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The First Families of Gotham (also known as the Founding Families of Gotham or Five Families) are the five families affiliated with the creation of Gotham City.
History[]
The five families are the families which assisted in Gotham's recovery from the financial damage caused by the American Revolution. These five families were:
- The Wayne Family:
- The Cobblepot Family:
- The Elliot Family:
- The Kane Family:
- The Crowne Family:
- The Arkham Family:
- The Gotham Family
By the 2010s, apparently only three of the five original families would be staying strong. The Wayne family was still highly successful due to Wayne Enterprises and its patriarch, Bruce Wayne AKA Batman. The Kanes were still powerful thanks to their own businesses and having combined with the Waynes with the marriage of Bruce's parents Thomas Wayne and Martha Kane; most notably the matriarch of the Kane family would be Katherine Kane AKA Batwoman. The Cobblepots on the other hand would survive predominately through criminal means thanks to the empire of one Oswald "The Penguin" Cobblepot.
The Crowne family was apparently all died out by this point or at the least, defunct financially and politically. They did biologically live on in the Wayne family due to Dick Grayson being the great-grandson of Amelia Crowne and her ex-fiancee William Cobb. As for the Elliots, they were fairly recently strong thanks to the Elliot family-head Dr. Thomas "Tommy" Elliot's ownership of the Gotham Gazette, Elliot Pharmaceuticals and success as a brain-surgeon. However, Tommy would go insane and become the super-villain known as Hush, squandering what little remained of the once proud family and becoming committed to Arkham Asylum.
Appearances in Other Media[]
Sam Hamm's Batman II[]
Sam Hamm's script for the film which would become Batman Returns (1992) featured a sort of five families of Gotham. In it, the Penguin would have hired Catwoman to steal five raven statues which belonged to five wealthy Gotham families which were part of something called the Raven Society, one of these families being the Waynes. Penguin would apparently require these statues due to them revealing a buried treasure he wished to uncover.
Gotham (TV Series)[]
The TV series Gotham replaced the Cobblepot family with the Galavan or Dumas family. They are stated as being the five families which founded Gotham albeit with the Dumas estate being banished from Gotham due to a falling out with the Waynes.
DC Animated Universe[]
The first families of Gotham were incorporated into Batman: The Adventures Continue, here being the founders of the Court of Owls. The founding-fathers mentioned had the surnames Marsh, Mayfield, and Hill (the latter being ancestors of Court of Owls member, Hamilton Hill).