Leslie Thompkins

Publication history

Created by writer Dennis O'Neil and artist Dick Giordano, she first appeared in Detective Comics #457 (March 1976).

A close friend and medical colleague of Thomas Wayne, Leslie serves as a surrogate parent to his son Bruce after his parents are murdered, and later becomes a confidant in his crusade as Batman. In addition to being one of Batman's allies, Leslie is also a renowned medical professional who has dedicated her considerable skills toward helping Gotham City's less fortunate.

Fictional character biography

Leslie Thompkins made her first appearance in Detective Comics #457, in which she is depicted as comforting the young Bruce Wayne on the night that his parents were murdered. Inspired, she dedicates her life to helping slum kids avoid a life of crime. Every year on the anniversary of his parents' murder, Batman visits Leslie in Park Row (which was now referred to as Crime Alley). However, Leslie has no idea he is the boy she had helped decades before.

In later years, Leslie is portrayed as having been a close friend of Thomas Wayne, Bruce's father. She takes it upon herself to look after Bruce after the boy's parents are murdered, often acting with the family butler Alfred Pennyworth as a parental figure and guardian. In Batman Special #1 (1984), after costumed cop-killer Wrath dies in combat with Batman, Leslie comforts Wrath's grieving girlfriend much as she had young Bruce. She also eventually learns that Bruce is Batman.

Wrath's girlfriend, former Mafioso Gayle Hudson, becomes a close friend to Leslie. At one point this protects Leslie from two attackers, who fear what retribution Gayle might bring.

Leslie disapproves of Bruce's vigilantism, and feels partly responsible for his transformation into Batman, fearing that somehow she failed him as a role model. She has also been linked to Alfred romantically on more than one occasion.

She runs a clinic for criminals and drug addicts in Gotham City. While the majority of her patients are repeat offenders, she continues to do her job with great perseverance and determination. During the No Man's Land storyline, she runs Gotham's only medical clinic, operating under a strict 'No Violence' policy regardless of her patients' actions and intent. Even Killer Croc respects the rule and stays out.

Stephanie Brown, the current Robin, suffers serious injuries at the hands of Black Mask during the War Games crossover, and is taken to Leslie's clinic for treatment. Initially thinking Stephanie died of her injuries, Batman later discovers, during the War Crimes storyline, that Leslie deliberately treated her improperly, resulting in her death while hoping that it would teach Batman the lesson that his constant use of children as partners was only putting their lives in danger.

After liquidating her assets and giving them to Stephanie's daughter, she flees to Africa. Batman follows her and forces a confession, coldly informing her that he may not stop violence, but he had never thrown another body onto the pile in the hopes of making a statement. He warns her that she is now just another murderer in his eyes, and if she ever returned to the United States or practiced medicine again, he would bring her to justice.

A mysterious familiar figure has been stalking Tim Drake wearing Stephanie's Spoiler costume, which at one point Tim thinks he imagined it to be Stephanie herself. The stalker indeed turns out to be Stephanie; Robin #174 reveals that Leslie faked the girl's death and switched the body with an overdose victim who had a similar body type.

A 2008 Robin/Spoiler one-shot special shows both Leslie and Stephanie alive and in exile, protecting a village somewhere in Africa.

After the events of Batman: Battle for the Cowl, Leslie Thompkins has once again set up shop in Gotham, attempting to start over and continue to help unfortunates. She gained the Cavalier as her bodyguard and has, along with Barbara Gordon, begun helping a former associate of the Teen Titans named Wendy Harris deal with the loss of the use of her legs. Leslie meanwhile, has been welcomed back warmly by Alfred and Dick Grayson. Tim Drake, however, maintains a frosty attitude towards her due to her actions regarding Stephanie.

New 52

In The New 52 (a reboot of the DC Comics universe), Leslie Thompkins appears in the pages of Red Hood and the Outlaws. She is featured in Jason Todd's flashbacks as the Red Hood: she took him in at her clinic in Gotham City after he was beaten within an inch of his life by the Joker.

At the offices of Gotham Child Services, Killer Croc makes a violent entrance, startling Leslie and demanding that Jade be returned to him so that he can give her the things he never had. Leslie admits that Jade has been returned to the Ibanescu family.

DC Rebirth

In the DC Rebirth relaunch, Leslie Thompkins appears, and a younger age than she is usually depicted. She has a secret clinic set up in an abandoned building previously used as a base by Azrael (Jean-Paul Valley), where she is treating his injuries from a bombing earlier in the story. She is shown to dissaprove of Batman's plan to "get teenagers involved." (Meaning the team Batman and Batwoman had assembled in the recent Detective Comics).

Green Lantern: Convergence

During the Convergence storyline, the Pre-Crisis version of Leslie Thompkins has spent a year inside a struggling Gotham City under a strange dome. She is devoting her time as a therapist. One of her patients is Guy Gardner; Leslie tries to help Guy understand that his devotion to the city's children is just as heroic as his past exploits as Green Lantern.

Animation

Dr. Leslie Thompkins appears in several episodes of Batman: The Animated Series, voiced by Diana Muldaur. She is depicted as a lifelong friend of Bruce Wayne, having attended medical school with his father, Thomas. She knows Batman's secret identity and serves as his on-site doctor, confidentially treating injuries that Bruce Wayne could not be publicly known to have without raising suspicion. When the series was retooled as The New Batman Adventures, Leslie is absent except for a cameo appearance in the episode "Chemistry".

Live-action

Leslie Thompkins appears in the live-action series Gotham played by Morena Baccarin.

Season 1

Leslie "Lee" Thompkins first appears in the episode "Rogue's Gallery" as a medical practitioner at Arkham Asylum's female ward. She befriends Jim Gordon, who was reassigned to guard duty at Arkham. She helps him control a riot and apprehend an inmate who has apparently been turning her fellow patients into mindless zombies. Leslie visits Gordon, who has been reinstated as a detective, at the Gotham City Police Department and shows him a doll that the "Sorceress" in Arkham's female wing uses to curse people. She visits Gordon again after he arrests Jack Buchinsky, the mastermind of the prison riot, and the two of them share a kiss. They soon begin a relationship. She becomes a medical examiner at the Gotham City Police Department, and frequently helps Gordon with cases. In the season finale, "All Happy Families Are Alike", she reluctantly provides trauma counseling for Gordon's ex-fiancée, Barbara Kean, who had been kidnapped by serial killer Jason Lennon, who had seemingly killed her parents. During one of their sessions, Barbara tells Leslie that she, not Lennon, killed her parents, and attacks Leslie with a knife. Leslie subdues Barbara just as Gordon arrives and learns what happened.

Season 2

In the second season, Leslie reveals that she is pregnant, and Gordon proposes to her. When Victor Fries goes on a crime spree to save his wife Nora, Leslie becomes her doctor. When Gordon is framed for murder and thrown in jail, he tells Leslie to leave town. He later finds out from Harvey Bullock that she lost the baby. At the end of season 2, a vindicated Gordon leaves Gotham to reunite with Leslie, but finds out that she has moved on with someone else.

Season 3

Leslie returns to Gotham in season 3 with her new fiancee, Carmine Falcone's son Mario Calvi. When Jervis Tetch and the Tweeds kidnap her and Gordon's current girlfriend Valerie Vale, Tetch forces Gordon to choose which one will be killed. Gordon replies that Tetch should kill Leslie, which ironically prompts Tetch to shoot and wound Vale; he knows that Gordon still loves Leslie and only told him to shoot her to misdirect him. On her wedding day, Gordon warns her that Mario is infected with a rage-inducing virus created by Tetch, but she refuses to believe him and says she never wants to see him again. She marries Mario, unaware that Gordon was right and that Mario plans to kill her at his father's lakehouse. Just as Mario is about to stab her to death, Gordon appears and guns him down in self-defense. As the scene closes, we see her with Mario's infected blood on her cheek. Leslie blames Gordon for Mario's death, and calls on Harvey Bullock to arrest him, but he refuses. She goes to Arkham and visits former GCPD captain Nathaniel Barnes, who was also driven insane by the Tetch virus, and sees that Mario would have eventually lost his mind, or possibly already had. She begs Don Falcone to call off the contract he put on Gordon's life, which he reluctantly does.

Film

Leslie Thompkins is mentioned in the film Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker. She is mentioned to have cared for Tim Drake after he was driven insane by Joker.

Video games

Novelization

Leslie Thompkins is referenced in the novelization of Batman Begins.

Short story collection

In Marco Palmieri's short story "Best of All," featured in the non-canonical anthology The Further Adventures of The Joker, the Joker tells Batman that Leslie is his mother. He says that she committed him to a mental institution as a child after he murdered his father, who was abusing her. The story is ambiguous as to whether the Joker is telling the truth, with Leslie attributing the story to her habit of referring to various orphans she cared for in the past as her 'children'.