Just Another Batman Blog

I just finished an excellent 3 part podcast about rats. The Radiolab talked all about New York City rats, the history of people's perception of rats, rat control, rats as pets, etc. We have been studying rats and rat behavior for quite some time. Rats can remember, make decisions, and have pattern recognition. They also display empathy. While it has been inconclusive whether they can pass the mirror test, recognizing themselves in a mirror, they do show abstract and emotional intelligence. This includes responding to their own name, learning tricks, and learning how to find things, like drugs, and cadavers. In fact, cadaver rats are cheaper to train than dogs and have a better success rate. The downside, rats have a lifespan of 12-24 months. Most wild rats don't survive past a year with a 95% mortality rate.  On the other side, rats have a terrible reputation in urban areas. They reproduce at a high rate. Five litters a year per female can produce around seven pups each totalin...

  Cornelius Stirk has probably the least scary name for someone truly horrifying. Created in 1988 by Alan Grant and Norm Breyfogle for Detective Comics #592, Stirk is a cannibal with mind altering powers.  A serial killer is bad enough, there is already one of those in Gotham. Stirk, though is a cannibal. And to make things worse, he can make people see him as someone else. Apparently, a hypothalamic disorder allows him to change his appearance in other people's minds. This allows him to camouflage himself as someone his victim trusts, long enough to murder them.  He eats hearts. He believes by eating the hearts of his victims, he can gain norepinephrine and extend his life. Norepinephrine is an actual hormone produced by the human body in bigger doses, like adrenaline, when the body is under stress. Stirk believes fear brings out the hormone, which he desires, so he scares his victims first. This seems like it would be pretty easy to do, considering he's going to murder...

  The first Batman villain based on a philosophy, Anarky was created in 1989 by Alan Grant and Norm Breyfogle. Grant created the character around the ideas of anti-statism and populism, but eventually his philosophy turns more toward rationalism, atheism, and free market capitalism.  Lonnie Machem is a child prodigy, based on Chopper from Judge Dredd, V from V for Vendetta, and Spy vs Spy. Heavily influenced by radical philosophies, he calls himself Anarky and begins a violent vigilante campaign against the "corrupt system" in Gotham. Naturally, Batman stops him, and realizes Anarky is only 12 years old.  The character could be interesting, he appears to be built as an anti-hero from the start. Grant had admitted he created the character hoping he'd become the next Robin. That obviously did not happen, and instead, he becomes symbolic of misguided leftist terrorism, much like Poison Ivy .  There have been several attempts to make this character stick. He had his prim...

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 ...

There are an awful lot of lame comicbook villains out there, especially from the Comics Code era . Once the Code was deemed unnecessary and ridiculous, plots in comics became, like any fictional medium, relatable again. This meant villains could be villains again worthy of super heroics to stop them, and not a bunch of schoolyard pranksters and petty thieves best left to rookie cops and mall security. If the criminals in your neighborhood are tougher than the villains in your fiction, there is something wrong. But still, stupid villain concepts popped up now and then. For a long while different writers for comics, movies, and games have been trying, mostly successfully, to reboot Batman villains in ways that make them less of a joke and more like realistic horror shows. I was never sold on The Ventriloquist. A puppet with a machine gun never scared me. Created in 1988 by Wagner, Grant, and Breyfogle for Detective Comics #583, the original Ventriloquist was a study in dissociativ...