Black Superhero: Batwing (David Zavimbe)

Batwing

David Zavimbe had a shitty life. There's no other way to put it. When David was young both of his parents died of AIDS although he and his brother were uninfected. This left David and his brother, Isaac, to fend for themselves until they were drafted as child soldiers into the army of General Keita, known as The Army Of The Dawn.

David and Isaac show great ability in the business of death. They earn the name Dragon Flies for their ability. However while Isaac enjoys his work this hurts David's soul and he can no longer take lives. Keita orders David and Issac to kill one of his rivals Okuru and his squadron. David was willing to accept the job but refused once he learned that they were to burn the entire village as well. David could not do this knowing it could kill hundreds of innocent women and children.

On the mission David fires his gun into the air alerting the other army and forcing Keita's to retreat. While arguing about the failure Keita states that he can no longer take David's insubordination. He attacks David but Isaac hits Keita to protect David. While David runs Keita attacks Isaac with his machete. After seeing his brother die to save him he decides on revenge as his final act.

Late one night David sneaks back in to camp. He drugs Keita and waits until he retreats to his room for the night. He ties up Keita and gags him. He steals a SUV and abducts him. David stops the SUV outside of Okura's camp. There he fires his gun in the air to alert them, leaving Keita to his death. David spends the next few weeks walking to The Children's Harbor, an orphanage for former child soldiers.

David grew up and became a police officer under the advice and guidance of Matu Ba. Think of him as Alfred, except a former child soldier who helped others to escape. David became disgusted with the corruption and injustice within the police department. David played everything by the book for some time. This was his attempt to change the department from within. However, it fails and he begins to grow tired and aggravated from the continued corruption.

Meanwhile Bruce Wayne is announcing Batman Inc. to combat Leviathan. David comes into contact with them many times but is helpless because the other officers refuse to help him. But not all is lost, soon Bruce arrives and takes David to the Batman Inc. Armory and outfits him with the most bad ass suit in Batman history passing up the Batman Beyond suit. Bruce explains to David the goals of Batman Inc. and of course lets him know that he is Batman. David vows to protect all of Africa and thus Batwing is born.

Bruce helps David to establish his own Batcave, known as the Haven, for a base of operations. Matu Ba is brought in as his adviser. I told you he's Alfred. Batman guides Batwing through his first mission which was to gain intel on a Leviathan brain washing facility. However Batwing was detected. Instead of fleeing he took the opportunity to destroy the facility and free the victims. Batman was impressed when he learned that David had some martial arts training from his time as a child soldier and was able to maneuver the suit with little practice including it's flight. Bruce spends a little more time with David, helping to refine his martial arts and teaching him as much as he can. It is now for Batwing to set off on his own and clean up Africa. It was up to David to clean up an entire continent.

Although he thought his training was done Bruce came back, David was his favorite Batman Inc. member. He continued training him in various forms of Martial arts as well as training Matu Ba to be able to handle injuries, like Alfred. Bruce tells David that he should aim higher than just street thugs before he leaves to check in on other Batman Inc. members. During the time away Batwing takes down the warlord Blood Tiger and his army.

During his job as a now happy police office he discovers a pile of bloodied dead bodies. Using the Batcomputer he learns that one of the bodies is Africa's first superhero Earth Strike. When he shows up at work late, on cp time even in Africa, he sees everyone has been slaughtered. Then he's ambushed and stabbed through the the chest and has his throat slit with a machete by a man name Massacre. He spends the next two weeks in a coma. Against Alfred's.... Matu Ba's orders he leaves bed rest to hunt Massacre.

Batwing learns that Massacre is stalking and killing all former members of The Kingdom, think Afirca's Justice League. Batwing shows up and interrupts a fight between Massacre and Thunder Fall. David has a flashback and remembers his time as a child soldier with his brother Isaac. Apparently David had spent years suffering from PTSD blocking it out of his memory. While David is out Thunder Fall forces Massacre to retreat. Injured Thunder Fall dies in a hospital and states The Kingdom betrayed Africa and cost 50,000 lives.

David takes a break from his Batwing duties to deal with his PTSD. He forced himself to remember everything before meeting Matu Ba. He remembers his brother, the Army of Light and his parents slow AIDS death. One day on duty as a police officer he finds the body of Dawnfire, another Kingdom member. She was once known as Africa's Greatest Heroine. This forces him to return to his work as Batwing and bring this to a stop.

Batwing teams with Batman again. This time as David and Bruce. Bruce is in town for the opening of the Kingdom's museum after taking a legit interest.(What is with Bruce Wayne and his love for black people? You'll see what I mean in a later post) David expects an attack and is there as Bruce's personal body guard. Men dressed as Massacre come into the building and begin firing on the crowd. Batwing takes out the thugs while Batman helps civilians to escape. No one is killed, but the goons blew up the building when they got beat, destroying the museum. Batwing realizes that Massacre is at the Sphinx. The two arrive in time to stop Massacre from killing Steelback.

Steelback gives them a list of locations where the other Kingdom members are located. This takes them to Gotham, where Batwing meets Nightwing Batman (Dick Grayson, the other Batman at this time), they get along well, especially with both of them having histories of being police officers in corrupt departments. Steelback explains they had to allow a warlord to live in order to prevent the deaths of millions yet over the years he was responsible for the deaths of 50,000.

Batwing(David), Batman(Bruce arrived late), Nightwing(Dick put on the old suit) and Robin(Damian) arrive to see Massacre finish off two Kingdom members. There's also a robotic version of Steelback. The family takes out the robot and Batwing finally squares off with Massacre and defeats him. Only to realize it is the brother he thought was dead. Massacre escapes when the robot explodes. However Batwings suit had tracked the location of the robots signal before it vanished.

They track the signal to Josiah Kone. Josiah was the tech adviser of The Kingdom. He wanted revenge on them so he indoctrinated Isaac as his personal killing machine. David swears that he will track down Massacre and rehabilitate Isaac.Well that covers Batwing #1-8 I suggest you go get those. The artwork in them is really good and it's unique as well. If you crave more Batwing he appears in Justice League International briefly to save their asses when Batman couldn't reach them in time. What about Superman and Flash? Those assholes could have been there in no time. However they were only in trouble because Booster Gold ruins everything.

Abilities and Equipment

• Martial Arts: Trained by Batman in several styles
• Detective Skills: Trained by the Police and Batman
• Bat Suit:

Here's some random stuff on the origins of Batwing. In Batman #250 a story is told called "The Batman Nobody Knows." In this story a young black kid tells a story. This story features a black Batman that he imagines. Who could tell him he was wrong Batman moved in the shadows strictly at the time. He imagined that Batman had a suit that allowed him to fly. He also had large amounts of gadgets and a shiny suit. He also called him "Batwings" Nobody payed much attention to this story in 1973. Decades later Batwing was created by Grant Morrison, Chris Burnham and Yanick Paquette and bears a great resemblance to that young kids depiction. With a much cooler suit. It's crazy how a simple story inserted as filler into a twenty cent comic can come back today. It's remarkable, I was honestly speechless when I learned this information. The groundwork was laid so long ago. It's funny because I've been covering black superheros all month and in 1973 the only established black superhero was Luke Cage who had just received his own comic series the year before. Some people probably never heard of Luke Cage at that point.  The comic market was predominantly white at that time so for a black superhero to be seen must have been shocking especially to see him affiliated with one of the biggest names in the game. I'm rambling again.

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