In the Star Chamber's detention cells, Batman encounters many metahumans undergoing brainwashing and other horrific experiments, including Barry Allen, a man capable of moving at supersonic speeds. The 'Batman', as Bruce calls his disguise, eventually secures enough secrets to infiltrate the Star Chamber, the state's highest and most secretive court. By day, he spies on and burgles from his fellow clergymen, while by night he disguises himself in a bat-like costume his father had used for passion plays. Charles McNider, who warns him to give up any hope of avenging his parents, as the state is far too powerful.īruce subsequently joins the clergy, but continues to harbor a dream of catching his parents' killer. Bruce corroborates this information with an old journal of his father's and the last living radical, Dr. Gordon, who had secretly continued his investigation of the Wayne murders, finally tells Bruce the truth: his parents had been radicals with sympathies toward homosexuals, prostitutes, and various other 'undesirables', and their deaths had been a disguised execution by the state.

Twenty years later, Gordon has become Gotham Towne's Lord High Inquisitor, while the adult Bruce is preparing to join the clergy. Fearing for his own family's life, Gordon keeps his suspicions secret from Bruce, but slowly befriends the orphaned boy. The murder is investigated by Inquisitor James Gordon, but swept under the rug by Gordon's superiors when Gordon begins to suspect that the Waynes' deaths had not been a simple mugging. Some time in the twentieth century, Thomas Wayne, personal physician to Gotham Towne's privy council, is murdered alongside his wife, leaving behind only their son Bruce. This causes England to enter modern day as a Puritan theocracy encompassing not only the British isles but most of the American continent, including Gotham City - or, as it is now known, Gotham Towne. In 1658, Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell manages to recover from his bout of malarial fever, and strengthen his hold on England.

Holy terror batman