Bane has faced the Batman and walked away victorious. Fuelled by the strengthening serum known as Venom, he snapped the Bat's spine. Bane - and Bane alone - has taken down the Dark Knight. He proved that Batman could be defeated. That Batman could be broken. And with that, Bane cemented his place as one of Batman's all-time greatest adversaries. But prior to his triumph, the fearsome villain was just an orphaned boy, imprisoned by tyrants and used as a lab rat for high-risk experiments. Before he takes on the Batman once more in The Dark Knight Rises, read here the first appearance and origins of Bane, the man who broke the Bat...

Batman Versus Bane collects together stories that were originally published in comic book form in Batman/Bane and Batman: Bane Of The Demon issues #1 to 4. Here we see Bane's origins and his rather unhinged obsession with taking down the Batman.

It's funny, for a collection that seems to promise a showdown between Batman and Bane, that the two only meet in a handful of panels. Instead we follow Bane from his birth to him becoming a broken, yet hardened teenage. We also witness his transformation at the hands of scientists, him working for Ra's al Ghul and his brief affair with Ra's daughter, Talia.

Parts of this collection were also used as the basis for segments of Dirk Maggs's audio drama series Batman: Knightfall, so fans of that will also find much to enjoy here.

This is a great collection that will help Batman fans flesh out a little more of the background to Bane.

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Darren Rea