Joe Chill
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This is the Joe Chill disambiguation page.
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Joseph Chill • Joseph Chilton
Joe Chill is the name commonly ascribed to the man responsible for the murder of Bruce Wayne's parents, Thomas and Martha Wayne. In some incarnations of the character, his full name is actually Joseph Chilton. In the 1989 Batman movie, Jack Napier, aka the Joker, was responsible for the death of the Waynes. John Corben, also known as Metallo, has also been linked to the Wayne murders.
See Also
Overview
Little is actually known about the Joe Chill character, and his history retains little consistency, but he is generally acknowledged as being the small-time crook who murdered Batman's parents. Although some continuities prefer to have Thomas and Martha Wayne's killer remain anonymous so that every criminal the Batman fights may stand in for him, it is considered general canon that if anybody specific killed the Waynes, it was Joe Chill.
Pre-Crisis
Batman's origin story is first established in a sequence of panels in Detective Comics #33, later reproduced in Batman #1, but the mugger is not given a name until Batman #47. In that issue, Batman discovers that Joe Chill, the small-time crime boss he is investigating, is none other than the man who killed his parents. Batman confronts him and reveals his secret identity. Chill, frightened, seeks protection from his henchmen. Once they learn that Chill's actions led to the hated Batman's existence, they turn on their boss and kill him, never giving Chill a chance to reveal Batman's identity.
In Detective Comics #235, Batman learns that Chill is not a mere robber, but actually a hitman who has murdered the Waynes on orders from a Mafia boss named Lew Moxon.
In the 1980 miniseries The Untold Legend of the Batman, Alfred Pennyworth reminisces that Joe Chill is the son of one Alice Chilton, one-time caretaker of young Bruce Wayne.
Modern Age
In the post-Crisis 1987 storyline Batman: Year Two, Chill played a key role. Several Gotham City crime bosses pool their resources to deal with a vigilante called the Reaper, and Chill is hired to take him out. When Batman proposes an alliance it is agreed that he and Chill will work together - something Batman finds repugnant, but which he nevertheless justifies to himself as necessary to tackle the Reaper. He vows to kill Chill afterwards. Chill is also commissioned to kill Batman after the Reaper has been disposed of. During a major confrontation, the crime bosses are all killed in a battle at a warehouse, in which the Reaper seemingly also perishes. Chill reasons that he now no longer needs to fulfill his contract, but Batman takes him to "Crime Alley", the scene of his parents' murder. There he confronts Chill and reveals his identity. Batman has Chill at gunpoint, but the Reaper appears and guns Chill down. It is left it ambiguous as to whether or not Batman would have actually pulled the trigger.
In the 1991 sequel one-shot, Batman: Full Circle, Chill's son (also named Joe Chill) appears, taking on the identity of the now deceased Reaper. He seeks revenge for his father's death, and subsequently attempts to drive Batman insane by using hallucinogenic drugs to trigger Batman's survivor's guilt over his parents' deaths. Chill knows that his father had killed Batman's parents, but does not know of Batman's identity. However, thanks to the intervention of Robin, Batman frees himself from the drug-induced haze, and overcome his guilt. After the new Reaper is defeated, Batman accepts that the bad blood between him and the Chills is now over.
After 1994's Zero Hour storyline, DC Comics stated that Batman did not catch or confront who had murdered his parents after having seen in an alternate timeline that Chill hadn't done it after all.
In 2006's Infinite Crisis #6, another cosmic crisis reestablishing that Chill murders Thomas and Martha Wayne and adding for the first time that he is later arrested on that same night for their murder. This change is consistent with the previous year's film Batman Begins, in which Chill is also caught shortly after murdering the Waynes.
As revealed in the 2008 Grant Morrison story, "Joe Chill in Hell" (featured in Batman #673), Joe was a mid-level crime boss. He had built the Land, Sea, Air Transport company from the ground up (most likely through illegal means). Any crimes he committed, including the Waynes murder, he blamed on class warfare. But it is told by Batman this experience happened in Nanda Parbat when Batman was alone for seven weeks and visualized life, death and rebirth. In this story, Batman has visited and frightened Chill every night for a month. Chill is living as a shut in, but his guards never see or catch Batman during the visits. On his final visit, Batman give Chill the gun he used to kill the Waynes. There is one bullet left in the clip (possibly meant for Bruce). Chill finally realizes who Batman is. Realizing that he was the one that created the Batman (and what his fellow gangsters would do to him if they found out), he presumably takes his own life with the gun, but whether he actually did this or not is still unknown.
