Just Another Batman Blog

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...

Calendar Man was created in 1958 by Bill Finger and Sheldon Moldoff. The character made seven appearances from 1958 to 1996. In 1996 Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale rewrote him for the Long Halloween where he played a major role in the murder mystery. His real name is Julian Day. For most of his existence in the Batman mythos Calendar Man was essentially a gimmick character, committing larceny according to days of the week, holidays, and seasons. He morphed into a supervillain with super weapons used to pull heists, and then built elaborate traps to kidnap victims for ransom. Loeb rewrote him as a Hannibal Lector type of character. This idea of him being a high functioning sociopath, a dangerous mastermind with an obsession with dates helped resurrect the character and save him from being forever a joke character, like Kite Man , the Polkadot Man, and Crazy Quilt. This version of Calendar Man was also used in the Batman Arkham games, which painted him as a very dangerous adversary, cont...

The Gotham mafia may be one of my favorite Batman villains. No one else seems to fawn over them the way fans do for any of the other Batman villains. Looking up Falcone or Maroni fan art on the internet is useless. I can find a billion awful Harley Quinn pieces, but Carmine Falcone turns up just a few scans from comic pages. Batman's origin always included becoming Batman to fight crime in Gotham, a city with a high crime rate. Miller, I think, wanted to ground his Batman in reality, and historically big cities had organized crime problems. Gotham, being the culmination of every corrupted, dark, and dangerous part of every city everywhere, should have organized crime. Bob Kane, Sheldon Maldoff and Bill Finger created Lew Moxon as the crime boss responsible for Batman's parents' murder, Sal Maroni as the mobster responsible for disfiguring Two Face, and Tony Zucco as the racketeer who put a hit on Dick Grayson's parents. But organized crime didn't take a fron...

She is DC's Bonnie Parker. She is Gotham's Mallory Knox. She is Mary Brunner in clown makeup, and a murderous Esther Greenwood. Harley Quinn is the most unlikely star of the Batman villains rogues gallery. Considering how mostly male and mostly sexist the comics industry was (and still is, although it has become better) in the 90s, the development of Harley Quinn is pretty interesting. As you scroll down, I have added additional Harley Quinn art, which shows the evolution of the character's costume, from completely covered catsuit, to almost nothing. Pretty indicative of the male dominated industry. Initially, she was created by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm for the Batman Animated Series as a sidekick and foil for the Joker in episode 22 "Joker's Favor". Arleen Sorkin should also get credit for creating Harley Quinn as well, as her blueprint for the character was used by Paul Dini. Harley Quinn initially was supposed to be a one act character. She fits i...

The Scarecrow was created in 1941 and appeared in World's Finest Comics #3. Another character created by the Bob Kane/Bill Finger combo that brought us many of the early Batman characters, Scarecrow makes two appearances in the '40s but is almost unrecognizable from the character used later. This original Jonathan Crane is a university professor with a case of bibliomania, and has obvious parallels to the Ichabod Crane from Sleepy Hollow. This professor dresses up as a scarecrow to commit crimes to earn money to afford more books. He also apparently has a hat fetish, and leaves clues like the Riddler . In 1967 Gardner Fox reimagined the character as a psychology professor. This Dr Crane specialized in anxiety and phobias. He becomes obsessed with fear and mass hysteria and often conducts unethical studies and experiments. The character and his origin, like most older comics characters, have been amended and tweaked to include a history of abuse and ridicule, job expe...

Comic book characters are usually created around themes. Sometimes these themes are seemingly childish and ridiculous, like clowns or Alice in Wonderland, until they are applied to realistic crime, and then they become true horrors. Maxie Zeus, I think, could qualify as having a villainous theme on par with the Joker , and the Mad Hatter.  There is so much potential with this character that hasn't been explored in Batman comics or other media. The character first appeared in Detective Comics #483 in 1979. Created by Danny O'Neil, Maxie Zeus seems to be based on the King Tut character from the Batman television show from the '60s. He is delusional, sporting an ancient Greek theme, and believing himself to be Zeus from mythology.  Originally, he was written as an ex high school history teacher who loses his family through tragedy and builds a criminal empire (sound familiar to any Breaking Bad fans?). This in itself would be interesting enough for Gotham City,...

There has been much written in the news lately about our police force. The stories of excessive force, militarization, and racial profiling, and seeming lack of meaningful discipline have exposed a dark side to the thin blue line. It turns out that the police are less like  Dragnet , and more like  The Shield . There is no villain that better embodies this idea of the two sided nature of lawmen than Two Face.  Created in 1942 by Bob Kane and Bill Finger, Harvey Dent/Two Face was inspired by Dr Jekyl/Mr Hyde and the pulp character Black Bat. Harvey (Kent) Dent is the city district attorney turned villain through an unfortunate assault. He enters the Gotham legal system as the Court's champion. Harvey Dent is the incorruptible attorney using RICO to clean up Gotham's streets. However, during a court case, he is scarred with acid while prosecuting organized crime boss Sal Maroni . This incident psychologically ruins Harvey Dent, ripping his personality in two. This dual pe...