Just Another Batman Blog

  Batman's 2nd ever villain in the comics, the Mad Monk, was created by Gardener Fox and Bob Kane for Detective Comics #31 in 1939. The first super natural character, predating Ra's Al Ghul by 30 years, the unnamed monk is a vampire, the Dracula kind. He wears a red robe and hooded mask, depicted above, looking eerily similar to a klansman. The monk has hypnotism powers, and can turn himself into a wolf.  The original character is a Hungarian lord with a plan to dominate the world with an army of female werewolves. The Monk kidnaps women and turns them into monsters. He is assisted by Dala, the first female sidekick, starting a trend in DC comics that gave us Talia , Query and Echo, March Harriet , Dollhouse , Harley Quinn , and Punchline .  The Monk and Dala attempt to kidnap and turn Bruce Wayne's girlfriend. Obviously this was a mistake, and Batman rescues the girlfriend, and kills both vampires with silver bullets.  In 1982, Gerry Conway brough the character back...

   Comics as a medium have always reflected the time period in which they are created, like all other artforms, really. In the 1940s, comicbook heroes were pitted against fascist Nazi adversaries. In DC Comics this included Doctor Poison, The Baroness, Captain Nazi, and a pelethora of Nazi soldiers, generals, and of course Hitler himself. However, as time goes on, American sentiments change. Nazis are still a favorite villain. Even alternate versions of our heroes have had Nazification treatments. I've written about Nazi Batman before. The deeper into the Cold War we get though, comic book villains shift from Nazis and Fascists to Communists, and Soviet spies.  Aside from breaking up a Nazi spy ring in Batman #14, the caped crusader seemed to stay out of international conflicts. But, as the real Cold War goes on, Batman's storylines expand out of Gotham and into other spaces. By the 1980s, Batman is ready to move from Nazi spy rings, to Soviet spy rings. In 1988, late in...

  Blockbuster is not a very compelling character on his own. A lot of this character and his themes are better used on other characters. However, I did bring him up in my first post ever , and just never got around to writing about him. So, here it is, the Blockbuster post.  Created by Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino, Blockbuster's first appearance is in Detective Comics # 345, in 1965. One of many scientist Batman villains, Mark Desmond is a chemist who develops a serum to boost his physical attributes. Predictably, the experiment goes horribly wrong, and Mark Desmond turns himself into a giant, rage filled monster with limited intelligence. His Blockbuster persona is manipulated by his brother, Roland Desmond. The two brothers go on a crime spree, and are eventually stopped by Batman and Robin.  After this initial appearance, Blockbuster returns a few times, butts heads with Solomon Grundy , is manipulated by the Outsider, and then turns anti-hero and rescues trapped ...

  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...

This is another one of Scott Snyder's new villain creations. First seen in Batman vol 2 #43, during the Iron Man-esque Jim Gordon Batman arc, Mr. Bloom is equal parts technology villain and supernatural monster. Mr. Bloom introduces "seeds" that unlock superpower abilities but with deadly consequences, which he gifts to unsuspecting citizens. Physiologically, Mr Bloom can manipulate his size and shape, can manipulate fire, ice, and mechanics. His MO seems to be to "sow seeds" of chaos. Sometime after the events of Scott Snyder's Zero Year, scientist Daryl Gutierrez developed a project using nanotech to create superpower abilities in normal humans. The unpredictability of the nanotech reactions, and the public reaction to mysterious new superpowered people forced Dr. Gutierrez to scrap the project. However, the nanotech seeds resurfaced years later, in the possession of the mysterious Mr. Bloom. Mr. Bloom's longterm plans aren't very clear, other...

Science fiction, and comics especially, have played with the idea of a string theory multiverse concept for a very long time. Some authors/writers are better at it than others. HG Wells, Philip K Dick, Philip Roth, Harry Turtledove, and Robert Harris all play with these ideas of alternate histories and multiverse concepts. This idea of an infinite multiverse was first introduced by Erwin Schrodinger in 1952. Creatively, the nature of an infinite multiverse allows writers/artists to come up with a seemingly endless line of what-if scenarios. Marvel just made an award winning Spiderman movie on this very concept. Creators were allowed to create Spiderman if he were a Japanese girl with a robot, or a cartoon pig. Into the Spiderverse scratched the surface of what is creatively possible (spoiler: everything is possible in this scenario). This is not a new thing for DC comics, or Batman in particular either. I wrote before in my other blog about the DC Elseworlds imprint. Batman has ...

As an obvious reversal to our hero, the Batman, Frank Robbins and Neal Adams created an actual bat man for Detective Comics #400 (1970). Kirk Langstrom is a scientist, another in a long line of unregulated, crazy, comicbook scientists. Dr. Langstrom studies chiropterology (the study of bats) and specifically their ability to use sonar. He tries to develop a way deaf people can utilize bat sonar, and creates a serum. Naturally, he tests the serum on himself, and things go sideways. Kirk Langstrom turns himself into a human sized bat monster, The Man-Bat. At first, this character is a frenzied wild animal, and Batman has to save the day by finding an antidote. Sometimes, Dr Langstrom is a Jekyl/Hyde character, unable to keep himself from turning into his evil alter-ego. Other times, he's a naive and victimized scientist and inventor that other villains use to build armies of man-bats, or sow public chaos (or both). Sometimes his wife Francine is involved and becomes She-bat. T...

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 ...

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 ...

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,...

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...

I began playing Arkham Asylum again after reading a bit about the new Batman Arkham Origins game set to be released in October. Although the Joker is clearly the main antagonist (as he ought to be in a Batman game), I had forgotten how many other villains had substantial importance to the plot. Some of the supporting villains in this game were reimagined, saved from the borderline ridiculous reputations created in earlier incarnations. Poison Ivy is one of these characters. Almost doomed from the start, Poison Ivy was created in 1966 by Robert Kanigher and Sheldon Moldoff and debuted in Batman #181. She is a reaction to the growing feminism and environmentalism of the time and fit right into the "campy villains with a theme" trend of the 50's and 60's. Connected with plants and ecology, Poison Ivy becomes a vengeful Mother Nature type of character, extracting revenge on people for abuses to the environment. JT Krul was instrumental in developing the character...