10 Things DC Comics Wants You To Forget About Bane

3. When He Learned How To Love

One of the big character changes we saw Bane gone through during Sinister Six was the melting of his heart in the presence of young supervillain Scandal Savage. Whilst his friendship with Osito the teddy bear was spoilt a little by the plush toy concealing a knife, the paternal love Bane exhibited for Savage was completely without pretense, and made the masked supervillain seem a lot less like an intelligent, uncaring, unfeeling force for destruction and more like an embarrassing dad. Not that he danced like Bernard Sumner or poorly adapted the lyrics of popular songs. Instead Bane was the sort of embarrassing dad who thinks all your friends are bad influences and decides not to let you go to fun stuff like hang out at the mall or go on life-threatening adventures to steal magical items from under the noses of other supervillains and heroes. Which is exactly what he did when he took brief control of the Secret Six team, booting Savage from the roster for her own safety. The lighter side of Bane was not one fans were interested in seeing. We actually kinda dug it, although it did at times have a similar vibe to classic Bond villain Jaws' about-face in Moonraker where he sacrifices himself to save the bad guy because he's fallen in love. The cliche of the big lumbering monster being transformed by the love of a good woman has been around for yonks, and it did kinda work for Bane - just not enough for it to define the character in any book besides Secret Six.