Why is Batman already sick at the beginning of the story? Would have been nice to have a "previously" recap at the beginning for casual fans like myself. I just checked this out from the library and it's mostly enjoyable except for the fact that Bats is too stupid/stubborn to call in someone from the Justice League.

Before Knightfall, Bane was already putting Batman through a bunch of challenges. I think there was the Venom-induced Riddler. Something with Killer Croc. Also, Superman died right before Knightfall started.

OK, I thought I would be getting the complete story with TPB I checked out, but I guess I should have researched better. It did have mention of Riddler and Croc having run-ins with Bane, but wasn't really clear.

thanks

There's also a prequel to Knightfall but I'm not sure if it really explains why Batman is so worn down. It's called The Sword of Azrael. I think it more or less just introduces Jean Paul Valley as a character though. It seems pretty common for DC to leave stuff out of their trades that should go with the main books. I also know that Knightquest (the second volume) doesn't include The Search issues which were a pretty big part of the storyline. I just hunted down the issues to that today off eBay actually (this thread reminded me to find them ).

Always an annoyance in the big shared universes. Even if Batman didn't call them in, they would see the news reports of chaos in Gotham & just show up. I remember news cameras filming the fact Bane beat Baman. Of course, it kills any suspence in the comic if Superman shows up and defeats Bane in three comic panels.

Very annoying for comics that deal with events that threaten the whole world and just that comics hero deals with it. No one else apparently cares for the planet and they don't show up.

Doug Moench began as the main Batman writer around #480 give or take a few issues, and he pretty much started building up to Knightfall right away with Batman getting worn down fighting Black Mask, Metalhead, Venom pumped Riddler, etc. None of those issues were ever collected in a trade, but you can probably find them pretty easily in dollar bins.

The Sword of Azrael miniseries is decent, but its really just an introduction to Jean Paul Valley and nothing more. It also had the first appearance of Barbara as Oracle in the Batman series.

Regarding the Justice League, remember that back then it was actually the JLI. I loved that whole JLI era, but they were more of a comedic team and weren't really used much against any serious threat. (When they were they got easily trashed like when they went up against Doomsday.)

The comedy version of JLI was done by the time Doomsday & Knightfall started. Jurgens was already 8 months into his run before the Doomsday crossover. He was using a more traditional League when Knightfall started (for an alternate timeline story).

Thanks all. The only trades I buy are some Star Wars and I get the rest from the library. The only non SW ones I own are Watchmen, Marvels, Kingdom Come and LXG vol 1.

DC is relatively poor about including all tie-ins and run-ups to their big crossover series, in their collections. There is always sniping on the Amazon forums about DC leaving out mini-series and other related issues in their volumes.

Sword of Azrael also had art by some guy named Joe Quesada (that's the reason I picked it up when it came out). Whatever happened to that guy?

Did DC include Batman #491 where Bane breaks Arkham Asylum open letting everyone out or did the TPB start with the first official Knightfall issue (Batman #492)? It would be really dumb if they left #491 out of the book.

It started with the backstory of Bane (which seemed really shoehorned in) and did include the Arkham breakout. But as I said, it started with Batman already worn down, and Riddler and Croc had already met Bane.

The Bane backstory is from the Vengeance of Bane one-shot that was released prior to Knightfall to give the origin of Bane.

The Croc and Riddler stories are from #489 and #490 respectively.

He still does the occasional cover or pin-up from Marvel, but otherwise, I haven't seen much from him in years. I think he might work in Hollywood these days.

Hey, I have those Batman issues too, because of the Travis Charest (at that point a Jim Lee clone) covers...

That is some horrible art right there.

It almost looks like Liefeld (but I know its not). There are no feet anywhere. Batman's left foot should be visible. Croc's hand isn't technically obstructing the view of the whole foot, but there still is no foot.

While I'm not a big comics reader, I know enough of the Bat-verse that I can fill in most of the blanks regarding bigger characters like Croc and Riddler.

Though I'm still puzzled about the origin of Bane: was he specifically created for this story? Was there any seeding of his storyline? (like years in advance?) Seems like the story would resonate more if it had been even a minor villain from years ago that Took a Level in Badass.

Bane was introduced a month or so before he started making appearances in the Batman books in a one shot called "Vengeance of Bane."




Like a lot of characters in the 90s, he was touted as "a new hot character" who was going to have a major impact. It worked for Doomsday. Suddenly, every comic that came out had a "hot new character" who was going to shake up the book.

Granted, Bane has survived a lot longer than most 90s characters.

Those were my same thoughts when I saw those covers in the thread. At first I thought Liefeld had actually done the art.
Yep, Bane basically came out of nowhere. I think his character is somewhat of a different take on the Mutant leader from Dark Knight Returns. I've never really understood his popularity beyond the recognition for the villain that "broke" Batman. On any given day, there are probably 4000 or 5000 meta-humans on Earth that would eat Batman's lunch in a fair fight. Miller really ruined the character when he had Batman beat Superman in a one-on-one confrontation.

I always liked it in Irredeemable when one of the first characters killed off is the Batman-analog by the Superman character.

Bane was basically evil Doc Savage, even down to his assistants.

I always thought Bane was basically what Killer Croc was originally intended to be. Croc was originally just a very strong man with a rare skin disease that gave him green scaly skin. He was cunning and fairly intelligent. It wasn't until the late 1990s when Croc started mutating into a more primitive more monster than man kind of thing.

Anyway, in his first appearance, Croc attempted to become the "King of Gotham" by "breaking the Bat." Of course he failed whereas Bane would attempt the same thing and actually succeed. The first time Bane ever appeared in the Batman comics (Batman #489 posted above) he fought and completely trashed Croc. I always wondered if that had some deeper meaning since Bane was basically going to do what Croc never could do. Especially since Doug Moench was the main architect of Knightfall, and his original Pre-Crisis run started with Batman #360 which was right after the Croc storyarc, and his original run ended with Batman #400 which was basically Knightfall done in one issue with Ra's al Ghul breaking all the inmates out of Arkham.

Bane and Azrael were created specifically for their parts in the Knightfall storyline, and were introduced with their specials months prior to the start of Knightfall.

Venom was also introduced about a year prior to that in a story line where Batman had been using it.

Like I said before that was Travis Charest in his Jim Lee clone phase (he also did a Flash Annual and some Darkstars comics around that time). Being a big Jim Lee fan at the time I ate it up, and he eventually (IMHO) became much much better than Lee, although he also got even slower than Lee as well...

I don't think Miller ruined the character in Dark Knight returns... I do think Morrison went over the top in making Batman and uber-genius to keep him up to par with the rest of the Justice League. The Giffen/Demattius Batman held his own and took no nonsense, but Morrison took him to a new level in his (excellent) run on JLA (Marvel also did a similar thing with Tony Stark, who was always really smart but somehow became Reed Richards-level smart over time)