| Crime Bible | |
|---|---|
The first page from Crime Bible: Five Lessons of Blood #1 depicting a page from the Crime Bible Art by Steve Lieber and Eric Trautmann |
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| Publication information | |
| Publisher | DC Comics |
| First appearance | 52 |
| In story information | |
| Type | Book |
| Element of stories featuring | Darkseid |
The Crime Bible is a fictional religious book that has appeared in various comic book series published by DC Comics. The book and the religious groups that have formed around it exist within DC's main shared universe, known as the DC Universe.
The book deals with the exploits of Cain and his works of evil in the world, in association with Lilith. The copy of the Bible seen most often in the DCU allegedly has a cover of stone, made from the physical rock used to kill Abel.
Contents |
The Crime Bible first appeared in the 2006 to 2007 series 52, in the sections dealing with the characters Renee Montoya and Batwoman. The story was continued in the later part of 2007 in Crime Bible: Five Lessons of Blood, a five-issue limited series featuring Montoya in her new guise as the Question.[1] Since then it has reappeared as the inspiration for the villains facing Batwoman in Detective Comics, in which it appears that a rift has appeared within the followers of the Crime Bible based on differing interpretations of its teachings. The focus of the rift is that the book supposedly predicts the actual death of Batwoman; when she survives being stabbed through the heart many of the cultists come to believe the book is deeply flawed.
Bruno Mannheim even uses the Crime Bible to help in running Intergang.[2]
In 2008 the Crime Bible was featured once again in the series Final Crisis. There the character Libra appears to be using the Crime Bible to organize the DC Universe's supervillains along religious lines.[3] The Religion of Crime uses the Crime Bible as their central reading.
The limited series was collected into one volume: