In Tenses, there are two characters who serve this purpose. William Black is a reporter desperate to uncover the real story behind Bruce Wayne, and having lost both of his parents as well, he tries to offer support for Wayne. Obviously he remains unaware of Bruce's night life, but he seems to realise that Bruce is hiding something.
The second character is more deeply scarred by his parents. Firstly his father left when he was a child, although it is revealed to us in flashbacks that this perhaps wasn't such a bad thing. And when we first meet this awkward young man, Theodore Krosby, he is about to be fired from his job at a store owned by Wayne Enterprises. In this meeting, he explains that his mother passed away recently. There are already hints that this has set him on a dark path, as a red panel flashes up in between the scene showing one of the two men in a horrific car accident.
Later on, after falling victim to Bruce's 'downsizing' in order to reclaim his company (and set aside funds for his nighttime project?) we join Ted by the grave of his mother. Whilst there he believes that he sees a skeleton propped up against a tree, but when he looks again this skeleton is gone.
As with many of Batman's more famous villains, you could argue that Ted is set on his dark path by Bruce Wayne's return to Gotham City. More directly than others, in some ways, as it is his dismissal from his job that leads to him being dragged into a criminal undertaking along with a thug who had been apprehended at the dockyards by Batman the night before. At the end of the first volume, he is arrested, and we see his mental state breakdown further as he headbutts the wall of his cell to try and stop the images of apocalypse that flash in front of his eyes.
Into the second volume, we see him deteriorate further. He lectures Bruce Wayne - who for some reason thinks it is a good idea to go and visit his disgruntled former employee - about how he sees Wayne as a 'man without vision'. Soon after, whilst being transferred to Arkham Asylum, he is broken out by his accomplice. This doesn't end well for the rest of the gang, or the apartment building they are in, as 348 corpses are found the next morning. Is this worse than the Joker has managed in a single attack?
Things come full circle for Ted Krosby, as he revisits the man who began this cycle of violence. His father. Killing his father seems to be the closure that he wanted, and after a brief fight with Batman, he walks off to die in the blizzard. The last we see of him, he is propped up against a tree trunk in the same position he saw the skeleton right back in the first volume.
Would this have happened regardless of whether his mother had passed away, or whether or not he had lost his job?
This was an odd little story, but enjoyable. It was intriguing to see a smaller scale story of crime in Gotham, and to see first hand the effect that Bruce's return had on the citizens in the city. Many familiar elements were missing: there was no Jim Gordon, no Alfred and no masked criminals.
However it gave us an insight into Bruce's mindset. We see him looking into a mirror, and seeing a scared little boy look back. We see him angered by this weakness. And we see his obsessive excercising as he strives for perfection. There are hints that he is hiding a lot beneath the surface, his doctor expressing surprise that he shows no signs of stress for such a high position in a major company. The same doctor recounts a tale of a man he knew of that had trained his body to fool a lie detector test, which we can assume is something that Bruce has managed to achieve as well - as he said to Black in the opening pages 'They know what I want them to know'.
Next up - Batman: Prey.
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