Modern comics depict Batman as having an understandable aversion to guns. This is ironic, given his earliest adventures in Detective Comics depicted him regularly using a pistol. This point is explored in the final chapter of The Bat-Man: First Knight, a retro examination of the Dark Knight’s Great Depression era origins.
Written by Dan Jurgens with art by Mike Perkins, The Bat-Man: First Knight #2 ended with Bruce Wayne pondering using a gun. He had been advised by his one ally, Commissioner Gordon, that he couldn’t keep fighting gangsters without one. Issue #3 finds Bruce still examining his father’s gun collection, his practicality clashing with his idealism.
Batman Learned His Father’s Hatred of Guns
It is revealed that Batman’s aversion to guns is not only because of a moral call to avoid lethal force or his parents’ deaths. He recalls that his father, Dr. Thomas Wayne, had once been called in to perform surgery on multiple gunshot victims. The injured were caught in the crossfire between the police and a group of gangsters. Just as many of the innocents were shot by the lawmen as the criminals they were trying to stop.
Bruce recalls his father swore off hunting as a hobby after that night. Thomas Wayne said he didn’t want to be responsible for inflicting the same damage on any living thing, human or animal. Bruce recalled how shaken his father was by the incident and made a similar oath to never use a gun.
Bruce ultimately remains true to that oath, but not only because of his father’s memory. A conversation with his love-interest, actress Julie Madison, affirms his commitment to non-lethal force. After a night of passion, Bruce finally throws the contents of his father’s gun cabinet into an incinerator.
The Bat-Man: First Knight #3 is now available in comic shops everywhere.
