THE BATMAN

Bruce Wayne is a complex character. He cares for people and believes idealistically in their better nature and second chances, but struggles with two of the fundamentals of relationships: communication and honesty. He has a dark sense of humor, obsesses, and can be judgmental and hypocritical. He’s an idealist at heart in an extremely terrible city.

First and foremost, Bruce Wayne (if we’re talking that Batman) is not mentally healthy. Let’s get that out of the way. You can argue about whether there’s a label you can slap on it, but he is not and has not been mentally healthy since his parents were murdered in front of him. (That tends to mess you up a bit, I would guess).

He is obsessive. If he latches onto an idea, be it a moral standard (no killing), a mission (to spend the rest of his life warring on all criminals), or a symbol (the bat), that will consume him. Alfred has expressed concern about this on many, many occasions, but Bruce will not be dissuaded.

Bruce is highly private. He keeps things close to his chest: feelings, plans, his levels of trust. He is highly guarded, at best reserved and cautious, at worst antisocial and paranoid.

That said, he has a huge love for and belief in the goodness of people. He’s good with kids. He is always trying to help people, from victims to villains. He values all life. His crusade is not one of revenge, it’s born of a desire to see justice done and make it so that no one else has to go through what he went through. He’s all about rehabilitation and second chances—no matter how many times it fails and he has to go after the same rogues again and again, he still tries to get through to them. Heck, his believing in her ability to do and be good is one of the things that gets Selina Kyle to turn her own life around.

Batman, in most of his incarnations, is a dark and brooding hero with a personal vendetta against crime and injustice. Psychologically traumatized by the death of his parents, Batman has sworn to rid Gotham from the criminal elements that took his parents away from him. He is extremely pessimistic and suspicious, which often makes it difficult for him to trust people other than Alfred, Commissioner Gordon, Lucius Fox, the Robins, or the Batgirls.

Despite this, Batman has proved to have a great love for humanity, which was instilled by his parents. His father was a doctor, while his mother was a crusader against child abuse. Indeed, Batman's oath of vengeance is tempered with the greater ideal of justice. He refrains from killing, as he feels this would not make him any better than the criminals he fights. He is also a very prominent member of the Justice League and the founder of the Outsiders.

To protect his secret identity, Batman has constructed a fake persona he can use in his civilian identity. To the world at large, Bruce Wayne is a self-absorbed, irresponsible playboy and philanthropist. Only his closest allies know that this attitude is just an act. It's implied that he also considers Batman his true identity and that his civilian identity was essentially an alter ego as a result of having to watch his parents be gunned down.