Martha Wayne Deserves More Love

[espanolbot]

I’ve spoken in the past about why Martha Wayne, mum of Batman, deserves more attention that she gets in a lot of media, as really most of the attention by some creators is aimed at her husband.

In the Nolanverse version of Batman, she didn’t have any lines, nevermind any implied impact on Bruce of not prior to her death. Heck, even in the DCAU (which largely did very well by its female characters) really more focus was placed on Thomas Wayne, his friends and connections than anything Martha did.

As such, I come bearing a bit more of Martha, and although she doesn’t get as much respect as Thomas, it’s always nice to see it acknowledged that she actually had a personality and did stuff prior to Bruce wandering onto the scene.

To start, here is a recent scene from Batman and Robin, where Bruce is taking part in a treasure hunt organised by Damian to test his capacity as a detective. Bruce and Alfred end up in a hotel in London, where an interesting surprise awaits them…

Moving back in time to the 1980s, we have the adaptation of the Batman novel the Ultimate Evil, which may have been the start of the Martha Wayne: Social Justice Crusader (in the positive sense) trend that contined on and off to the present. Here, Bruce is investigating a child sex ring in Gotham City, and Alfred decides that now is the best time to sping this on him.

Within the universe UE is set, it’s actually implied that it’s Martha’s work as a social worker that lead to the eaths of her and her husband. Which I think is a touch silly.

In Paul Dini’s work prior to the DC reboot, he did a really good job at both humanising a lot of neglected characters (like Hush) and building on the history of Gotham and it’s citizenry. This came to a head in the House of Hush storyline, which not only prominently featured Martha and Thomas before they were married, but also impliy it’s Martha’s influence that made Thomas become the pillar of society lauded in other sources.

Here, we have the first meeting of Thomas and Martha, featuring also Hush’s folks and Zatanna’s dad. After Martha’s father lost their fortune to a Madia-addiliated scam artist, she now divides her time between being a volunteer nurse and fundraiser at Leslie Thompkin’s free clinic in one of the worst parts of the city…

Comments

[starwolf_oakley]

My idea for a Batman movie or even TV show has Bruce finding a 20 year old video message to him from Martha Wayne in a bank's safe deposit box. And Martha thinks she's going to make a lot of these messages for Bruce.

The bank is getting robbed in broad daylight (Gotham City and all) and Bruce, all silent rage and not in his batsuit, makes vicious work of the robbers as the video message plays.

[icon_uk]

That's pretty much exactly the same plot idea that happened with Jack Crusher and Wesley in ST:TNG. Wes eventually saw the one recording that Jack had made before he died.

Not quite as much back robbing was going on, of course.

[superfangirl1]

I really like that idea and hope somebody make that possible someday.