More screws loose than I have, he does.”

“He’s positively genius. The stuff he’s been working on, my good man, it’s…”

“Dangerous. Takes all the lab work upon himself, no help. ‘Course, that was ‘til you came back. God only knows what horrendous experiments he’s been putting ye through since then.”

“We’re simply building prototypes, Alfred. There’s nothing dangerous about it.” That, of course, had been a lie. While so many of Wayne Enterprises’ resources had been spent on weaponry over the past two decades, I took it upon myself to attempt a shift into the production of protective equipment instead. Weaponry had consistently been getting more powerful and, consequently, far more deadly, and so it only made sense to me that our armors should be improving in effectiveness at a similar rate. In testing the new fabrics, however, I had taken it upon myself to act as a test subject in brandishing the suits during various field tests. This included heavy bludgeoning, knife slashing, and unleashing live gunfire upon my person.

“That’s a bloody lie, Master Wayne, and I’m offended ye’d even try me with it. I’ve known dear Lucius a lot longer than ye, and don’t ye forget it.”

It was true enough. Lucius had been another good friend to my father and mother while I was growing up. After discovering what a brilliant inventor the man had been, my father took him on as his personal apprentice in the labs, and soon placed him at the head of the experimental research and development division. Such a move was no small thing in those days, as Lucius was a black man, and the resistance to him being in any place of authority was strong. Despite the many morally gray territories of business my father dabbled in over the years, or any ethically questionable decisions he made during that time, one thing I hold firm on is that matters of race were never a subject for discourse with him. However, that protection only went so far, and along with his death buried any hopes of Mr. Fox climbing further up the totem pole. Luckily enough for him, the board allowed him to carry on in his current capacity after my parents’ deaths, as a tribute to their friendship. Unfortunately, their reliance upon the R&D division lessened more and more over time, and the resources allocated towards its inventions served to reflect this change. In short, the good inventor had to be clever in order to get anything accomplished at all.

“With all the tidings going on in Germany, you know as well as I do it’s only a matter of time until we’re pulled into the conflicts. We need to be properly prepared, and I believe Lucius has found a way to protect more lives with his latest fibers.”

“Fibers, ye say? Well, blimey me! I’ll start thinking up new breakfast cereal names on the double for ye’s.”

“Synthetic fabrics, Alfred,” I must admit to never knowing when he was being facetious and when he hadn’t a clue what I was on about. “The kind of hardened plastics that Wayne Enterprises used to be known for.”

Lucius had discovered, quite by accident, a new material with the potential of changing the world as we knew it. The solution was of a cloudy, opalescent nature, and of low viscosity. With it, he created a high strength, heat resistant synthetic fiber which would not break in the same way that nylon would (a synthetic plastic discovered only a few short years prior). Today, we know this as poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide, as it was properly discovered and brought into the public’s eye in 1964 as a marketable substance. This being, of course, due to a complete failure of Wayne Enterprises’ moral obligations. More on that later.

With this new synthetic fiber, Lucius crafted a bi-weaved suit of armor incorporating 15 full layers of the stuff. Essentially, the chains of the polymer aligned in parallel lines where the benzene rings stack with man interchain bonds, due to the interaction of the carbonyl and amino groups along the chain. It should be noted, this was done in order to give a symmetrical and highly ordered structure. There were further aromatic stacking interactions between adjacent strands, which gave the material its high tensile strength. It had then been synthesized in solution from the monomers 1,4-phenylene-diamine (1,4-diaminobenezene) and terepthaloyle chloride (1,4-benzenedicarbonyl chloride) in a condensation reaction. This reaction yielded 2 equivalents of hydrochloric acid as a by-product, essentially exploiting the monomers’ difunctionality and allowing the molecules to be strung together. The solvent used in the reaction was called hexamethylphosphoramide, which was, unfortunately, somewhat carcinogenic, and great care had to be taken to avoid this ill side-effect during synthesis. Post-reaction, the new polymer was filtered, washed, and dissolved in concentrated sulfuric acid and extruded through spinnerets. The string of polymer was then passed through a narrow passage and went through the wet spin process, whereby it was coagulated in sulfuric acid. The filament could then be formed into either a yarn, dried spools, filament pulp, spun-laced sheets, or paper. For our purposes, however, it was weaved into a vest of armor. Proposed to be one of, if not the most comprehensively toughened materials in existence, together he and I had tested the suit against knives and bullets and hammers to measure its strength. The results were nothing short of remarkable, in my own humble opinion. It was fascinating stuff!

Given the current state of the world, it seemed beneficial to pursue the military in an attempt to market the technology and ensure higher overall survival capacities for ground forces. As such, a meeting had been scheduled to give our pitch in just under a week’s time. It was an immensely exciting venture for me to launch into, and so soon after my return.

“Oh, is that it, then? For what purpose, might I ask? And how, pray tell, is dear Lucius testing these ‘life-saving’ materials? Not on a live body, I should hope.” Alfred cocked an eyebrow at me knowingly. He always knew when I was bending the truth, even after all those years of being apart from one another.

“I would suggest you take a look on page one of the paper, Alfred. War’s bubbling again. If we can use our inventions to do good…”

“Then ye’ll finally have achieved all your goals, and peace can return to your world. Aye. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Then ye’d finally be be able to step back and lift that giant weight from your shoulders ye’ve been carrying all these years.”

“You disapprove?”

“No, I merely doubt the path you’re on. Not because I don’t believe it’s for the better of the world, but because I know you’re still struggling to find your place within it. And when I look to the future, do ye know what I see at the end of the tunnel, Master Wayne?” I could only stare at him and wait for the inevitable end of his lecture. “Only darkness. That tunnel is neverending, Bruce. No matter how much ye try to make sense of things that’ve happened to ye, there will always be more lingering questions left in the end that will drive ye mad.”

“You’re saying you’d rather I took a wife, popped out a couple whelps, and turned my back to all of the injustices surrounding us?”

“I should hope she’d be doing the whelping. I didn’t say ye had to become entirely selfish. I’m saying this crusade for meaning you’ve been on has become an utter obsession. Sometimes, we must be willing to accept when there are no answers. Sometimes bad things happen, and it’s beyond our abilities to prevent them. Ye take all the world’s problems on your own back as if it was you who caused ‘em in the first place.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, old man.” I remember my blood boiling then. For years I’d harkened back to that conversation, wanting to prove him wrong. I suppose, if I’m being fair, he may have been right about a lot of it after all.

“No, perhaps not.” He decided to end it there, and continued on with his morning duties. He looked tired - exhausted, even. I had only been back for a month, and I could see it in his eyes that he’d already determined to take on the weight of the problems I brought with me, for better or for worse. For that, I am irrefutably guilty.

The rest of the morning had been graciously uneventful. At a few minutes to ten, I arrived at the lab where Lucius had positioned himself motionlessly over a telescope. He was of an age with Alfred. Tall, with a very dark complexion, as he was in fact of African descent. His hair was a steady mix of salt and pepper, and the lines of his face were hard and defined.

“I’m here, Lucius.”

“I think I’ve found the answer to our little carcinogenic problem, Mister Wayne.” He waved a hand in greeting, but did not look away from his experiments.

“Oh? How’s that?”

“I conducted the polymerisation process with a mixture of N-methyl-pyrrolidone and calcium chloride. Less toxic than hexamethylphosphoramide anyway.”

“Brilliant. Can we have a new prototype ready in time for the meeting?”

“Unlikely, but it won’t matter. The logistics behind the synthesis processes would go above their comprehension anyhow. We just have to convince them it’s worthy of the investment.”

“A live demonstration had ought to be cogent enough, I should think.”

“Indeed. That’s if they allow us to get that far.”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“Well, Mister Wayne… it’s my unfortunate duty to report that the military can be a… shall we say, rather fickle entity to reckon with. Your father produced hundreds of similarly well-intentioned prototypes during the war, almost none of which were given approval. Turns out, offensive weaponry is far more valuable to them than protecting human life.”

“Perhaps my father was simply a better inventor than he was a salesman.”

Lucius finally looked up from his tools then and stared at me seriously. Lost in his thoughts for only a few short seconds, he eventually shrugged and moved away from the telescope, beckoning me to take a look for myself.

“Bruce… I don’t want you to get your hopes up. You could be the most charming and convincing salesperson in the world and it still wouldn’t matter a damn bit when the financial estimates are staring them right in the face.”

“Never you worry, my friend. I have a plan for that.”

And I did. To this day, it still stands as one of my finest. We were selling the technology itself, mind you, and not the rights or the means to mass produce the manufactured items. If it did in fact come down to another worldwide war, I intended to self-finance the mass production of the units by selling off all of my stocks in Wayne Enterprises and donating all of the money to the project. It seemed so foolproof at the time, but in my naivety and youth I had failed to fully comprehend the power of greed in all its ferocity. You see, I did not solely possess the ability to sell officially owned property of Wayne Enterprises (despite my name being in the title) to anyone. Simply put, I had to get the Board to sign off on it first, which they refused to do, owing to the philosophy that war was great for business. If the weaponry we were selling had been rendered less effective by high powered armor tech, we would subsequently lose our financial pipeline from the military as a result. Lucius and I were devastated. We were the sole two votes in favor of selling the technology. The other ten Board members had declared it would be best to hold on to the special concoction for a later time, when the world was more ‘ready’ for it.

I had half a mind to steal the technology and leak it to another firm, as I was determined to see it through, but Lucius would not allow it. He did not wish to see me pay such a heavy price under the law if I had been found out. As much as I didn’t care for my own sake, I knew that he himself would also be castigated for his part in the affair, and the penalties afforded to a black man were even harsher than the ones I would face myself. Though it would have been for the greater good of the world, my principles would never allow me to betray a friend so heartlessly.

In the aftermath, the military meeting had been canceled. Lucius and I went back to square one with our experiments, and I had already felt as though my fight had come to an end.