This is a piece done for the R3 Illustrator Jam, the subject being a redesign/reinterpretation of Batman: Year One.

In the streets of Gotham, young, ambitious jewel thief Bruce Wayne and his fiancee Selena Kyle planned the perfect crime: steal the Dream Diamond from the Gotham Historical Archives, by flying down through the clerestory windows of the building using Wayne’s father’s experimental human glider tactical suits.

Though his father had spent much of his fortune employing reformed criminals, believing in their ability to be good citizens, Wayne believed that many of the workers in his fathers factory that had assisted in the prototypes were secretly part of Gotham’s organized crime network. After his father’s passage, Wayne had found his ownership of the company threatened by internal corruption, sabotage, and labor strikes. His family fortune nearly depleted, he crafted a scheme by which the massive diamond would be sold to a private Italian collector, Falcone, replenishing his cash reserves and enabling him to fire his father’s corrupt crew, and build a new labor force of non-ex-felons.

However, the heist went terribly wrong. Wayne’s beloved Selena was struck by building structure as they entered at a steep angle through the clerestory, causing her ultralight glider cape to catch on the jagged structural glass and inadvertently strangle her. As Wayne struggled to free her, police responded to eyewitness reports of giant bats circling the dark streets of downtown. Suffering bullet wounds and struggling to stay conscious, Wayne hurled himself back out the window, and sailed across the urban nightscape to freedom, nearly passing out from the loss of blood.

After his slow, lonely recovery, Wayne would grow embittered over the incident, dedicating his life to delivering vengeance upon the men in his father’s employ who had tampered with the gliders in order to engineer his capture or murder, and wrestle control of his father’s fortune from him. Soon the Gotham underworld would learn to fear the Bat-Man!

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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1. TRDL Tribute: Batman: Year One
2. TRDL 2011 Series No. 35 – Iron Man vs. Batman
3. TRDL Tribute: Batman Begins