This is "How Can I Explain?", which is a feature spotlighting inexplicable comic book plots.

Today, based on a suggestion from longtime reader, Tom A., we look at some particularly inexplicable ages that Bruce Wayne apparently was when his parents died.

It all began with that classic origin that we first saw in Detective Comics #33 by Bill Finger and Bob Kane. I am going to share the version of the origin from Batman #1 (I like Batman #1 better than the original origin in Detective Comics #33 because they change the first panel so that it is not a teaser for the main story from Detective Comics #33. It always kind of weirds me out that Batman's first origin has a big panel for an unrelated story at the start of the page)

Bruce is clearly a kid in the story, right? I mean, it's Bob Kane, so it's not like you're going to get a ton of detail into the character work, but he's pretty clearly intended to be a child. That's the whole tragedy of it all, right? That Bruce Wayne's childhood was ruined by the loss of his parents right in front of his face.

In Batman #47 (by Bill Finger, Bob Kane and Charles Paris - one of the, if not THE, last Batman stories that Bob Kane ever drew on his own. He would contribute Batman and Robin drawings to the stories for a little while before officially bowing out entirely), Bruce looks like a kid...

In the classic "There Is No Hope in Crime Alley" from Detective Comics #457 (by Denny O'Neil and Dick Giordano, the story that both established "Crime Alley" as part of Batman's origin and the introduction of Dr. Leslie Thompkins), the whole intervention of Thompkins seems to be centered precisely ON the fact that Bruce is a kid, as she is there to comfort him in the way that you would a child versus, say, a teenager...

In The Untold Legend of Batman #1 (by Wein, John Byrne and Jim Aparo), Bruce is clearly a kid...

He looks even younger in Dark Knight Returns #1 (by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson)...

And roughly the same age in Miller and David Mazzucchelli's version of the Wayne's death in Batman: Year One...

One of the few examples to actually specifically detail the age of young Bruce Wayne was Alan Brennert and Dick Giordano's classic "To Kill a Legend" in Detective Comics #500, which explained that Bruce Wayne was eight years old when his parents were killed in front of him...

He's also a kid in Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness' Superman/Batman #1...

Okay, so that's the basic gist of all of the most famous versions of the iconic death of the Waynes - Bruce is a kid.

In Tom King's Batman run, he has Bruce attempting to kill himself at the age of 10...

Okay, so now let's look at some weird stories where Bruce's age is all over the place...

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In 1956's Detective Comics #235 (by Finger, Sheldon Moldoff and Stan Kaye), Batman discovers that he got the idea for being Batman from a costume that his father, Thomas Wayne, wore to a costume party when Bruce was a kid (I wrote about this in a piece about retroactive explanations for superhero names).

However, that same costume party also ultimately led to Thomas' death.

Tom correctly pointed out that even if you want to say that Bruce is as young as three in that flashback scene, then that would mean that if ten years passed from the costume party to Moxon getting revenge on Thomas Wayne, then that means that Bruce would have been a teenager when his parents were killed!

The much weirder one, though, was in Adventure Comics #275 (by Jerry Coleman and George Papp), where the Waynes moved to Smallville and Bruce GOES TO HIGH SCHOOL before his parents are dead!

At the end of the story, Bruce figures out Superboy's secret identity, but wants to be hypnotized to forget it....

His family moves back to Gotham City the next YEAR, so the EARLIEST his parents could have been killed was a year after that, so, what, Bruce would have been a freakin' sophomore in high school at the earliest?

I know no one was paying attention to this stuff at the time, so it's not a big deal, but it's also pretty darn funny!

Thanks for the great observation, Tom! If anyone else can think of a good inexplicable comic book plot, write me at brianc@cbr.com!