Just Another Batman Blog

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 ...