Every week, we will be examining comic book stories and ideas that were not only abandoned, but also had the stories/plots specifically "overturned" by a later writer (as if they were a legal precedent). Click here for an archive of all the previous editions of The Abandoned An' Forsaked. Feel free to e-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com if you have any suggestions for future editions of this feature.

Today we look at the changing story of how Alfred first met Bruce Wayne (and discovered that Bruce Wayne was Batman)...

Alfred first showed up in 1943's Batman #16 (written by Don Cameron with art by Bob Kane, Jerry Robinson and George Roussos)...

Years later, though, in 1957's Batman #110 by Bill Finger, Sheldon Moldoff and Stan Kaye, give a completely different origin for Alfred...

Years later, in 1980's the Untold Legend of Batman, Len Wein and Jim Aparo mix the two origins together to get...

After Crisis, Frank Miller made it so that Alfred was the Wayne butler ever since Bruce was a boy and that's been the way ever since (Crisis doesn't count for abandoning and forsaking, though, since it was a company-wide reboot).

As an aside, just in case you were curious, here are the first appearances of Alfred's first last name, Alfred Beagle, from Detective Comics #96...

And here is when he became Pennyworth in 1969's Batman #216...