Batmans 10 Best Comic Mentors
Batman’s 10 Best Comic Mentors
Contents
Batman is known for having mastered a vast array of skills, and these are some of the mentors from the comics that taught them to him.
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DC’s Batman has made a name for himself across different mediums in large part for being a super-powerless superhero that’s mastered an astounding array of skills. It’s what puts him on a more level playing field with the aliens and metahumans of the DC universe, and even overpower them in several instances.
Part of the Dark Knight’s origins in the comics was traveling the world, gathering knowledge from some of the best martial artists, strategists, and detectives. In those travels, he picked up on a lot, even from other prominent and recurring DC characters. Though, Batman’s been one to pick up on new tactics in various stages of his career.
10 Henri Ducard
When it comes to skills and epithets, the World’s Greatest Detective is of Batman’s most notable ones. Acquiring such expert skills in sleuthing eventually led him to Paris in the comics. There, a young Bruce Wayne approached Henri Ducard to pass his knowledge. Ducard is an elite detective who specializes in manhunting cases, having worked with Interpol for a time.
However, Ducard is an amoral character, as he’s worked with criminals about as often as the side of the law, leading the two to have an unsurprisingly strained relationship. Nolan’s movies incorporated this character and one of Batman’s greatest supervillains–Ra’s al Ghul–into one by having Neeson portray a version of Ducard that eventually becomes the new Ra’s of Batman Begins.
9 Lady Shiva
Lady Shiva is one DC character that taught Bruce while he already had experience as Batman. She helped hone his combative prowess as Shiva is one of DC’s best martial artists, and one of the few characters/supervillains to beat Batman in hand-to-hand combat. During the classic Knightfall arc, Bruce eventually went to Shiva to train under in order to recover from Bane breaking his back.
Shiva eventually tried to force an ultimatum on Bruce; kill his assailant with the fatal Leopard Blow she taught him, or face non-stop waves of opponents. Through a mix of Bruce’s skills and Shiva’s teachings, the former was able to mimic the move without it being lethal, allowing him to pass with none the wiser.
8 Giovanni/John Zatara
Delving more into the supernatural, Giovanni Zatara helped teach Bruce about the arcane world and arts, as well as escapology and sleight of hand. Batman: The Animated Series also shows a flashback sequence involving this training. Giovanni is a recurring DC character throughout the universe, and more famously is the father of Zatanna Zatara, whom she also taught.
He’s known for being a stage magician that actually practices magic, giving Bruce a variety of skills to learn given the former’s talents, background, and profession. Being a non-meta human in a world filled with them–along with the usual madmen like Joker–Bruce needs to use his wits and an extremely deft hand to overcome grueling situations.
7 Alfred Pennyworth
Of the mentors in Bruce’s life, Alfred is undoubtedly among the most consistent. Though clearly important to his life across the board, some may not immediately have him come to mind when thinking about mentors that taught him concepts like martial arts and criminology.
Nonetheless, Alfred has taught Bruce techniques like disguise and acting, with the latter particularly for holding up his life as a rich philanthropist while deflecting any potential suspicion of being Batman. On top of that, Alfred is most prominently Bruce’s surrogate father, being his emotional and psychological anchor.
6 David Cain
Bruce somewhat surprisingly trained with David Cain, a world-class assassin known for having murdered some of the most powerful people on Earth. Cain trained a young Bruce in several lethal forms of martial arts, despite not actually using them as Batman.
While stark opposites, Bruce did well to learn from a dangerous martial artist, as it teaches him how to counter opponents with the intent to kill and how far he can take his combat skills without succumbing to murder. He also plays a role in shaping the Batfamily, as Shiva and Cain are the biological parents of Cassandra Cain, who’d later become Orphan and then Batgirl.
5 Sergei Alexandrov
During the New 52 run of the Batman comic book series, the character Sergei Alexandrov is introduced as a mentor of Bruce’s past. Specifically, Bruce was 21 when he sought Alexandrov out for engineering training. Alexandrov is a Russian mechanical engineer and inventor; a teacher that proved vital to Batman’s effectiveness on the field in Gotham.
Aside from physical prowess and sleuthing skills, gadgetry is something paramount to the Dark Knight’s arsenal, and knowledge in engineering is something else to give Bruce perspective on solving complex problems from different angles.
4 Don Miguel
Staying within the New 52 continuity, but two years before training with Alexandrov, Bruce traveled to Brazil to train under a criminal named Don Miguel. In Rio de Janeiro, Miguel trained Bruce in getaway driving tactics. Putting together the engineering expertise with this, and Batman has the necessary tools for driving the Batmobile–his most famous gadget–so wildly.
Don Miguel has a lethal track record, and after Bruce mastered what he was taught, he crashed his teacher’s getaway car and knocked him unconscious for the police, as Miguel needed to be tried for the murders of 23 officers from over 12 countries.
3 Wildcat
Ted Grant, or Wildcat, played a notable hand in training a few key Batfamily characters. A former member of the Justice Society of America, Wildcat trained Black Canary, Catwoman, and Batman in the art of boxing. It’s quite the list of students to have, and it’s another fighting style to make use of given the situation.
However, as boxing will require, it also taught Batman defense in, specifically, how to take a hit rather than solely knowing how to deal them out. Being human, Batman’s body is bound to take plenty of physical punishment, so defense in combat is something invaluable.
2 Shihan Matsuda
The story in Detective Comics #0 showed fans Bruce learning from a crucial mentor tactically, but also proved to be one of the catalysts for one of his biggest psychological and emotional weaknesses: his distrust of people. Shihan Matsuda was a Buddhist warrior monk who trained Bruce in sword-fighting with the katana, along with teaching him how to regulate his body temperature through meditation.
However, the weakness he gained from his mentor here came after Mio, a woman he fell in love with, and the mentor’s own wife tried to murder Matsuda. Bruce watched everyone he grew to love there die after being deceived; Mio, his master’s wife whom he saw as a mother, and Matsuda whom he saw as a father. Matsuda’s dying words and teachings were to embrace loneliness and rid himself of love.
1 Kirigi
Introduced in a Batman issue from the late 1980s, Kirigi is another mentor who’s built up an impressive list of students in the DC universe. On top of Batman, Kirigi has trained Bronze Tiger and Kyodai Ken. He’s a famous master and teacher of Ninjutsu and has also trained several members of Ra’s al Ghul’s League of Assassins.
A particular mark of honor from Bruce training under him is being allowed to learn his coveted vibrating palm strike technique. While a lethal move that Batman wouldn’t put to practice, it offers great martial arts insight like from the teachings of mentors Cain and Shiva. Kirigi has also made an appearance in the Arkham Origins video game in DLC.
Link Source : https://screenrant.com/batman-best-mentors-comic-books/
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