Bane was born on the small Caribbean island of Santa Prisca as the son of Edmund Dorrance, also known as King Snake, a British mercenary who served in the rebel forces during a failed revolution, and a local woman. He was born with a life sentence because the military junta ruling the island, as part of their repression, would sentence his mother, and the unborn child was to inherit the punishment from his father. As a boy, Bane spent his entire childhood in the Peña Duro prison. It was there that he first heard of Batman from a fellow inmate named Bird. This character ignited his imagination, and he decided to defeat him. He spent many years meditating, exercising, and learning. When he grew up, he was selected for a secret military super-soldier project using a drug called “Venom” (a steroid that increases muscle mass, the same one Batman took for a while), which was being carried out secretly in the prison.
Having achieved everything he could in Peña Duro, he escaped from prison, taking with him three trusted helpers, and headed to Gotham. It was then that he fought Batman for the first time. At that time, he believed that his symbolic mission was to defeat the demonic evil that Batman represented. Realizing that a direct fight with the Bat would be too difficult, he decided to release the criminals (including the Joker, Mad Hatter, Scarecrow, Ventriloquist, Firefly, and Victor Zsasz) from the Arkham Asylum, thereby unleashing chaos in Gotham. While Batman and his allies were busy catching the escaped criminals (the beginning of the Knightfall saga), Bane managed to discover his hidden identity. When Bruce Wayne, exhausted from the mission, went to his mansion, it turned out that Bane had set a trap for him there. They both engaged in an unequal fight in the Batman’s cave, where Bane delivered his final blow – he broke Batman’s spine. When Bruce fought for his life, his captor declared himself “the man who broke the Bat.” When he became the new ruler of Gotham’s criminal underworld, Bruce entrusted Jean-Paul Valley (formerly known as Azrael) with the mission of restoring peace to the city. Jean-Paul Valley (now as the new Batman) cut off Bane’s supply of “Venom” to his brain during the fight and brutally beat him. The defeated villain was finally sent to prison.
After the events of Knightfall, having cured himself of his addiction to “Venom,” Bane escaped from prison and set out into the world to find his biological father. Over time, he met Ra’s al Ghul (in Batman: Bane of the Demon, which is part of the Batman: Legacy crossover), who decided to make him his heir and his daughter, Talia, his fiancée. However, after another fight with Batman (Bruce Wayne, who had recovered), Bane lost, and fell out of favor with Ra’s al Ghul (Detective Comics (vol. 1) #701). In an act of revenge, he destroyed part of the “Lazarus Pit,” the vats in which Ra’s al Ghul immersed his body, making himself practically immortal. Another episode in Bane’s history was his delusional belief that he and Bruce could be half-brothers…