Scans_Daily

This might just be my favorite published Scarecrow story ever.

Having grown up reading the character from the 90's (particularly Grant's prancing bully and Moench's bullied revenge-killer), I was never fond of him until I read my girlfriend's epic fanfic series about the character ("Squishy" as we call him), which is rooted in the best parts of canon, particularly the idea of Crane as the consummate scientist and professor. This story is very much THAT version of Squishy, with just a subtle dash of Moench's if one wishes--as one commenter mentioned above--to see the character as the same one who was tormented by bullies as a child.

What's more, Dini emphasizes a wonderful theme about the Batman villains in TAS: they're not monsters, but broken and fucked-up people driven to extremes by the actions of the real monsters, the everyday and human-sized monsters of Gotham. For Mr. Freeze, there was Ferris Boyle. For Harvey Dent, Rupert Thorne. For Clayface, Roland Daggett. For the Riddler, Daniel Mockridge. To a lesser extent, you also have the Mad Hatter's jerkish boss and Veronica Vreeland's manipulation of the Penguin. The stories make it clear that the villains are threats that must be put down, but sympathy is invariably on their side.

How frustrating, then, that the actual DC comics pretty much just make them monsters, period. They're far more interesting as the broken, fucked-up people that they were in TAS, especially if they come with their own "moral codes," as you put it, to separate them from the ruthless, conniving people who helped to create the villains in the first place.