DC · DC Comics
Batman
Bruce Wayne
A human with no superhuman abilities whose place among gods is the entire point of the character.
Across continuities
One canonical record, many iterations. A version is this character in a different continuity; a variant is a separate in-fiction instance inside one. Everything below resolves back to this page.
| Iteration | Type | Continuity | Performed by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Batman (Post-Crisis DC) | Version | no performer on file | |
| Batman (Pre-Crisis DC) | Version | no performer on file |
Key issues
Milestone appearances — first appearance, death, return, team change. These are the issues the collector market actually prices.
- debut · 1939
Detective Comics #27 DC Comics
First appearance, as 'the Bat-Man' — a pulp vigilante who carried a gun in his earliest stories - origin · 1939
Detective Comics #33 DC Comics
The origin is told for the first time: the murder of his parents, in two pages - key · 1940
Batman #1 DC Comics
First appearances of both the Joker and Catwoman, in the same issue - key · 1986
The Dark Knight Returns #1
An older, harder Batman returns from retirement — the book that set the tone for decades of adaptation - key · 1987
Batman: Year One #404
The definitive modern origin, and the template for Batman Begins - key · 1988
Batman: The Killing Joke
The Joker's proposed origin, offered by the character himself and explicitly unreliable - key · 1988
Batman: A Death in the Family #427
Readers voted by phone poll to kill Jason Todd, the second Robin - key · 1996
Batman: The Long Halloween #1
The Batman-as-detective story that most directly shaped The Batman (2022)
On screen
Canonical productions only. Parody and fan work is classified and excluded — Wikidata makes no such distinction, so without it these lists fill with material that is not canon.
Has appeared with
Every character who has shared a production with this one. Wikis are organised by character, not by encounter, so this question is close to unanswerable elsewhere — it exists here only because co-occurrence is recorded at the moment an appearance is.
| Character | Where | Shared |
|---|---|---|
| The Joker | Batman, The Batman | 2 |
Commonly got wrong
Claims that are widely repeated and wrong, with what the cited record actually shows. If you are generating anything about this subject, these are the errors to avoid.
Commonly believed Batman has never killed and has never used a gun.
Actually In his earliest 1939-40 appearances he carried a gun and killed. The no-kill rule was imposed by editorial in 1940 and became character-defining afterwards — so the claim is true of almost every version, but false of the original.
Commonly believed Batman's parents were killed by Joe Chill in every version of the story.
Actually Chill is the killer in many versions, but Year One and several adaptations leave the mugger unidentified, and Tim Burton's 1989 film makes the killer the Joker. The murderer's identity is one of the least stable parts of the origin.
Commonly believed Batman is a member of the Justice League with no powers, which makes him the weakest member.
Actually Preparation and intelligence are written as his power. The stories consistently frame the absence of abilities as the reason he is dangerous, not a handicap — which is why he is on the team at all.
Continuities
Claims on this page are tagged by canon. Blending them is the most common error in both wikis and AI answers.
- Post-Crisis DC — 1986 Crisis on Infinite Earths through 2011 Flashpoint
- Pre-Crisis DC — DC continuity before the 1985 Crisis on Infinite Earths
- New 52 — DC relaunched continuity, 2011 to 2016
- DC Rebirth — DC continuity from 2016 onward
Last updated 2026-09-06 · machine-readable version