Just Another Batman Blog

  Another in a short list of compelling female Batman villains, Natalia Knight, Nocturna, was created in 1983 by Doug Moench, Don Newton, and Gene Colan for Detective Comics #529. I am surprised I hadn't heard about this character more, or why she hasn't been used more frequently, as she ticks off a lot of boxes character-wise.  An orphan, like our hero, Batman, Natalia Knight is adopted by a Gotham mobster. She attempts to turn away from her criminal family and becomes an astronomer, working at Wayne Enterprises. Another in a long line of science-based Batman villains, Natalia is a victim of a lab accident (obviously), which essentially turns her into an albino. After this, she rejoins her adoptive brother Anton Knight and his inherited crime family. The two of them start a career of breaking and entering, and burglary. So, to recap, Nocturna is a female thief, and gangster, a scientist, and an accidental monster, and creature of the night. On the surface, she appears to be a...

There has been far more interest and emphasis put on Batman villains as gang leaders and organized criminals than as petty criminals and thieves with silly motives.  A need to make the villains believable and grounded in realistic crime grows from the Christopher Nolan films, and also the comic arcs written by Jeph Loeb, Grant Morrison, and of course Frank Miller. Two Face and the Penguin have been reimagined as mob bosses, and The Black Mask has become a better, more compelling villain because of this refocus.   The Black Mask was a villain recently resurrected from obscurity and pushed to the top tier of Batman adversaries. Filling the need for interesting gang leader/mafioso type characters, Black Mask bridges the gap between ordinary organized crime characters like the Falcones , and the more colorful deranged crazies like the Joker and Scarecrow . Roman Sionis first appeared in Batman #386 in 1985. Created by Doug Moench and Tom Mandrake, Roman Sionis appear...

This latest installment of Batman Villains is going to be all about nostalgia. Most of the time, I complain about squandered opportunities back in the day to make villains more than two dimensional crooks with a theme, and celebrate the recent adaptations, and reimaginnings that have revived characters like the Joker , Mr. Freeze , and the Mad Hatter . But, there is at least one character that has gone the other direction. What happened to Bane? In 1993, Bane makes his debut in the Knightfall story arc. Created by Chuck Dixon, Doug Moench, and Graham Nolan, Bane was supposed to be both a physically imposing villain, and an intelligent criminal mastermind, influenced heavily by the famous Doc Savage character of 1930's pulp. Bane's character is made famous in Knightfall for physically crippling Batman, breaking his back after besting him in hand to hand combat. This is definitely one of the most iconic images in Batman history, right up there with the death of Jason Tod...