I’m counting the days until Dark Knight Rises. So the recent casting announcements have been very exciting to me. Last time we looked at Anne Hathaway’s character, Selina Kyle. This time, we’ve got Tom (Inception) Hardy playing Bane. And you may be asking “So who the hell is Bane?” Well, therein lies a tale….
Bane is a fairly recent addition to the Batman mythos. In order to understand the Man who Broke the Bat, you need to understand the 90s. The comic book industry was very strange at the time – speculator mentality was rampant, and every publisher was trying to outdo all the others in terms of sheer audacity. Back-issue prices were artificially inflated by a few unscrupulous price guides, and everybody was looking for the next big payoff. It was insane – the most amateurish crap you’ve ever seen could sell a quarter-million copies just because it had shiny silver ink on the cover. If you ever want to see true horror, ask a comics retailer about Turok, Dinosaur Hunter. I guarantee they will have anywhere from fifty to a hundred unsold copies of the first issue in their back room or in the quarter boxes. I worked in a comic shop for most of the 90s, and I still bear the psychic scars.
My favorite part of this was that Bane was in prison serving his father’s life sentence.
That never fails to crack me up – it’s a pretty sweet system of criminal justice. “Man, that guy’s hard to catch. Wait, he’s got a kid? Let’s just lock him up. You want to get a sandwich?”
In a way, it makes SOME sense. Maybe his parental guilt would lead him to turn himself in.