Families Echo
Another new character appearing during Scott Snyder's Batman run, The Dollmaker is not to be confused with previous DC villains also using the same name. Created by Tony S Daniel and Ryan Winn for their run in Detective Comics, this Dollmaker first appeared in 2011 in Detective Comics vol 2, #1.
Almost as soon as he debutes, Dollmaker disappears, in the shadow of another bigger villain. He helps the Joker escape from Arkham. Joker has his face removed and reattached, aided by the Dollmaker. Once the Joker is out, Snyder's Death of the Family storyline begins.
Despite Dollmaker's seemingly throwaway role to launch Death of the Family, he actually is a pretty interesting villain. In summary, he is a 2nd generation serial killer, obsessed with body parts in a very Frankenstein-like way. He wears his father's face, Wesley Mathis, a serial killer executed by Jim Gordon in self defense. Dollmaker has created a "family" of Frankenstein monsters which include his real daughter known as the Dollhouse. The Family runs an organ harvesting racket, selling body parts on the black market. And to make things more creepy, he then uses the husks of his victims, empty of lucrative organs, to make lifesized puppets.
On the surface it appears Dollmaker's role could have been just as easily filled by Professor Pyg, also a surgeon. However, his chilling MO, and the uniqueness of running a black market organ harvester, fit him in well with the usual Gotham crazy, but sets him apart from other doctor villains like Pyg, Hugo Strange, and Tommy Elliot. On top of all of this, it also gives Batman another female villain, and there are very few of those, even if she begins as a sidekick.
Barton Mathis's daughter, Dollhouse, makes this all interesting in a new twisted way. Dollhouse, Matilda Mathis, is a 3rd generation serial killer. The family tree here is what is unique, tragic, and twisted.
Not only is the Dollhouse one of her father's physically manipulated specimens, she is also a career serial murderer, and continues in her family's business of organ transplant surgeon. She is made up, much like Professor Pyg's automatons, to be a porcelain doll, albeit a cracked and damaged one.
No one has used these villains since Daniel's run in Detective Comics, or Death of the Family. The Mathis Family would fit in well in a macabre horror story. A team up with Professor Pyg, maybe? An homage to the Isle of Doctor Moreau? Frankenstein?
The Dollmaker character has also appeared in Arrow, Season 2. However, he's written to be no more than a serial killer who dresses up and poses his victims, instead of the deeper, scarier comics villain.