Much like Lex Luthors contradictory youth, DC has gone back and forth on the decision to have murderous thug Joe Chill be the man who essentially created Batman. More often than not, the Waynes murderer is an unnamed crook who is never caught; audiences never learn his name or who he was and Batman never catches him. When Batman was first introduced in 1939, the identity of the killer was unknown until a 1948 story where he discovers and confronts their killer. Since then DC has retconned Joe Chills identity at various points, but for the majority of the Golden and Silver Age of comics, Chill was the murderer. After Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC rebooted their line of comics and re-introduced Chill in the godawful Batman: Year Two, but because of that storys poor reception it was largely ignored and then wiped from continuity in 1994s Zero Hour for a little over a decade until Infinite Crisis re-established Chill's role in 2006. Grant Morrison played with the idea that Chill had become a small-time mob boss who Batman tormented every night in the early days of his career, driving Chill to the point of suicide once he found out who Batman was under the mask. Chill has largely been left out of The New 52, only being featured in a story focusing on a young Bruce Wayne just prior to leaving Gotham for his training. That being said, most people often find the tragedy Bruce went through much stronger when the murderer remains anonymous, representing the idea of crime and the unknown lurking around the corner than being a flesh and blood man. It somewhat lessens the impact of Thomas and Marthas deaths when a face and name are given to the infamous killer, a solid reason as to why DC doesn't fully commit to making Joe Chill the perpetrator actual canon.
Richard Church has a Bachelor of Arts in English and a diploma in Television Writing and Producing. He is an aspiring writer for short stories, novels and screenplays. He is also an avid fan of comic books and graphic novels.
