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ORIGIN STORIES: ELIAS CLAYTON

August 5, 2021 / Dave Heilker

Elias Clayton liked to be up before the sun to help prepare breakfast and coffee. He’d been working for Martha Kent for almost a full week and had always managed to be in the kitchen before she was up. He enjoyed the conversations with the older widow, and Martha seemed to enjoy them in kind (she would tell the women in her Bible study group that “Elias radiated warmth and had a very kind smile…for a colored boy.”).

On this particular morning, when Elias came down the stairs from washing up, he was surprised to see a tall and broad-shouldered man at the stove, frying sausage and eggs in the cast iron skillet. He wore a loose-fitting tee shirt and a pair of grey jersey pants, and turned to meet Elias’s eyes with a warm grin.

CHAPTER 8

July 29, 2021 / Dave Heilker

“Make sure nothing is wasted. Take notes. Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your mind. In life, this knowledge is essential.
“I’ve told you, nobody becomes an artist unless they have to.”
Ingrid Magnussen, White oleander

Mount Olympus

Selina Kyle had seen her fair share of dead bodies. She told herself that it didn’t bother her anymore, and she was probably right. Growing up as a ward of the state, between orphanages and the alleys of Gotham City’s less savory neighborhoods, she’d mostly stopped being traumatized by the idea of mortality quite some time ago.

CHAPTER 7

July 22, 2021 / Dave Heilker

CONTENT WARNING:
ethnocentric slurs • misogyny, sexism • sexual harassment • attempted sexual assault • attempted drugging.

♪ ♫ Twinkle, twinkle, little bat,
How I wonder what you’re at.
Up above the world you fly,
Like a teatray in the sky ♪ ♫
the mad hatter, Alice’s Adventures in wonderland

Some Call It Work, But It’s More Like Art

“Mr. Mayor, crime is way down, and I know some of our uhh…” Gotham Police Commissioner Peter Grogan struggled for the appropriate colloquialism “…mutual friends may be alarmed, but I assure you, we’ve got our best team on it.”

The Commissioner loosened his tie, and looked longingly at the meatloaf sandwich sitting, just unwrapped, in parchment paper on his desk.

CHAPTER 6

July 15, 2021 / Dave Heilker

So this Faustus having godly parents, and seeing him to be of a toward wit, were very desirous to bring him up in those virtuous studies, namely, of Divinity: but he gave himself secretly to study Necromancy and Conjuration, in so much that few or none could perceive his profession
P.F. Gent[leman], The historye of the damnable life and deserued death of Doctor Iohn Faustus. Newly imprinted, and in conuenient places, imperfect matter amended: according to the true coppy printed at Franckfort, and translated into English

First Contact

Istanbul.

Kyoto.

Metropolis.

St. Louis.

Sacramento.

Metropolis.

Kinshasa.

Smallville.

Arequipa.

Brockton Bay.

CHAPTER 5

July 8, 2021 / Dave Heilker

“First sacrifice to the warriors who once had their home in this island…
Laid in the tombs of heroes with their faces turned to the sunset.”
The Pythia (Oracle of delphi), to solon, c. 594 b.c.e.

Meeting The Oracle

Barbara Gordon didn’t understand why she was here. She’d been working at Wayne Enterprises for about three months, and, at least per her coworkers, was doing a pretty solid job as an audit accountant.

Wayne Enterprises had been one of the few local places that was willing to hire a young woman just out of junior college, but there was this whole worker cooperative thing that she didn’t quite understand. If Wayne was owned by the employees, what happened if she decided to leave to pursue a better degree.

CHAPTER 4

July 1, 2021 / Dave Heilker

“My psychoanalyst thinks I’m perfectly right.
I won’t say the Lord’s Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven’t told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia.
I’m addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I’m obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It’s always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious.
Everybody’s serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.“
AllEn ginsburg; “America”

A Dance With The Devil

The sun was setting, and Dimitri Vladkov was running late for a meeting on the docks at Gotham Harbor.

Not a meeting, exactly, but, a private acquisition. A favor, for his employer, Liam Warner.

Dimitri had trouble understanding why this couldn’t be done during the day, or at the office and why the shipment needed to be carried out in a place with a less than shimmering reputation for safety.

ORIGIN STORIES: MARTHA & THOMAS WAYNE

June 24, 2021 / Dave Heilker

Martha Wayne (née Martha Kane) was an heiress to the Kane Chemical family fortune. In her early years, she may have been described as a debutante, or, more charitably, as a socialite, but her sense of social justice became galvanized in college, where she helped organize a student government on campus at The Gotham Ladies Academy for Distinction.

CHAPTER 3

June 24, 2021 / Dave Heilker

“I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.“
Eugene v. debs; “Statement to the court upon being convicted of violating the sedition act”; September 18, 1918

Perhaps Too Convenient

In 1934, there was nothing more exclusive than being a billionaire.

Except, perhaps, being the Man of Steel.

You could count on one hand the number of billionaires in the United States: Lex Luthor and Henry Ford were, somewhat consistently, the wealthiest or second wealthiest man in America, depending on the day of the week that you looked into it. Number four and five were banker and former Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon, and famed “oil man” H.L. Hunt, respectively.

The third wealthiest man in the United States, as was customary for him, was taking dinner in his home at Wayne Manor, joined by his adoptive family.

CHAPTER 2

June 17, 2021 / Dave Heilker

“There is no shortcut to achievement, Life requires thorough preparation—veneer isn’t worth anything.”
George Washington Carver

That’s Something We Could Test

Wayne Manor, The Library

July 1920

The first time that Bruce Wayne read The Hound of The Baskervilles, he thought it was the best thing he’d ever read.

When Bruce Wayne was a child, his parents would read to him. He became, in turn, a voracious reader and seeker of knowledge. The bookshelves of his family’s ancestral home were packed edge-to-edge with texts; tomes from academia and collected works that previously were published as pulp stories.

There was almost no genre of fiction or nonfiction that Bruce didn’t have a favorite book within.

By far his favorite books were mysteries, but Sherlock Holmes had fallen out of his preference in favor of detective stories where the reader could actually solve the mystery.

Two months after the murder of his mother and father in a robbery-gone-wrong, Bruce, formerly a playful and spirited boy, had become a brooding, traumatized young man.

During a re-read of Hound, Bruce became crestfallen, almost to the point of tears. He put down the volume and relayed the source of his disappointment to nobody-in-particular.

“Impossible. There’s no real way Holmes could’ve known these specific details. This isn’t ‘elementary,’ it’s magical.”

“Magical, Mister Bruce?” Replied Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce’s adoptive father.

CHAPTER 1

June 10, 2021 / Dave Heilker

“Had I interfered in the manner which I admit, and which I admit has been fairly proved (for I admire the truthfulness and candor of the greater portion of the witnesses who have testified in this case)–had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their friends–either father, mother, brother, sister, wife, or children, or any of that class–and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have been all right; and every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment.”
John Brown, Abolitionist; at his sentencing; November 2, 1859

A City on the Rise

Dimitri Vladkov turned back to his comrades in silence as Alexander Luthor walked back and started scribbling something on a piece of paper at the small table he occupied with his –– what, Assistant? Wife? Mistress?

All three men were struck dumb. Dimitri was a bit shellshocked from the flying man, but this meeting seemed to compound his confoundedness. Of course, everyone in the Skylight Club knew who Lex Luthor was; the rumor was that he owned the place, or partially owned it, but Lex Luthor didn’t just speak to patrons. A drink –– vodka and tonic water with a twist of lime –– arrived at the table in a highball glass, and Dimitri quickly downed it.

“Sorry mack, but Dimitri’s had a bit of a rough day. Seeing bird men and all,” explained Saul, slapping his hand on Dimitri’s shoulder and gripping it a bit too tightly as if to tell him get it together. Saul maintained eye contact and a grin with the irishman at the table. “What did you say your name was, pal? Warren?”

“Warner,” the man replied in a thick Irish brogue. “Liam Warner, and I’d say I’ve got an opportunity that could make the two of you a pretty penny.”

The Gothamite