Just Another Batman Blog

Comics, like most western media, has had a diversity problem. With origins in the late 30s and early 40s, born of pulp fiction magazines, comics character creation relied heavily on stereotypes. Asian characters were treated particularly badly. We still have trouble today creating Asian characters who are not martial artists, or wise old Eastern mystics (also kung fu masters somehow). However, a martial arts based character, depending on the martial art, probably should be Asian. Richard Dragon was one of those characters, with his own title, in the early 70s. In 1975, Lady Shiva made her first apearance in Richard Dragon #5, created by Dennis ONeil, and Ric Estrada. Like most stereotypical Asian characters, Lady Shiva is a master martial artist, an assassin, has a mentor/teacher named O'Sensei, and has a daughter with a dude named King Snake, and has aliases that include names like the Paper Monkey, and the Jade Canary. Over time, the Lady Shiva character has been refined a...

There are reasons we create monsters in fiction. Stephen King once said "Monsters are real. [. . .] They live inside us, and sometimes they win". This echoes an idea in sociology, which I couldn't find a reference for, which claims that society creates monsters as analogies to the crazy, animalistic behavior humanity is capable of. Ghosts, and goblins, fairies and witches, demons, ghouls are all symbols for psychopathic activities that real people commit. Serial murder, rape, cannibalism, kidnapping are all traits of the fictional monsters we've created. There are no real monsters, spoiler alert. As King said, it's only us. Victor Zsasz was created in 1992 by Alan Grant and Norm Breyfogle in Shadow of the Bat #1. He is portrayed as a serial killer, a sociopath who considers what he does to others as merciful, freeing them from their earthly misery. Zsasz keeps track of the souls he frees by marking his body with tally marks. This tally mark idea is echoed by ...

DC comics has, over time, delved into supernatural and religious contexts to come up with superheroes and storylines. The Spectre, Dr Fate, Ragman, Azrael, and Zauriel, among others, are all heroes who take their powers from religious artifacts, or mythologies. There was even a Batman Elseworlds story Holy Terror , where he was an ordained priest by day, Batman by night.  However, there aren't many stories in contemporary comics involving the believers. Pulp fiction from the 1920s and 30s, a place where comics gleaned much of their source material, often used cults as villainous foils.  Belief can be a strong and terrifying phenomenon, and there aren't too many stories that explore that. Robert Anton Wilson once said "Belief is the death of Intelligence". Nietzsche said the foundation of Belief is "blindness and intoxication, and an eternal song over the waves in which Reason is drowned". Anyone who can manipulate Belief could be a terrifying an...

The more into this Batman villains blog thing (I'm not really sure what this is) I've gone, the more I realized there are so many evil dudes in this rogues gallery. There aren't very many women though. Aside from the big 3 ( Catwoman , Poison Ivy , and Harley Quinn ), Batman's female adversaries appear to be next generation versions of older male villains (like Clayface , or the Ventriloquist ), assassins from the League of Assassins ( Talia , Cheshire, Lady Vic, Lady Shiva ) or henchmen (henchwomen?) for male villains, which is how Harley Quinn started (Query and Echo, Dollhouse, Lark, Fright), or throwaway villains that either get killed off, or taken advantage of by other male villains.   This post features the Magpie, whom I believe has been misused and done wrong. Created in 1986 by John Byrne, Magpie debuted in Man of Steel #3 , and was the first villain to be apprehended by the Superman/Batman team up. However, she continued to be a villain primarily for...

Ruling Gotham from a shadowed perch, behind granite and lime. They watch you at your hearth, they watch you in your bed. Speak not a whispered word about them, or they'll send the Talon for your head Retconning in comics happens all the time. This insufferable need for fanboys to have an understandable continuity butts up against new writers and ideas. Storytelling in comics has become better, taken more seriously, and sometimes new ideas require backstory that may or may not come into conflict with already established continuity, hence reboots and retcons.  In 2011, Scott Snyder introduced the Court of Owls into the Gotham/Batman mythos. Borrowing from real world conspiracy theories of secret societies like the Illuminati, Free Masons, and Skull and Bones, Snyder created a clandestine group of rich elites that control Gotham's destiny through extortion and murder. They manipulate city politics to favor their own interests, and cultivate hitmen known as Talons...

Physical deformity has played a huge role in creation of villainy. The importance we put on human beauty means the alternative, ugliness, becomes vilified. The best villains from fiction have physical deformities that mirror their evil personalities. James Bond villains all have physical issues, Dick Tracy villains are all identified by their unique malformities. Witches with warts, the one armed man, Captain Hook, Freddy Krueger, Scar from the Lion King, every movie monster ever are all good examples. Killer Croc is the most obvious deformed Batman villain. Killer Croc was created in 1983 by Gerry Conway and Gene Colan for Detective Comics #523 where he appeared in a cameo. His first full appearance was in Batman #358 a few months later. The character was depicted as a man with reptilian-like skin. Because of his gruesome appearance, Jones pursues a career as a sideshow oddity, and then as organized criminal muscle.  In Geoff Johns Earth One story, Killer Croc becomes a ...

Batman has been featured in comic books since his creation in 1939. As a consequence, an 80 year old hero has a large number of similarly aged villains. Most of the villains I've already posted about here were created between 1939 and 1971. A theme to these blog posts have been the evolution of these old characters into less campy, scarier, more realistically terrifying villains. However, more recently created characters come already fully realized as completely evolved nightmares. In 2007 Grant Morrison introduced Professor Pyg . Before that, Dan Slott and Ryan Sook created Jane Doe. In 2003, Slott and Sook wrote the miniseries Arkham Asylum: Living Hell . They introduce several new characters, some more interesting than others, but Jane Doe is one of only a few that would continue to appear in other DC mediums. Jane Doe is also one of a few female villains who aren't sidekicks. Jane Doe's true name is unknown. In fact, other than being distinctly female, she has n...

It seems like the biggest challenge for contemporary comic writers is creating new characters that are as interesting and potentially as longlasting as the more classic characters. How do you create a villain for Batman, for example, that is as terrifying and dangerous an adversary as say... the Joker ? Grant Morrison had a run on Batman and Robin that not only had to create an interesting storyline without using Bruce Wayne as Batman, but also had to develop a new Robin (Damian Wayne) who initially wasn't very popular (the test tube son of Batman and Talia? Really?). Morrison did pretty well, and created some new interesting villains in the process. Professor Pyg is one of these new characters, and perhaps the most interesting, most twisted, original Batman character in the last 30 years. His first appearance is in Batman #666 (2007), created by Grant Morrison and Andy Kubert. Professor Pyg doesn't really become developed though until 2009 when he appears in Batman and ...

Sometimes comicbook villains are rebooted or reused periodically. Clayface is one of these. The original Clayface was created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane and appeared in Detective Comics #40 in 1940. Originally Clayface was the alter ego of Basil Karlo, an infamous b-list horror film actor. He dressed up in one of his costumed roles, the horror villain Clayface, in order to intimidate, terrorize, and murder people associated with a remake of one of his movies. The second, and best known Clayface was created by Bill Finger and Shedlon Moldoff in Detective Comics #298 in 1961. Matt Hagen is a career criminal who gets mutated by radioactive material, allowing him to reform and change himself into any shape imaginable. This version of Clayface is the most well known, appearing across most mediums. Later on, the original Basil Karlo Clayface turns himself into a similar transformational monster using Hagen's DNA. There have been 8 other Clayface-related villains throughout Batman...

I find this character to be one of the most interesting villains, not just of Batman, but the entire DC comics shared universe. Unlike most Batman villains, this guy pops up as a threat to numerous Justice League heroes.  Solomon Grundy was created in 1944 by Alfred Bester and Paul Reinman. First appearing in All American Comics #61, but not as a Batman opponent. Originally, Solomon Grundy is an adversary of Alan Scott, the Green Lantern of the Justice Society. But, both characters, Alan Scott and Solomon Grundy, are from Gotham City. Bester and Reinman base the character on the old British nursery rhyme of the same name, HP Lovecraft's Herbert West: Reanimator serial short, and folktales of revenants. The nursery rhyme is below, a verse that the character repeats often during his appearances in the comics.  Solomon Grundy, born on a Monday, Christened on a stark and stormy Tuesday, Married on a grey and grisly Wednesday, Took ill on a mild and mellow Thursday,...

I have been reading through Tom King's recent Batman run. Like Snyder before him, King has been overhauling stale, silly aspects to Batman canon and recreating them into twisted horror shows. The recently completed War of Jokes and Riddles (spoilers ahead, I guess) revolved around a pretty innocuous character and his origins, and it was done in a way that you don't immediately see coming. King takes perhaps one of the stupidest Batman villains, The Kite Man, and turns him into a tragic victim of both the Joker and the Riddler . Before this reboot, however, Kite Man started out in Batman #133 (1960), created by Bill Finger and Dick Sprang. His real name is Charles Brown, an homage to Charlie Brown of the Peanuts, created by Charles Schultz, who had repeat issues with an infamous kite eating tree. Right out of the gate, Kiteman was fated to be a joke.  He had 7 or 8 appearances since 1960, none of them truly memorable. Two of them ended in his death. His appearances ...