so, my opinions here are a bit complicated: i think, for the most part while he's batman, bruce is stable in this arena of his brain. in order to function as batman he couldn't not be. and i say for the most part because, directly after jason's death, bruce was deeply depressed. the broken bat volume of knightfall is literally just one extended romp in bruce's sad brain. that's............ that's the whole thing, there's a particularly weird narration box where he's talking about "going where lions lay down with lambs" which, y'know, That's Heaven Babey. That's Just Heaven Babey. but that's something that heals with time.

i specify "as batman" because, uh, batman: year one exists. and in BYO, there is a point where bruce is bleeding out in his study, staring at a bust of his father, going, "i'd rather die... than wait another hour..." because that's what it came down to. it was being batman, or letting himself die. and following BYO, a few other comics depict a younger bruce having suicidal impulses, most of which come in fantasies where he dies alongside his parents.

so basically; when bruce was younger, he was a wreck. he was a purposeless, hurt kid flailing around, and he probably went through a lot of suicidal thoughts in that time. i think it leveled out during his training, because he had a purpose, and in BYO, he is kind of down to the wire. if this doesn't work, it's over, it's just lions and lambs, bud.

and when his plan initially isn't working, he sinks back into that hole, it's - bruh, it's a fucking bat that saves his life. a bat crashes through the window. it's not the city he latches onto as a reason to live, it's the goddamn bat that busts through the window. it is pure accident. and his entire life rode on a tiny flying mammal. i emphasize this because i think it's important to remember how fractured bruce's brain was, how desperate he really was, that the first thing he is given, he latches onto and bases an entire identity around it.

i'm so fucking validated right now. i bet batman keeps up with all the paleontology drama. maybe he runs a paleontology news blog in his spare time, or maybe he doesn't, because he doesn't actually have spare time. maybe he's a ceratopsid enthusiast, i can imagine him being a ceratopsid enthusiast. or maybe ankylosauria. do you think he'd be visibly moved if he ever went to the royal tyrrell museum and saw the nodosaur fossil they have on display? and he's just whispering to alfred, "this fossil is so complete scientists were able to discern pigment........" and alfred's internally like "oh, bother," because he's too british to care about dinosaurs.

"you're growing like a sauropod," bruce says, jokingly, to a baby dick grayson. baby dick grayson cocks his head in confusion. bruce looks nervous, and continues with, "because, uh, sauropods are the fastest growing land animals ever documented, according to -" baby dick grayson interrupts by shrieking NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERD.

OH BOY DO I

so, thanks to audrey, i will always run with her headcanon that alfred didn’t know how to cook, really, when he became bruce’s guardian because he was only a butler - he bossed the cooks around, instead of cooking himself. so for years while alfred Learned there were a lot of relatively easy meals, sandwiches, soups, stews, that bruce considers comfort food now.

there’s a panel in gotham knights where alfred talks about having to chase bruce down as a toddler, and this is because, as a baby, bruce may have been quiet, but he was always on the go. could not get him to sit down. this lad has frogs to find, he has turtles to document, he has trees to climb, and finding bruce was a task left to alfred for the following reason -

baby bruce was extremely and deeply interested in alfred, because, from a kid’s perspective, alfred was the Coolest. alfred spoke in a funny way, and gave bruce a funny title, and also alfred - because alfred is a naturally awkward man - tried to pay bruce as little mind as possible initially, and playing hard-to-get automatically made him interesting. bruce, even as baby, likes a challenge. so alfred eventually got the role of babysitter. bruce bit all the other babysitters.

alfred used to playact with bruce because he was really good at it, and sometimes it devolved into bruce watching alfred act out scenes in Tiny Baby Fascination

whenever baby bruce is upset alfred would make a weird face at him, and it would always, always get a surprised gurgle-laugh

bruce was a touchy-feely kid before his parents got got, so he was always hugging alfred and tugging on alfred’s pants leg and holding alfred’s hand and alfred was very [britishly explodes internally] about it

they fought a lot when bruce was a teen. they fought a lot because bruce as a teen was a bastard. i mean, he was always a bastard, but when he hit thirteen he became a Bastarde. there were periods during this time where alfred and bruce only communicated in shouts for weeks, and those weeks were followed by weeks where if alfred said anything even slightly reprimanding, bruce would burst into tears, because Hormones mixed with Mental Illness do not a good combination make. can you imagine having a kid that is an absolute wreck just walk out of your life to go globetrotting and learn to crack open a can of whoop ass from ninjas? how wild would that be.

how heartbroke would you be, actually, because i think those years bruce was gone were some of the hardest in alfred’s life because there was nothing to focus on but a big old empty house and the very rare communication from your boy and the fact that you are worried, and very worried.

i can’t handle the canon that says bruce and alfred had no contact while bruce was training, i can’t, it makes me sad, so i like to think bruce wrote sometimes and came to visit sometimes, and each time he came to visit alfred would have to take a moment to Collect Himself because his boy is so grown now

alfred still has those moments. alfred will see bruce interacting with a batkid and have a sudden rush of extreme fondness for this kid who grew into a man that risks life and limb every night to try and make gotham a better place, this kid who grew into a man with kids of his own.

So imo if he was going to see Alfred in person during that period, Alfred has to have come to him. 

(Or they met up in London or something; it’s not like Alfred was physically tied to the house with no one in it. I dislike picturing this purely because it reminds me of Nolan’s stupid trilogy’s stupid ending; on its own merits it’s charming.)

But I like to think there were postcards. An occasional phone call. Maybe on his birthdays. ‘Hey Alfred, not dead, another year down.’

Supplement, I have to assume part of the appeal of Alfred to Baby Bruce was that he was the most recognizable/routinely present adult whose business in no way concerned Bruce.

His parents doted. Whoever the Waynes hired to supplement childcare was probably a highly trained professional and their only reason for being in the same room as Bruce was to pay attention to him.

I’m writing with capital letters in this post, because this is an Issue, and this is a write-up of an Issue. The first rule of this post is, there’s not to be any fucking around on this post; discussion will be conducted respectfully, or it will not be conducted. The second rule of this post is, ordinarily, I am a proponent of ignoring the canon, and doing whatever you want - I think everyone has full license to play with these characters however they want. But because there’s so many people citing specific ideas as canon, that are not canon, or are only canon in specific continuities, that we’re going to play around in the big well of canon. We’re also going to take Word of God input from creators as something of note. Third rule of this post is, I’m talking about Batman. I am talking about Bruce Wayne, and Bruce Wayne only, because this is already a long enough discussion. Fourth rule, you might notice that there are creators in this write-up that you might realize I personally do not like and do not support - unfortunately, they’re here because they’re creators whose viewpoints have had a massive effect on Batman as a character. Whenever performing any kind of serious analysis of Batman, I cannot ignore Frank Miller because of the significant effect his work has had, as much as I would like to never speak of Frank Miller again. Let’s get to it.

Historically, the debate has been whether Batman was a lapsed Catholic or lapsed Episcopalian, and has recently extended to include Judaism as a possibility. The reason the debate has extended to Batman possibly being Jewish is because DC Rebirth retconned Kate Kane, Batwoman, a Jewish lesbian, as being Bruce’s cousin and Martha Wayne’s niece. This is a retcon, and was not canon until DC Rebirth. When Batwoman was reinvented in 2006, the Kane family was separate from the Waynes, and the two were not related. This opens up the potential for Batman to be Jewish because of the matrilineal tradition of Judaism, which states that a person born to a Jewish mother has irrevocable status as a Jew. As the Kanes are a Jewish family, this opens the possibility that Batman is also, through his mother, is Jewish. There is a depiction of Batman as a Jewish freedom fighter in Nazi Germany in Berlin Batman, which is really fucking good by-the-by, but it’s an Elseworlds, and out of continuity. This is all pretty fucking cool, but a really recent development, and one that DC has not capitalized on, depicted, or encouraged in any way through their comics. In fact, in Tom King’s Batman #53, solidly in the Rebirth continuity, a significant portion of fans read Bruce as being an atheist, and Bruce’s father is depicted as a Christian.

(Batman #53, and it’s important to note that later King said he didn’t intend to write Bruce as an atheist, despite the fans’ popular reading of it.)

Bruce being an atheist specifically is not new:

(JLA #66. Joe Kelly is pretty fond of Bruce being an atheist.)

(Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader by Neil Gaiman)

I find this a little bit bonkers, considering it’s canon in the DC Universe that there’s a God, a bunch of other Gods, a heaven, a bunch of other heavens, and Bruce was on the Justice League with a literal angel of Heaven at one point in time. I find it weird when they do this with Mr. Terrific, too.

Another connection Batman has to Judaism is through his creators, Bob Kane and Bill Finger, who were both Jewish men. However, there are no early depictions of Batman as Jewish; the depictions of him engaging with religion are scant, except for his engagements with Christmas - which there are plenty. There have been a number of Christmas stories written with Batman over the years, and, in fact, the very first one was in Batman #9, penned by Bob Kane and Bill Finger themselves. (Well, I don’t know if Bob Kane penned it, because Bob Kane had a veritable army of ghostartists. But his name sure is on it.) This wasn’t the only Bat-Christmas story published under their watch - Bill Finger went on to work on Batman #45, another classic Bat-Christmas story.

(Batman #9)

(Batman #45)

In the vast, vast majority of Batman comics, Bruce is separated from religion entirely - which benefits DC, because it makes him more marketable. But this isn’t the case with every comic, as he’s depicted praying:

(Secret Origins #6)

And there’s another notable instance where Bruce engages with religion, and it’s in Batman: The Chalice, written by Chuck Dixon; Bruce is the descendant of a line of knights tasked with protecting the Holy Grail. Chuck Dixon has a few opinions on Bruce’s religion: “Graham Nolan and I had an ongoing argument about whether Bruce was raised Catholic or Protestant. I recently conceded to Graham that he must be Catholic. No Protestant ever suffered guilt the way Bruce does.”

Which, holy shit, I could talk about that all day, because that’s fucking WILD, Chuck. Through this we can presume that Bruce is depicted as Catholic in Batman: The Chalice, even though the book never specifies a denomination, and that book was canonical for its continuity. Unfortunately that was a couple continuities ago, and we can no longer be sure! How fun comics are. Another notable creator that argues Bruce is Catholic is the one, the only, fucking goddamn Frank Miller, who argues strongly for the case and wrote some pretty religious lines into The Dark Knight Returns.

The Dark Knight Returns is non-canonical, which also happens to be the one example that exists of God’s love for me, because if it was actually canon I would’ve given up on this whole charade a long time ago. But The Dark Knight Returns has had a massive, incredible impact on how Batman is conceived of as a character, which means people take Frank Miller’s opinion seriously, and a lot of people therefore are very solid in the belief that Bruce Wayne is a Catholic. The argument rests in the idea that Bruce behaves psychologically like someone raised Catholic, which, like, fucking - holy shit. You guys. It might be the childhood trauma that led to Bruce’s guilt complex, not the Catholicism, and Batman comics’ over-usage of Catholic imagery might just be because Catholic imagery kind of fucking rocks, but you know, who am I to judge.

Other arguments rest with Bruce being Episcopalian, and these arguments are more related to Bruce’s socioeconomic status, because he’s honestly as WASPy as they come, and in One Time Lost To Comics History, one of Bruce’s ancestors was buried at an Episcopal church. Elliot S. Maggin, a Jewish man most well-known for his work with Superman, has a few things to say on this subject: “I give all my characters religions. I think I always have. It’s part of the backstory. It’s part of the process of getting to know a character well enough to write about him or her. Jimmy Olson is Lutheran. Lois is Catholic. Perry is Baptist. Luthor is Jewish (though non-observant, thank heaven). Bruce and Batman are both Episcopalian and I said so in the text though it was edited out erroneously.”

A lot of people try to reverse-engineer Bruce’s religion with are the gravestones, which is like, a buckwild way to do it. The Waynes (and our dear Jason Todd) have been depicted with everything from heaving monuments to plain headstones to simple Christian crosses to the angel-bearing gravestones Bruce sobs over in Tim Sale and Jeph Loeb’s The Long Halloween. The most extravagant is probably from Mike W. Barr, Alan Davis, and Todd McFarlane’s Batman: Year Two -

There is a lot of imagery of Bruce hugging his parents’ gravestones, because he is kind of a fucked up man. Don’t judge him. Leave him alone. He wants to be gothic and weird and cry alone in the dark in a cemetery and dammit, goths have rights. Point being, the gravestones in Bruce’s family change with every artist that depicts them, and it’s impossible to pin anything definitive down because everything is done for aesthetic. Kind of goes back to the extensive usage of Catholic imagery, like how Bruce and Selina [checks watch] seven continuities ago were married in a Catholic church - I honestly think that a lot of these artistic decisions are made purely for the aesthetic instead of trying to subtly communicate any particular religious belief on Bruce’s part.

OKAY BUT OKAY THE THING IS THAT BRUCE HAS THOSE TIMES WHERE HE FEELS GUILTY FOR EXISTING SO THE THING IS

bruce, who has been in confession for three hours: ........ and at 5:30, i dropped a piece of paper and alfred picked it up for me -

A simple yet wondrous robot design!