Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman: Vengeance of Bane, Issue #1!

I hear this whole Knightfall arc is one of the best of the ‘90s, bro. I’m going to start at the beginning with the Prelude to Knightfall collection of stories that span both the OG Batman series and the OG Detective Comics series.

But before that, we have a semi-one shot called Batman: Vengeance of Bane to kick everything off! Will Tom Hardy make an appearance?? I sure hope so!

Batman: Vengeance of Bane, Issue #1 [January, 1993]
Written by: Matt Wagner
“Vengeance of Bane”

64-Page Special?? Fuuuuuck. Well, I’m going to write a lot right now, and you’re going to not want to read it. Might as well hit the “x” at the top right of your screen, jerk.

Santa Prisca, that fake country in the Carribean? Many years ago there was an attempted coup. Emboldened by the circumstances in Cuba, the people of Santa Prisca were like “fuck that” and rose up against the junta, but they failed. “The dead were buried and the living arrested. The three-day battle in the capital left many questions to be asked.” Yeah, such as “who are you?” and “what are you doing here?” and “where are my pants?”

Names were named and people were taken to a nearby place called Pena Duro – The Hard Stone. A pregnant woman was brought to Pena Duro because, per Santa Prisca’s laws, the unborn child would be charged with its father’s crimes! Sounds legit to me. Maybe that’s why my own life sucks so much!

Anyway, the baby was born and immediately sentenced to life in Pena Duro’s prison. Baby Bane. Did you see that coming? I hope so, or else you’re not much of a thinker, are you?

The mother was imprisoned as the baby’s guardian. The narrator is a man they call The Zombie. I don’t know who calls him “The Zombie”, but he should get back on his morning radio show where he belongs. “CRAZY JACK AND THE ZOMBIE ON WPGF!”

“I watched the boy grow over the years. Even as I watched his mother waste away. Dr. Ruger saw nothing. I could see her dying a little each day. Hope is a living thing. It must be nurtured. But the boy was still a boy. He grew. He thrived. He knew no other place. He learned every hidden corner of Pena Duro. Every secret. It was here that he learned of life. And at far too tender an age he learned of other things.”

*child pulls out Inmate #871’s extensive contraband dildo collection*

By the time Little Bane was six, Mother was starting to kick the fucking bucket. She lied on her deathbed all sorts of decrepit and, you know, drooling. “The boy would not allow himself a tear. He had become as hard as this place. His mother was weak. For that she died.”

Hey, I was promised some ketchup with my corpse!

The Junta General Warden McMustache speaks to the little six-year-old about what to do with him now. His mother left him to the state, and the state is no one’s mother, you feel me? You will barely be taken care of, is the point here. You dig? “You must fend for yourself, little one!” the general says smilingly. “I am releasing you from protective custody and into general population. That is all.”

He gets to hang out with the other inmates! Lots of roughhousing coming up in the future. Scuffles and tussles. “I was restricted to the infirmary block and could not watch over him,” says The Zombie. “The shame I felt.”

Li’l Bane sits in his cell hugging his Teddy bear. A large shirtless man in the adjoining cell is like “come closer, little boy, I wanna feel ur nethers” but the kid is understandibly frightened. “We will become good friends tomorrow,” the man says, showing off his mess of crooked teeth and his gold chain nose ring.

The kid got no sleep in his cell that night. Maybe some Wheaties in the morning will boost his spirits! Maybe some PBS cartoons. Hey, wait! They don’t have that stuff in prison!

The next day, the man grabs his shoulder not ungently. “We will become friends today, eh? You would like to work for me, would you not, niño?”

“That boy does not want your filthy hand on him, puerco,” says another nearby man in the shadows. Li’l Bane is even more afraid of this new guy. His name is Trogg, and he has killed many right here in Pena Duro. And he will do it again right now! Like this: *snaps neck*

Trogg tells the man to let Bane go and then uppercuts the guy on the chin. The kid gets knocked off the ledge of the cell block and plummets to his “death” below. As in, the boy in him died and the man in him was born. And that man’s name was “Nipsey Russell”. They’ve just made a movie about a mermaid, I don’t understand the reason why. Not enough woman to make love to, and too much fish to fry! Heh heh. Oh, Nipsey.

Oh shit, man, I’m tripping balls.

Li’l Bane wakes up from his bout of unconsciousness in a dark room with a single spotlight on the Teddy bear, who gets up on its own and starts walking away. It heads toward a bright-ass light, which is caused by a shiny, yellow, future version of himself. “We are one,” the figure says. “I am as you will be many years from now.”

The kid is in disbelief! This big, burly, hunk of man right here? Hubba hubba!

“A physical and mental paragon. The living embodiment of human superiority. The blood of kings runs in you. The blood of your father. The world is yours and will be yours one day. Men will be like cattle before you. Like sheep.”

Li’l Bane is about two seconds away from picking his nose.

“Only one danger stands in the way of your mastering the world,” the shiny figure of his future self tells him. “Fear. The fear that lies at the heart. Only this can keep you from what is yours.”

The figure points behind the kid at a scary bat with glowing yellow eyes! Oh dear! Oh no! It swoops down to the kid, who screams.

…and wakes up in the infirmary, head all bandaged up. It’s 31 days later, he’s been in a coma for a month. And now he’s ready to fuck some shit up around the prison, yo. Fear be damned! He approaches the big, hairy, shirtless man in the adjoining cell, brandishing a shiv. “Do you still want me to work for you?” Li’l Bane asks as the gleam in his eye makes him look hella deranged.

Watch out, DJ Qualls is comin’ to getcha!

So this guy dies, obviously. The guards are beside themselves with anger and fear. The warden has things to say! “It was the boy. By God, he has turned feral! I will not have such abominations in my prison. He is a bane to everything holy!”

Nice one, sir. Very subtle. He instructs the guards to throw the kid in the hole. “He will have hair on his chest before I release him!”

Trogg watches all the hubbub and smiles from his cell.

Li’l Bane spends his days killing rats in the hole. “The cell was below the level of the sea at high tide. And each night the ocean would flood it. And each night he would fight for his life. Hatred gave him the strength to hold on. Hatred and the promise of the man he would become.”

Soon he learned to even like the flooded cell! He caught fish with his teeth and swam around like a penguin.

“His entire world was the length of three short paces. They could not confine his mind. In his mind he travelled beyond his tomb. He travelled outside those walls using meditation techniques all his own.”

We see Bane all grown up, sinewy and muscular. Looks like my dude has been doing burpees for 15 years! His meditation techniques turn his eyes nice and green. During meditation, he seeks out the big scary bat that fucked with him during his coma. He’d stab it multiple times. He’d make it eat his dick. And the day he finally killed it, fear was killed within him.

Bane looks like Iggy Pop. 10 years in the hole will do that to ya.

“He embarrassed the warden by refusing to die.”

So, after all this time, the warden was like “fuck it” and threw Bane back into the general population. Maybe someone will avenge that one guy’s death? Here’s hoping, it’s nearly lunchtime and no one wants some rat-eating boy roaming the cells.

The other inmates do in fact the opposite of what the warden wanted. They start worshiping Bane. Giving him high fives and the like. So many wanted to help him, to be in his inner circle. An American named Bird was one of them. “You got the power, kid,” Bird said. He doesn’t look much like a bird, but he has a bird! It’s on his shoulder, see? He also has a fucking mullet.

He mostly thinks Bane has some sort of magic power that could help him fly over the walls. He’s got a score to settle in Gotham, you know? Someone stole his pie and he killed the pie-stealer while a porky kid witnessed it and now he needs to kill the porky kid. I definitely made that all up.

Yo, are those harlequin romances? Very nice!

Overtime, Bird taught Bane to read. Bane became docile. Nice. A Good Boy. He was reading three books a day and learned how to read in six languages: English, Latin, Portuguese, Esperanto, Pig Latin, and Horse Latin. Soon he read every book in the prison library and craved more. More! MORE! So Bane arranged to have outsiders smuggle in books instead of stuff like cigarettes or iPods or remote-controlled robot toys.

He also did one thousand push-ups, sit-ups, and pull-ups per day, which is 1,000 more than I would do with a gun to my head. He meditated instead of slept. He ate leafy greens instead of Sloppy Joes even though he really likes Sloppy Joes. Achieving perfection was the goal.

Sometimes Bane had to fight people to stay Top Dog around the prison. He always won.

And he hung around Bird because he was jealous of his mullet. Also, Bane wants to know all he can about Gotham City. What’s it like there? Are there any Bat Men? Because that would be awful, son.

Yes, there are Bat Men. Specifically there is one Bat Man. And they call him Batman. “Nobody knows who he is or what his game is. But Gotham after dark is his. He’s taken down every major hood in the city. The only ones who aren’t scared of him are crazy,” explains Bird to a very intrigued Bane.

“I will meet this Batman some day,” Bane says, rubbing his hands together as if he’s about to feast upon a delectable roast goose. “I will destroy him.”

Soon, Bane became obsessed with Batman and not in a sexual way! I don’t think so, at any rate. It may have been a little sexual, actually. Hard to say. But it gave Bane purpose, a reason to bust out of Pena Duro someday. He’s starting to realize how much of a caged animal he is, and it’s starting to fill him with RAGE! RRRAAGGHHH!

“The Warden was more than satisfied to see the inmates annihilate one another. But when Bane’s body count reached more than thirty men, it became a serious matter.”

So they moved Bane to solitary. Meanwhile, General Warden McMustache oversees medical experiments that confuse and bewilder, even stymie, him. Inmates are getting injected with a mysterious substance and dying horribly! Exploding hearts and crushed pelvises, chopped-up large intestines, ears pumped full of Justin Bieber music. It’s becoming too much, they’ll need someone strong and robust who will withstand these injections. And Warden knows just the man…

Bane gets strapped up to doohickeys and injected with Venom.

Bane, you silly boy, you need to just embrace the weird piss we’re sticking into your body!

Doctors were happy that Bane wasn’t dying. They started placing implants in Bane’s skull with which they could administer drugs directly to the brain. Bane was accommodating, believing that this was the way to achieve the perfection he had dreamt of achieving. The drug would ultimately fuse the two sides of the brain together more so than the corpus callosum. I don’t know what this means exactly, but Bane is pleased with it!

Here was the plan: Bane “dies” so that they can take his “corpse” and throw it in the “ocean” for the “sharks” to get. Although Bane doesn’t actually die and fighting the sharks just makes him stronger! And then, freedom! For the first time in his life he could go to Potbelly and get a sandwich. Things were looking up Milhouse!

“And yet he returned to Pena Duro. He returned from the dead. He returned from freedom.”

We see Bane grab the shit out of General Warden McMustache and drag him out into the rain. Not because he deserved it, but because he deserved it! And the other inmates watch loyally as the army helicopter shows up to meet Bane’s demands to save the warden’s life. To get them all out of the prison. “You will all die,” the warden warns. “They will hunt you down like dogs.”

Maybe so, Chief. But guess what… uh, you gonna get kicked out of the helicopter right now, buddy. Say hi to the sharks for me! *kick*

Now it’s time to head to Gotham City, gentlemen! Now to pay a visit to the Bat!

“Months passed. Bird used his connections to secure us false identities. With the help of Trogg’s talents for electronics and my knowledge of pharmaceuticals, we created a device for Bane.”

You look like you’re ready to step into the ring with Terry “Hulk” Hogan, brother!

While Bird, Trogg, and the Zombie toiled, Bane grew restless watching Mama’s Family reruns. Soon, they outfitted him with headgear and a means to feed that sweet, sweet Venom straight into his veins. Pretty soon, Bane and his Merry Band of Goons start busting heads looking for information on Batman. They infiltrate a lavish party thrown by local mobster Jimmy “No Nose”, who, in spite of his name, actually does sort of have a nose. They ask about the Batman, to which No Nose replies “So why d’you need to know about the Batman? What’s he to you? You another one of these nutcases got a thing for him?”

“I want to kill him,” responds Bane. This draws confusion from the crowd. No Nose likes the sound of this! “Only thing we do know is that wherever there’s action, he shows up,” No Nose tells his newest friend.”

“What sort of action?” asks Bane.

“Major crime. Big stuff. We could lure him out and you could whack him. For that we could be partners,” offers No Nose.

Ha! Guess what, No Nose? Bird here has a score to settle with the likes of you. “Time to bait the trap,” says Bane. “Time for something that will bring the Batman to us.”

And before you know it, No Nose’s whole party gets cancelled on account of the fact that Bane and his guys murder everyone gruesomely. Harvey Bullock investigates with a team of cops later, decides to have the Commissioner involved with this one since it would be funny if Jim Gordon lost another night’s sleep! Hee hee hee!

As Bullock and his team work on the Corpse Gala case, Batman flutters down to the scene. Bane and Co. wait atop an adjacent roof to get a load of the Bat. Bird says that should take him now while his back is turned. Trogg notices how fucking easy it would be. The Zombie chimes in that he currently suspects nothing.

…but ol’ Bane, he doesn’t want to. Not yet. “He’s not like the others,” he says. “This one will take finesse. This one requires talent. This one is mine.”

Later, Gordon gets briefed by Bullock. “Roomful of mooks with handguns gets chopped to itty bits by person or persons unknown. Motive is mob rivalry. But they usually don’t get this messy.”

Bullock suspects a wild card. Gordon tells Bullock to keep the media out of it. Batman watches in the shadows until they wrap up before getting Gordon’s attention. Peekaboo!

“Jimmy Novak was shouldering his way into extortion and unions,” informs Batman. “Teamsters.”

“That would be the Manklin brothers,” says Gordon. “They’re mean enough for a job this ugly.”

We don’t have time for warrants, Commissioner! Not when the Manklins are gonna get a couple of mousetraps on the penis!

Batman leaves. Bane follows him alone. Batman notices movement and flicks on his night-vision. Nothing. Bane hides well, it seems, for a burly and beefy hunk of manly meat!

“He will confront this creature on his own,” thinks the Zombie. “He will follow it into the abyss. He will meet its gaze. And he will destroy it. Or be destroyed.”

Meanwhile, the Manklin brothers are working out in their personal gym together, getting all sweaty and oily. Suddenly, the lights go out. The television goes out. Angus and Dougie and the third guy are like “whuh” and “whut” before Batman drops in and starts knocking heads. They call over their own goons who look like Moe, Larry, and Curly (likely on purpose) and Batman makes short work of these knuckleheads! Nyuk nyuk nyuk!

Pretty soon there’s just one conscious Manklin brother left. He prowls around the rooftop with a gun looking for the Bat while Bane stands up in the shadows. Suddenly, Bane grabs the guy and whispers in his ear: “He is mine. Nobody can kill him but me.”

So he dies.

The cops come in to bust up the joint. Bane finds and confronts Batman. “You do not kill,” he says to Batman one-on-one. “That is strange. A creature cloaked in nightmare. A figure of terror in a city of terror. And yet you will not break the sixth commandment.”

Batman realizes that he’s not dealing with a Manklin! Manklins don’t have Santa Priscan accents, for one thing. “Who are you?” Batman asks.

“You will know my name one day. And on that day you will beg for mercy.”

“You’re threatening me?” Batman shoots a wry sneer. “Get in line.”

“You will scream my name,” Bane says in a very sexual manner. “SCREAM IT!”

Then a bright light. Then a dazed bat. Harvey Bullock is now here to check out the scene. A cop informs Bullock that these men in the room are dead, because Bullock must be blind not to notice such a thing himself.

“Our lucky night,” says Bullock. “I play a hunch that the Manklins whacked Jimmy No-Nose and they’re shooting at each other to give us probable cause to bust in. And then they decide to kill each other and cheat us out of any more overtime.”

A man on the floor stirs and groans. Not dead yet, this guy. But watch! *clunk*

“Who did this to you?” asks a cop. The man on the floor stirs and groans, then tells the cop that it was fuckin’ Batman. Fuckin’ Batman beat everyone up and killed them besides. I guess Batman went psycho or something. He’s killing people now. Ain’t that somethin’ else??

Bullock says the fucker on the floor is lying his ass off. “This ain’t his style,” Bullock says of the Bat.

Meanwhile, Bane’s buddies see Batman billowing up on the roof. “You let him get away,” says Trogg to Bane, but Bane won’t hear it! “I let him live. There is a difference. This is a strange world to me. Complex. Fast. I have to understand this place if I am to rule it.”

“The Batman is Gotham city,” Bane continues. “I will watch him. Study him. And when I know him and why he does not kill, I will know this city.”

“And then Gotham will be MINE!”

And to that, friends, I say: oh dear.

Final Thoughts

Whoa nellie! I gots me a Bane origin story for the ages! Nothing can top the high I’m feeling right now, not even heroin!

OK, maybe heroin will also do the job, but I can’t get any heroin until my mom gets home from work.

At the heroin factory.