Who is BANE?
BANE is a brilliant world-class fighter and tactical genius who augments his great physical strength with a steroid called venom. Raised from childhood in the Peña Duro prison on Santa Prisca, BANE has been an international crimelord, an anti-hero, a mercenary, a government agent and even a dictator. The character was created by Chuck Dixon, Doug Moench and Graham Nolan, first appearing in Batman: Vengeance of BANE #1. (1993)
First Appearance
BANE was inspired as a "dark mirror" of the highly disciplined and multi-skilled pulp hero Doc Savage.
BANE was born in a prison called Peña Dura. His father, a revolutionary, escaped prison. The corrupt system then decreed the young BANE to serve his father's sentence. BANE's childhood was spent in this amoral penitentiary environment. Though imprisoned, his natural abilities allow him to develop extraordinary skills. He reads as many books as he can get his hands on, builds up his body in the prison's gym, and learns to fight in the merciless school of prison life. He has commited his first murder at the age of eight, stabbing a criminal who wanted to use him to gain information about the prison. During his years in prison, BANE carries a teddy bear he calls Osito, who he considers his only friend. Osito has a hole in his back to hold a knife that BANE uses against anyone who bullies him.
Through his extraordinary skills BANE establishes himself as the "king" of Peña Dura prison.
While still in prison. BANE became a test subject for a mysterious drug known as Venom, which had killed all other subjects. The Peña Dura prison Venom experiment nearly kills BANE at first, but he survives and finds the drug vastly increases his physical strength, although he needs to take it every 12 hours or he would suffer debilitating side-effects.
BANE began to have an ambtion of destroying Batman, about whom he had heard tales while serving his sentence. He was fascinated with Gotham City because it was a place where fear ruled. Aware that a direct assault on Batman would be foolish, BANE destroyed the walls of Arkham Asylum, allowing all of its deranged inmates to escape into Gotham City, where Batman spent three months rounding them up. Running himself to exhaustion, Batman returned to Wayne Manor, where BANE awaited him. He fought Batman in the Batcave, defeated him and as the coup de grâce, broke Batman's back and left him paraplegic, thereby having been the only man to have "Broken the Bat".
Later BANE stopped his Venom addiction, then fought alongside a healed Batman to take out a criminal ring that was distributing a Venom derivative to street-level thugs. Following a victory over the criminals, BANE proclaimed that he was "innocent" of his past crimes and urged Batman to stop hunting him. He then left Gotham to begin a search for his father.
More recently, BANE has joined the Secret Six, and has sought to rid himself of any temptation to use Venom again by employing tactical combat techniques instead of relying on crushing strength. He has also adopted a more peaceful demeanor.
BANE: The Man who made the Dark Knight Fall
ANIMATED APPEARANCES
Batman: The Animated Series
BANE made his animated debut in Batman: The Animated Series episode "BANE". Voiced with a strong South-American accent by Henry Silva for the episode and his subsequent appearances, this BANE is an articulate professional assassin hired by criminal Rupert Thorne to assassinate Batman.
New Batman Adventures | Superman: Animated Series
BANE returned in The New Batman Adventures episode "Over the Edge", this time with less of a noticeable accent. This same version of BANE appeared in Superman : The Animated Series.
The Batman
A different version of BANE is depicted in "The Batman", this version of BANE is seen possessing an athletic body before pumping himself with Venom. To access this, he turns a control on his right hand which pumps the serum into his body. After doing so, he transforms into a huge hulking brute with red skin. This is also the largest and presumably the strongest of all of the prior animated versions of BANE.
Batman: The Brave and the Bold
BANE appears in the animated show Batman: The Brave and the Bold. In this version, BANE is physically frail before pumping himself with Venom.
Young Justice
BANE then appears in the Young Justice episode "Drop Zone" voiced by Danny Trejo. BANE is in a small war against the cult Kobra over the production of his drug Venom.
Superman/Batman: Public Enemies
BANE appears in the animated movie Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, but has no dialogue and merely grunts. BANE, along with several supervillains, tried to collect the billion-dollar bounty on Superman
LIVE APPEARANCES
Robert Swenson
BANE appears in the live-action film Batman & Robin (1997) where he is the tertiary antagonist. This version of BANE is barely capable of speech and uses growls and roars for most of his communication. Despite this however, he is still muscular, wears a slight variation of his classic mask, and is still superhumanly strong.
Tom Hardy
In the Chris Nolan's Batman Trilogy, BANE will appear in The Dark Knight Rises and is portrayed by Tom Hardy.
POWERS & ABILITIES
Note: Due to the nature of comicbooks being an on-going tale, the character's powers along with his appearance, is in a constant state of flux.
Venom Usage: BANE's use of the Supersteroid Venom allowed him to temporarily enhance his physical functions to superhuman levels, particularly his strength, endurance, and speed. His body's senses and healing abilities are also augmented to a degree. BANE needs to periodically inject himself with Venom to retain these abilities, although overuse can result in temporary insanity.
Superhuman Strength: The primary effect of Venom is that it enhances strength to low superhuman levels, depending on how much venom is injected. He is ultimately capable of exceeding his limit to 3 tons, though not without temporarily losing control over himself.
Enhanced Speed/Reflexes: BANE's speed and reflexes also increases when using venom, allowing him to run, move and react faster than the limits of even the finest human specimen, though these abilities vary on how much venom he takes.
Superhuman Endurance/Stamina/Durability: BANE's stamina, as well as the density of his muscle, bone, and skin tissue increases dramatically when using the drug. BANE's stamina is very high, as he is constantly supplied with new energy when injecting himself. His durability can perhaps become sufficient enough to potentially shrug off bullets, and resist falls from great heights, temperature or pressure extremes, and blows from superhuman opponents. He has proven capable of holding his breath for extended periods of time.
Superhuman Healing: BANE can also use his Venom as a form of medicine to heal from injuries, poisons and diseases. Depending on how devastating the injury, BANE needs to inject a certain amount of Venom into himself. When faced with extreme wounds, such as many broken bones, excessive blood loss, or terminal poisons or diseases, BANE needs to inject an unhealthy amount of venom which will cause him to temporarily go berserk in order to heal properly.
Genius-level intellect: BANE is also highly intelligent. In prison, he teaches himself various scientific disciplines equal to the level of understanding of leading experts in those fields, making him a bonda-fide Genius.
Photographic Memory: he has a photographic memory, which borders on absolute total recall. This has allowed him to memorize the countless of skills, disciplines, and facts that he taught himself over his life. Within one year, he is able to deduce Batman's secret identity.
Polymath: Although BANE has had no college, high school, or even primary education, BANE has completely memorized all the facts in countless of encyclopedias and books during his time in Pena Duro. He is exceptionally knowledgeable in various subjects including Mathematics, various Sciences, History, Geography, Medicine, and most likely more, to a level that would have definitely given him degrees in these fields.
Polylingual: He teaches himself ten active languages and at least four additional arcane and dead ones, those mentioned are Spanish,French, German, Russian, Mandarin English, Urdu, Farsi, and Latin.
Escapologist
Expert Hand to Hand Combatant: BANE is a highly formidable combatant who has not only Mastered, but also created several forms of Martial Arts.
Expert Strategist: He is also highly devious , and a superb strategist and tactician, who has committed various famous war manuals to memory.
Peak Human Physical Condition: In prison, BANE also invents his own form of calisthenics, meditation, and a unique fighting style. His strength and is slightly superior to the likes of Batman, even when not using Venom.
Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bane_(comics) : http://www.comicvine.com/bane/29-6129/ : http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Bane : http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Bane_(New_Earth) : http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Bane_(New_Earth)/Gallery : http://gothamalleys.blogspot.com/2011/02/bane.html : http://io9.com/5738053/why-is-this-guy-youve-never-heard-of-christopher-nolans-latest-batman-villain :
This is the 77th article in my Know Your CBM Character series. Any requests and suggestions for an article for this series write it down in the comment section BELOW.
Build up your GEEKCREDS by answering this:
CBM FIGHT CLUB CHALLENGE
Here's a Scenario provided by x2SMONEY:
Arena-Underground Fighting Arena
When Bane puts his services up for the highest bidder, the King Pin accepts. Bane, thinking he could kill the Kingpin and become the man in charge, attempts to kill The Kingpin at an underground fighting tournament which Kingpin is running. Kingpin sees whats going to happen and tackels Bane down to the crowd below and the two begin fighting
Message to the CBM community:To those who are making requests, check first [here] because I might have done an article on the character already. If I have not please be patient, I will get on it as soon as possible (but consider the fact that I spend hours writing one of these articles). Try to limit your request to characters that already have been adapted to live media, so that the feature will at least be relevant to the site – Comic Book Movie(though I include TV characters). Characters in Manga or Anime’, I am not particularly familiar of, I am not discounting these characters but it will probably take some time before I write a feature on them because I have to read up on these characters. Thank you for reading these articles! If there are errors on the feature article above, blame it on my age, humanity and ignorance. Just be sure to check the comment section for the corrections, any error I made will surely be pointed out and corrected by much bigger geeks (because there will always be a bigger geek out there). -This has been PollMaster inviting you to the geekside. MABUHAY CBM and Godspeed!
FOLLOW ME ON: