James Tynion IV Retcons Bane With Vengeance Origin Reveal

JB Augustine |

Oct 29, 2021

Bane’s daughter – codenamed Vengeance – has finally gotten the gaps in her origin story filled in courtesy of the latest issue of James Tynion IV’s The Joker.

In Joker #8, Tynion IV reveals that everything about the young super-villain – how she came to be, what her origin really has to do with her supposed dad, and why she wants to kill The Jester of Genocide – is the design of the lab and institution in Santa Prisca who created her and sent her after Mr. J.

This epiphany has drawn some comparisons to Wolverine and X-23, but as well as to the relationship between Batman and his biological son Damian.

According to Tynion IV, Vengeance created using genetic material taken from Bane and grown at an accelerated rate – in other words, she’s a clone.

And just as the military junta that runs Santa Prisca can genetically engineer soldiers, they can also program them, which is why she and Bane hate and hunt Joker and The Bat – it was implanted in them.

With Vengeance, DC and Joker writer James Tynion can do what they want – she’s a new character – but in creating her, they’ve admittedly marred Bane’s origin a little bit.

No longer is Bane simply a master criminal and cunningly resourceful super-soldier who can get the best of any opponent with enough time and planning. Now he is a controlled product who possesses no free will.

He did eventually break that programming – though it cost him his life during the Joker War – and his curse subsequently passed to his “offspring.”

She was programmed just as Bane was – her whole life written on her mind – but with her mission being to track down and slay Joker.

When she finds discovers her true history thanks to a secret file containing all the intel, Vengeance turns rogue from her mission to weigh her options.

Her resulting course of action leads her to Europe, where she has currently kidnapped Jim Gordon in an attempt to sway him to let her kill the Clown – arguing that she would even be doing it for his sake – so that she could complete her mission and salvage some form of independent volition.

What Gordon will do when he ultimately confronts the archvillain after his investigation, given their tumultuous history, is unclear. However, it’s possible he might let Vengeance do her thing and absolve himself.

Also up in the air is how she will deal with it or evolve as a character when the deed is done. More than that, she has daddy to worry about now that he’s been brought back to life as one of the undead members of the newly-formed Task Force Z.