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#99 - Bane
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El Presidente.

Hacking and slashing your way through the tropical jungles of Central America, you're bound to stumble across the most bananas of banana republics, a small nation nestled between fascist dictatorships called Santa Prisca. And just outside of the capital city of El Monica lies the penal island of Pena Duro, where the unnamed boy, clinging to his sole possession, a ratty, one-eyed teddy bear, would grow up to become the most fearsome brute to ever stalk the surface of the Earth. Sure, Doomsday was stronger. Bizarro is tougher. But I contend in matters of spreading fear, Bane is second-to-none.

The history of Bane carries its own infamous notoriety. I won't break your back raking it all over the coals once more. What matters in this campaign instead was the place Bane comes from - not as a villain, not even as a member of the Society with his own righteous fury and indignation. No, Bane has been burdened with a responsibility most unexpected - if you didn't know Bane.

President Bane, in point of fact, if you're nasty.

Saddling the broad, uncompromisingly chiseled muscular shoulders of Bane with responsibility presents a new facet of Bane's personality. Furthermore, I think in contemplation on the history of Central and South American governments, so many of them built and propped up by the CIA through juntas and revolutions and bloody chaos, it becomes apparent why someone who, through the lens of an American, comes across as such bloodthirsty villain actually possesses the capacity to rule Santa Prisca and even bring it some amount of prosperity. In some ways, the culture is entirely alien to us, but the clarity of Bane's vision might in many ways be a bastion of comfort for the people of his country. Instead of suffering the weak leadership of criminals or simpering wimps who hide behind the coattails of drug dealers, multinational conglomerate corporations or the big sticks of foreign presidents, there is finally a local hero to bear the standard of Santa Prisca.

Does it matter that he's willing to kill to keep hold of his power? Of course it does - his people love him for it! They rejoice in the knowledge that their home has a true defender who will go to the most extreme lengths to protect their new way of life! In that way, Bane carries a bit of the mid-80s Doctor Doom sensibility, or, more interestingly, the facet of the Shade I find most interesting: Bane is a villain everywhere but his home. And that is good enough for Bane.

Which is why, now that his country has fallen, anyone who, simply put, fucks with Bane's home, gets a squeezin'. Like Minerva, who very recently revealed her own duplicity in earning Bane's support and in fact serving as the catalyst for Bane's migration to Z'onn Z'orr, facing Bane's controlled, restrained fury. Bane could have broken the fragile fish-woman with barely the effort of a moment - he did not. This doesn't suggest that Bane has tempered himself, but rather reinforces that Bane recognizes the long-term necessity of maintaining this connection. At first, Minerva was Bane's ally in a campaign to retake Santa Prisca. With barely a few words, that relationship turned to one of a favor owed - and if not repaid in full, that favor could easily lead to Minerva's death.

And then there's this: Bane's dying. Well, the world's dyin' Cloud, this I know, but Bane's actually dying in the sense that Venom, crafted from the Miraclo of Hourman, is poisoning his blood, like leukemia. Bane may very well be weakened by the source of his abilities. And in that first hint of weakness, he has demonstrated signs that the monster Bane has always been, where we started in this write-up, my rear its head again. Spirit and Mid-Nite now contend with the animalistic side of Bane, the barbarian, the being that will kill for pride, rather than for his country.

So in that way, I believe Bane represents so many of those South American revolutionaries that are praised for their extreme methods, all in the pursuit of freedom for a common man. That freedom is born out of the blood of innocents, and any being willing to expend the torrential rivers full of blood necessary to achieve that freedom surely have a dark passenger within them, capable of killing for far less.

So, you have to ask - is Bane, an ally of Checkmate in the war against Darkseid, truly someone Amanda Waller and the spec ops team really want to prop up as a future leader in a new world order? Or will he be the bane of their existence, once Darkseid is toppled?