Unless you've spent the last eighty years living in a Batcave, you probably already
know a whole lot about Batman: his origins, his fancy gadgets, and his penchant for young
sidekicks.
What you might not know is that an insane series of events drove Batman to being the
dark, brooding vigilante that he is today.
Here are some of the craziest moments in Batman's history.
Zur-En-Arrh
In the mid-1950s, Batman began to have interdimensional and outer space adventures instead of just
fighting street-level thugs and weirdos.
So, in Batman #113, our hero makes a strange trip to visit a tattered, multicolored Batman
from Planet Zur-En-Arrh who needs Earth's Batman's help fighting an alien invasion.
Though Batman really should have just arrested Zur-En-Arrh for his crimes against fashion.
"You just booked your next vacation Rotul.
A luxurious stay on the Zeta Alpha Nine prison planet."
If this wasn't strange enough, modern Batman writer Grant Morrison included the formerly
forgotten, insane adventure from Batman's zany comics history into being some kind of
trip into Bruce Wayne’s personal Imagination Land.
Apparently, Batman himself created "Zur-En-Arrh" Batman as a "back up personality" in case
he ever went insane—because people can be backed up like hard drives, apparently.
Bat-Mite
The following year, in Detective Comics #267, Batman is visited from the Fifth Dimension
by an all-powerful imp named Bat-Mite who absolutely worships the Dark Knight.
“I’m your number one fan.”
“My fan.”
“The biggest.”
Bat-Mite sets up increasingly strange challenges so he can see his hero in action, including
making an enormous statue of Batman himself come to life.
Naturally, Batman is annoyed by having another little punk hanging around the Batcave, but
the guy persists on and off for the rest of Batman's career.
“What is it?”
Bat-baby
Batman endures dozens of unusual transformations during the Silver Age, including periods of
getting super old, turning into an ape and a tiger, and being a genie.
However, few changes are so strange as Batman #147's transformation into a...baby.
Rather than taking the afternoon off, Batman insists on wearing some suspenders and continuing
to fight crime, because if you thought a man dressed as a bat was terrifying, a violent
baby is truly the stuff of nightmares.
Like, can you punch it in self-defense or what?
"Beh beh beh"
Zebra Batman
Quick disclaimer: As an englishman we say zebra not zebra.
I was asked to record this part saying zebra.
So just know that every time I say zebra I'm dying inside.
Thank you for your time.
Anyways, Zebraman!
Eughh.
Most cite Batman’s period of wearing rainbow-colored outfits as his strangest, but his time as
a zebra-patterned crimefighter was even stranger.
After going up against Zebra-Man, a guy in black and white who can emit rays of magnetic
force, Batman and Robin go to investigate the criminal’s lab.
Because Robin is a Darwin Award waiting to happen, he trips and zaps Batman with the
same machine that gave Zebra-Man his powers, also giving him a similar suit in the process.
As usual, Batman literally punches the stripes off of Zebra-Man, and everything returns to
normal.
Well, relatively normal.
Death of Robin
After the Silver Age ended, the once-carefree Batman of the '60s became darker.
Everything reached a boiling point by 1988's A Death in the Family: The Joker kidnaps Robin's
estranged, neglectful mother, beats Robin nearly to death with a crowbar, and sets off
a bomb.
Readers at home were given the chance to call a DC Comics hotline and let them know if they
thought Robin should survive or go off to that Batcave in the sky, and a slight majority
of overwhelmingly bitter nerds decided that Robin should bite the big one.
Robin dies, and Batman sets out on a darker, grimmer path from which he'd never recover.
Thanks, geeks.
Killing Joke
Because the Joker is on a mission to destroy everything that Batman loves, he goes on his
most malicious and personal crime spree in Bat-history.
In The Killing Joke, the Clown Prince of Crime shoots Barbara Gordon, also known as Batgirl,
and paralyzes her permanently, before kidnapping her father, Commissioner Gordon.
The commissioner is kept naked in a cage with circus freaks, and forced look at images of
his daughter, naked and in agony from a gunshot wound.
Batman's entire world continues to fall apart, and his real insanity begins to show through.
Venom
After accidentally letting a little girl drown, Batman starts to use a strength-enhancing
drug called Venom, knowing that it's a bad idea, but willing to do anything to prevent
another death.
After realizing that his addiction is sending him into an irrational rage and doing more
harm than good, Batman locks himself the basement for a month and detoxes by sheer willpower,
because damn, he's Batman—but a recovering Batman is still a sight to behold.
Knightfall
Two years later, a criminal named Bane gets ahold of the same drug that Batman was previously
abusing and uses it to enhance himself enough to snap Batman's spine…
“Bane”
…but only after releasing all of the criminals in Arkham to wear down the Caped Crusader
into a state of total exhaustion.
Batman remains paralyzed for a while, while a violent protege of his takes over the Batman
name and causes the wrong kind of chaos for Gotham's criminals, totally messing up the
Batman brand.
Even worse than this guy.
Batman wets his pants
If there's a single moment in Batman's complete history that has no right to exist—including
this…
...it's Kevin Smith's comic tale in which Batman wets his unitard because he stands
too close to an explosion.
Because Smith lives in a world where adults regularly cannot control their bodily functions,
Smith drags the Dark Knight into unforgivable territory.
He only makes it worse by openly discussing Batman’s bedroom habits, and making Catwoman
have a temper tantrum once she learns that Bruce is getting married.
Bob should have stayed silent on this one.
Zapped through time
Batman's time-travel adventures from the Silver Age make a comeback when supervillain Darkseid
shoots the hero with his Omega Beams.
Normally, these beams erase their victim from existence, but this time they send Batman
back to the Stone Age, where he lives as a caveman for a while, before slipping through
other eras in which he's a witch-hunter, a pirate, a cowboy, and a 1930s detective.
When Bruce Wayne eventually stumbles back into present day after his epic journey, the
Justice League has to stop his heart to prevent dangerous Omega Energy from destroying the
world anyhow.
He survives, because Batman is the most badass superhero ever.
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