Len Wein Gave us The Untold Legend of the Batman, and it was Glorious

If you haven't heard, Len Wein passed away yesterday. Most obits and tributes to him are going to lead off, as they should, with him co-creating Wolverine, Swamp Thing, Storm, and basically the entire modern conception of the X-Men. His contributions to comics in general are immeasurable and he was a giant at both DC and Marvel. One of his works that was as influential as his reinvention of the X-Men, but probably less likely to get mentioned today, was the Untold Legend of the Batman, an under-appreciated gem of the Bat-library.

Written in 1980, The Untold Legend of the Batman, written by Wein and illustrated by Jim Aparo (still the best Batman artist of them all) retconned and welded together all of the various origin stories for Batman, Dick Grayson, Alfred, and the Joker that had been featured in comics in a pre-internet era where the general audience might not have anything other than a vague idea of how all of these characters came to be. This was the story that explained how Alfred was a former special forces soldier who was also a former actor who was also the son of the last butler for the Wayne family. It was the story that explained how the Waynes were murdered by Joe Chill, random mugger, but also mobster Lew Moxon, who was tabbed as the murderer in some early version of the story (Chill was working for Moxon, who put a hit on Thomas and wanted it to look like a random mugging). If you wanted to know how Batman learned how to fight crime, be a detective, and why he chose vigilante justice over being a police officer, this was the story that caught you up to date in the early 80s.

While certain elements of the Batman legend must always remain constant, however, the details will always need to be periodically updated in order to keep the character relevant to the times. So it was that The Untold Legend of the Batman's heroic attempt to make a workable pastiche of all of the Golden/Silver Age Batman origins full of old-timey mobsters gave way to Frank Miller's Year One origin featuring a very Hells Kitchen-y Gotham inspired by the crime wave of 70s/80s New York.  Even Miller's seemingly untouchable take was eventually supplanted by Scott Snyder's Zero Year, which gave us a Batman dealing with 21st century threats likes superstorms, climate change, computer viruses, and terrorism.



Despite losing its place as the definitive Bat-origin twice over, The Untold Legend of the Batman, elements that The Untold Legend either created or popularized remain as pivotal to the Batman mythos as ever. Scott Snyder's run on Batman and now All-Star Batman has delved heavily into the Alfred as soldier-turned actor-turned reluctant heir to the family job of butler for the Wayne's origin. Batman: TAS ran with the idea introduced in Untold Legend that the Batmobile and other bat-tech are built by grateful people who owe Batman a favor for saving their lives (although he gladly compensates them anyway).

Beyond the contributions it either added to or updated for the Bat-canon, Untold Legend also had a lasting impact by being the first version of the Batman origin that many young fans encountered in the 80s and 90s. Desperate to seize on the Bat-mania surrounding the release of Batman 89, DC released a trade paperback version of the story that came with Batman cereal and an audio version of the books on cassette. This was the version my grandma picked up at a garage sale when I was a kid that I read and (listened to) repeatedly, well before I ever read Year One. As far as young Kyle was concerned, this was the Batman origin, and it had a huge impact on my lifelong love of the character. Plus it's hard to say this closing panel didn't define how I've felt about the character to this day:

 

RIP, Len Wein. Thank you for so many of the characters you gave us or defined for us, and remember that Legends can never die.