After Bat blew the sickness away from Raven he collected it and blew it into the nest of Vulture. Vulture went away forever. Thats all? You have the mark in your eyes. For you, it is enough The Shaman (talking to a 25-year-old Bruce Wayne).
Batmans final teacher (unless you count Alfred teaching him acting skills or Lady Shiva helping Bats to find himself in the Knightfall storyline) was a wise old Inuit Shaman whose real name was never revealed. Unlike the other teachers on this list, Bruce never actually intended to seek him out and their meeting took place entirely by chance. A young Bruce Wayne, close to returning to Gotham City for good, first encountered The Shaman in Alaska. He was training under Native bounty hunter and tracker Willy Doggett, when the pair were assaulted by the man they were tracking through the mountains, the murderer Thomas Woodley. Doggett died instantly and, whilst Bruce was able to fend Woodley off, he lost all his gear as a result. He was in the process of dying from hypothermia, when he was rescued by The Shaman, who healed him by wearing a ceremonial bat mask and telling him an old tribal story. Bruce eventually recovered and the story became part of his inspiration for donning the cape and cowl. From The Shaman and his granddaughter (who, of course, Bruce fell for), Bruce Wayne learned how to not just wear a mask, but how to become a mask. The Shaman is a complicated character who appears in a complicated storyline. Kicking off the wonderful series that was Legends of The Dark Knight (in November 1989), Shaman, by Dennis ONeill and Edward Hannigan was designed as a companion piece to Frank Millers (then relatively recent) Batman: Year One storyline. In fact, the two stories interweave and parts of Shaman intentionally occur between the pages of Year One. It also deals with the origins of The Batcave (where The Shamans Bat-Mask ends up as one of Batmans earliest trophies).
I am a professional author and lifelong comic books/pro wrestling fan. I also work as a journalist as well as writing comic books (I also draw), screenplays, stage plays, songs and prose fiction.
I don't generally read or reply to comments here on What Culture (too many trolls!), but if you follow my Twitter (@heyquicksilver), I'll talk to you all day long!
If you are interested in reading more of my stuff, you can find it on http://quicksilverstories.weebly.com/ (my personal site, which has other wrestling/comics/pop culture stuff on it).
I also write for FLiCK http://www.flickonline.co.uk/flicktion, which is the best place to read my fiction work.
Oh yeah - I'm about to become a Dad for the first time, so if my stuff seems more sentimental than usual - blame it on that!
Finally, I sincerely appreciate every single read I get. So if you're reading this, thank you, you've made me feel like Shakespeare for a day! (see what I mean?)
Latcho Drom,
- CQ
