Hey everybody, welcome back to the Batfeed, your source for Batman news, lore, and so much more!
Today's video is a little different. I recently came across this awesome book: An Unauthorized
Detailed Account of Gotham (1919-1939), and rather than just do a run-of-the-mill review of the book,
I decided to do a documentary style video on it. Before we go any further,
don't forget to SUBSCRIBE down below and I'll link in the description below too where you can
access this book and purchase it because I definitely recommend it. More on that
at the end of the video, so stick around! So without further ado, here is GOTHAM 1919-1939.
Gotham City. A den of villainy, a beacon of hope, and home of one of the most controversial figures
in the history of the United States of America. Founded in 1685 by Captain John Logerquist,
the city has been a center of crime and a topic of debate throughout the United States.
Many traveled there from Europe seeking new lives and a fresh start after the War of
Independence in 1776, and this sudden influx of immigrants required strong people to step up.
Gotham remained a beacon for its citizens all the way until the Great War.
World War I rocked the very foundations of the world; splintering lives, breaking apart families,
and damaging the minds of soldiers who fought bravely and returned home. It was a truly
devastating conflict and many were affected, including the people of Gotham. It wasn't until
1919 when this conflict ended that Gotham was able to begin to rebound. It was around this
time the Volstead Act was passed which forbade the manufacturing and selling of alcohol in the U.S.
This was very controversial and many people began manufacturing and selling bootleg alcohol
illegally. This drew the attention of the FBI under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover. Gotham
had become infested with criminal activity and numerous kingpins with a flare for the theatrical.
The Penguin, otherwise known as Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot,
was a direct descendant of one of the founding fathers of Gotham,
Theodore Cobblepot. His father was an alcoholic who wanted to marry into the family's wealth.
When this didn't work out he left but not before having a child with the young Esther Cobblepot.
Oswald was bullied as a child, but soon turned the tables on his tormentors,
acquiring allies and muscle to help him take over the streets. As he grew into adulthood,
so did his criminal empire. Soon he ran about half of Gotham as its criminal kingpin.
Penguin wasn't the first criminal kingpin Gotham had seen, nor would he be the last.
A long-standing name in the city's underworld was that of the Falcone family.
Carmine Falcone was the head of this notorious family, drawing inspiration from the crime
families of New York and Chicago. For many years the Falcones were the seat of power in Gotham,
but their influence began to fade as new players entered the arena. The golden years of the Falcone
Crime Family had come to an end, brought on by the mysterious Bat-Man. The Bat-Man; a hero,
a vigilante, and a figure of huge controversy. But who was he? What did he stand for? Was his war
on crime good for Gotham, or did it hinder actual good from being accomplished? While we still do
not know who he was, we have one suspect who stood out above all the rest. His name is Bruce Wayne.
Bruce Wayne was the descendant of Alan Wayne, one of the most prominent founding fathers of Gotham.
As a child, he witnessed the gruesome murder of his parents Thomas and Martha Wayne.
Just like that, the happiness and innocence of childhood were snuffed out in the young boy.
It is still undetermined whether their deaths were the result of a hit put out on them,
or just random chance. Whatever the case, this traumatic experience changed Bruce forever.
Gone was the little boy of a playful childhood, and in his place was something much darker and
more terrifying. As he approached adulthood, the Great War began.
Bruce enlisted in the army with a friend from his college days, Harvey Dent.
During their first battle on the front lines in France, Bruce disappeared.
His friends and commanding officers believed him to be dead and wrote his disappearance off
as missing-in-action. Little is known of Bruce's experience during the ensuing years except for a
few sightings and rumors passed around among his inner circle. Some speculate that he went on a
journey of self-discovery, stopping at numerous monasteries in Europe and the Middle East,
while others believed he abandoned his post in the army to escape the horrors of the battlefield.
What IS known is that he eventually returned to Gotham in 1919, a changed man.
He saw the corruption and crime happening in his home city and took it upon himself to better it
in any way he could. This coincided with the appearance of the Bat-Man.
The Bat-Man began his war on crime using the only language criminals and Gotham seemed to
respond to: violence. He fought back and helped the people of Gotham regain a bit of their hope.
But on the other side of the coin, many thought that his presence in Gotham only worsened things.
Some evidence of this lies in the next major player to appear in Gotham City.
This man single-handedly held Gotham in terror as his captive audience
as he committed some of the worst crimes the city had ever seen. This man was The Joker.
The Joker was the opposite of the Bat-Man. He appeared in Gotham City in 1923,
and was unlike anything the city had ever seen. What made The Joker stand
apart from the other criminals in Gotham was the fact that no one knew his true identity.
If the Bat-Man represented order and justice, The Joker represented chaos and disorder.
The Joker was tried and convicted of many murders and robberies, being deemed mentally incompetent
and sentenced to life in Arkham Asylum For the Criminally Insane.
For the many years following The Joker's appearance, numerous other criminals began
to appear in Gotham, all with a flair for the theatrical. Whether it was gangsters wielding
ventriloquist dummies, crocodile men killing people at the circus, or sword-wielding knights
on a so-called mission from god, these were very Dark Times for Gotham City. From 1925-1933,
the citizens of Gotham saw a crime wave unlike anything in U.S. history.
The Bat-Man fought and defeated most or all of these criminals who arose from the darkness
of the city. As the criminals arose, so did many allies. Robin the Boy Wonder,
Nightwing, the Red Hood, Oracle, and Commissioner James Gordon, just to name a few.
The Bat-Man's network grew as his vigilante career did, and they overcame many threats together.
But one threat loomed the largest of all,
a threat so wrapped in mystery that it leaves most officials and historians still baffled
about what really happened. All of this took place during the Shadow War of Gotham City.
There were many warning signs that this war was coming, but not many heeded them.
It was a well-known fact that Gotham City had been seeded with corruption
since the Great War, but nobody knew to what extent until it was too late.
A mysterious group, known only by a few as the League of Assassins, had infiltrated almost every
layer of Gotham's infrastructure. Their goal: to cleanse the world of crime and corruption.
Their leader Ra's al Ghul was at odds with the Bat-Man. It is speculated that the Bat-Man had
trained with this mysterious cult in the past, and that Ra's and the Bat-Man had fallen out.
The citizens of Gotham could only hide and watch as numerous rooftop battles ensued
between the League of Assassins and the Bat-Man's allies. They even watched in horror and amazement
as the Bat-Man aligned himself with his former foes, such as the Catwoman. By the end of it all,
there were countless deaths on both sides of the Shadow War. The police had been unable to maintain
the peace, and many civilians rose up in outrage calling for the outlawing of masked vigilantes.
The government heard their cries and sent the National Guard to regain control of Gotham City.
From 1937-1939, the city saw relative peace; at least for a little while. The Bat-Man gained
new allies in the years following the Shadow War, as well as many new enemies. From the
ashes of the island prison Pena Duro rose one of Bat-Man's most formidable enemies: Bane.
Bane was a victim of the horrific and inhumane experiments conducted on the prison island.
He had been imprisoned as a result of his father's crime, and grew up surrounded by cruelty
from his fellow inmates as well as the prison guards. When he was subjected to experiments with
a drug nicknamed "Venom," due to its potentially lethal nature, Bane didn't die. Instead, it
transformed him into a murderous, raging monster. He killed those responsible for the experiments
and broke out of Pena Duro, turning his sights to Gotham City and the notorious Bat-Man.
The meeting of these two titans resulted in Bane's defeat,
but also in the Bat-Man's back being broken.
The original Bat-Man disappeared and was replaced by a new, more brutal Bat-Man. This one resembled
a knight and dispensed lethal justice as he saw fit, murdering any criminals who got in his way.
His reign of terror left the infrastructure of Gotham fractured, and its citizens living in fear.
The only one who would be able to stop this new Bat-Man was the original.
No one knows where the original Bat-Man had gone, but once the murdering of criminals began,
he returned to rise to the challenge. He donned a new mask,
resembling more closely the face of a bat, and engaged in battle with the new Bat-Man.
The original Bat-Man emerged victorious, but soon after he vanished completely from the public eye.
Many attribute the disappearance of the Bat-Man to the ever-present threat of World War II drawing
closer, while others believe he merely had enough of the toils of fighting crime in Gotham City.
Where did the Bat-Man go? Would this be the last Gotham City would see of him?
After his recent reappearance and victory against the Mutant Gang threat, it is evident
that Gotham was not left defenseless. In the wake of the Bat-Man's second disappearance,
we recently received exclusive information that the answer lies with Bruce Wayne.
With his recent passing, we now know that Bruce Wayne was indeed the Bat-Man. He used funding from
his company to finance his crusade against crime, and his many allies were a part of his network;
some knowing his true identity, and others not being privy to that information.
Whether or not the Bat-Man's impact was good or bad is still a widely debated topic,
but what we do know is this: even in the face of great danger, he did not abandon the people
of Gotham City to the darkness, and he will live on in history for many more years to come.
What was I going to say? I love my wife!
Thank you guys so much for joining me this episode! If you liked the video,
give it a like and let me know your thoughts in the comments. If you would like to see content
more like this, definitely let me know! Most of the source material, including the photographs
and the entire historical timeline that I used, came from this book by GiantPandaKing.
Go check it out and if you feel like buying it, go buy it! It's on us.giantpandaking.com,
and like I said I'll link that in the description so you can just look below for that. I just wanted
to give a quick review. I thought this book was absolutely amazing, and as a lifelong Batman fan,
was just very pleasantly surprised at all the content inside and all of the
really creative imaginings and re-imaginings of these characters. While I used a lot of content
within the book, I also purposely didn't include a lot of it so that if you guys want to see the
full extent of this historical version of Batman, you can buy the book and check it
out yourself. There's a lot of really cool things I didn't include, like Harvey Dent's whole story,
various other characters that make appearances throughout history in this book, so 10/10 would
recommend it! Thank you guys so much for joining me, and remember the night is always
darkest before the dawn, and I promise you, the dawn is coming. Hope you guys have a great day!
Bye!