Batman’s 10 Craziest Mentors

By Chris Quicksilver /

6. Sergei (The Great Sphinx, Giza, Egypt)

€œThat is what I wanted to show you. When you can wield the impossible...You can create wonders€ - Sergei
Another New 52-era mentor, Sergei was a Russian inventor who apparently designed €œmilitary trinkets€ during the Cold War. His lessons were basically all to do with the creation of various gadgets (so that€™s where Batman got those wonderful toys!), together with the notion of letting go of the €œrigid concepts of what is possible€ and becoming an €œexplorer of the mind€. To this end, Sergei (aided and abetted by his bionic monkey, Maxwell) locked a 21-year-old Bruce Wayne in a cavern under The Great Sphinx. Bruce was armed only with devices that were all missing their key components and was thus forced to improvise a way out by breaking the logical rules of engineering. Another wonderful, throwaway character created by Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV and Rafael Albuquerque, Sergei€™s first appearance was in the Zero Year backup story That One Time, which appeared in Batman Issue 22 (September 2013).