Why does Batman’s dad keep coming back?

For a character killed in his first comic book appearance — 1939’s Detective Comics No. 33, if you were wondering, just six issues after Batman’s debut — Thomas Wayne can’t help but keep showing up in Batman-related stories. With the news that he will make an appearance in the upcoming Joker movie (played by Alec Baldwin as “a cheesy and tanned businessman who is more in the mold of a 1980s Donald Trump,” apparently), it’s worth reconsidering the shadow the elder Wayne has left over his superhero son.