Batman: Reptilian #3

[history79]

"I pretty much despise Batman’s rogues gallery. They put me in mind of a bunch of multicolored idiots tittering and twitching as they try to get into a nightclub, with the biggest, baddest, black-clad bouncer on the door ensuring they’ll never succeed. The Joker is the worst of the lot, probably the most annoying character in all of the comics. I quite enjoyed taking a buzz-saw to them in the first couple of issues. Croc is a bit more physically formidable but is just as lacking in credibility when it comes to taking on Batman. Something in his origin did, however, inspire a new character that I thought might actually be worthy of Batman’s attention."

- Garth Ennis

Comments

[thanekos]

Given the kind of stories the Joker's been in for the last several years, who wouldn't be tempted to do this with him in an out-of-main-continuity story?

[cyberghostface]

“ The Joker is the worst of the lot, probably the most annoying character in all of the comics.”

He’s better than your umpteenth variation of “hard man who does hard things” with stubble and a trench coat.

[tinygaylaura]

All of Batman's rogues, including the ones who literally eat people, are still better people than "Billy Butcher" or any of Ennis's other Gary Stu self inserts

[dcbanacek]

Surprised Ennis jobbed out Deadshot. You'd think out of all of Batman's rogues gallery, he'd be the one he'd most like.

[shakalooloo]

He's a rich, entitled asshole.

[janegray]

Deadshot? That's not the impression I got at all from Simone's Suicide Squad.

I mean, he's an asshole. But not an entitled one. He's very down-to-earth. Not particularly rich either.

[shakalooloo]

His origin was that he became a criminal to stick it to his rich parents, so while he may not be a wealthy man, he was born of privilege.

[dan_ingram]

He was born to wealth, but his origin comes from the emotional abuse inflicted by his wealthy parents using him and his brother as pawns against one another.

Floyd would be right up Ennis' alley, if he ever bothered to actually look at the character. But all Ennis can do is look down his nose at them, so...

[laughing_tree]

Very pleased to see the Joker treated as ultimately just some dude, which after all is what he is.

[reveen]

I'll give Ennis guys like the Riddle, Mad Hatter, Tweedle Dum + Tweedle Dee. But the rest? Scarecrow is a terrorist who bombs public places with nerve agents, Poison Ivy has supernatural powers over plants, Two-Face is an insane former district attorney acting as a gang boss, and Hugo Strange is a psychotic genius therapist who knows who Batman is and how to fuck with him personally. All of these are rock solid villain material.

There's no pleasing some people. This take only makes sense if 'big, strong, and scary' is the only metric by which you judge a villain.

[cyberghostface]

Yeah Batman has the best rogues gallery by a wide margin.

[sadoeuphemist]

Tbh, beyond Two-Face's personal relationship with Batman and the themes of duality and justice and obsession, I never got what would make him an effective supervillain. He's just a mob boss, except way more indecisive. Okay, so he was a former DA, big deal; regular mob bosses typically have teams of lawyers on retainer.

Like, Mad Hatter at least has mind-control tech. That's mind-control tech! He can control minds!

[lego_joker]

Poor Harv is really emblematic of how badly Batman's power curve has been distorted over the years. If you suggested that a mere gangster could pose a threat to Batman for an entire story, today's generation of fans would probably all give you a blank stare, even when that was exactly the case from Batman's debut all the way up to at least the '70s. Even the famously Realistic(tm) Nolan trilogy, in two out of three movies, pit him against guys that were Bond villains in all but name.

[sadoeuphemist]

Ehhh I don't think it's really power creep. Like, Joker's first appearance he's got his deadly Joker venom that lets him kill people in terrifying and mysterious ways; Riddler's first appearance he has his wildly implausible death traps that would take way too long to set up irl; even Penguin's got his weaponized umbrellas.

Two-Face has his coin, and sometime he flips it and does the thing that's detrimental to himself. It's a gimmick that's purely disadvantage.

[palgrave_goldenrod]

Looked at the other way, Two-Face is an unpredictable madman who likes to flip a coin to decide whether or not he's going to shoot someone in the face. The unpredictability is what makes him dangerous. Okay, maybe he's not going to reach the top of a real-world criminal organisation or anything, but I sure as shit wouldn't want to be tied to a chair in a locked room with someone like him pointing a gun at me.

[sadoeuphemist]

We are talking about his role as a Batman villain here. This just makes him less dangerous than someone who would predictably shoot at Batman 100% of the time. Or simply 51% percent of the time. This isn't a high bar to clear.

What this unpredictability does is make him bad at managing flunkies. With Joker you can at least imagine they're psychos who are into his sick sense of humor. Why would anyone work for Two-Face, when half the time he does the opposite of what you're hoping for, at random?

[palgrave_goldenrod]

Have to admit, it's kind of amusing how you initially went with "we're talking about his role as a Batman villain here!" only to then suddenly swerve into the realism of Two-Face's supervillain employee management logistics, as if that's ever been a priority focus for superhero comics. Especially since if we're going that route, sick sense of humour or not why would anyone work for your counter-example, a man who would just as likely kill you at random just because he thought it was funny? The Joker's not exactly a stirling example of flunky management either. If we're critiquing Two-Face as a supervillain, fair enough, but you can either assume a certain allowance for suspension of disbelief given the already highly unrealistic nature of comic book supervillainy or you can focus on strict realism, you can't really have it both ways.

Getting back to Two-Face, eh, I repeat, he's a dangerous unpredictable psychopath and in the fairly simplistic world of Batman comics that makes him formidable. Maybe that doesn't work for you, but it works fine for me, so I guess we're just gonna have to agree to disagree on this one.

[sadoeuphemist]

"..it's kind of amusing how you initially went with "we're talking about his role as a Batman villain here!" only to then suddenly swerve into the realism of Two-Face's supervillain employee management logistics"

"If we're critiquing Two-Face as a supervillain, fair enough"

???

No idea what you're talking about here. I am saying Two-Face may be a threat to you, or the average person, but he is not a threat to the superhero Batman. I am critiquing him as a supervillain.

[palgrave_goldenrod]

Yeah, that's on me; I was going through insomnia when I wrote that comment and was apparently somewhat rambling.

That said, pointing out that Two-Face's issues make him bad at "managing flunkies" isn't really critiquing him as a threat to Batman; it's critiquing him at his ability to manage henchmen as if he were an actual mob boss. Which is fair enough I suppose but kind of pointless since that kind of critique isn't limited to Two-Face and can be applied to pretty much any Batman villain, since they're unrealistic grotesqueries who aren't really supposed to be seen as realistic mob bosses (again, why would anyone work for the Joker, a man just as likely engage in pointless and unprofitable activities because it fits his warped neuroses as Two-Face is, but who on top of that is likely to randomly kill you purely for shits and giggles?).

And whether or not he's "a threat to the superhero Batman" is really as much a matter of willing suspension of disbelief as any other comic book supervillain; by your own examples, the Joker's threat to Batman relies at least partly on an unrealistic and non-existent form of poison gas (itself not really a practical form of weaponry for a criminal), the Riddler on impractically elaborate death traps often requiring knowledge of mid-school level puzzles and word games to escape from, and the Penguin has adopted possibly the least practical device to house a machine gun in ever as his weapon of choice. None of those are exactly plausible outside of comic books; their threat to Batman rises and falls on whether or not the writer is able to convince you that these things are actually threatening and not just kind of silly.

Similarly, Two-Face rises and falls on whether or not the writers can convince you that his neuroses and mental issues make him unpredictable and dangerous as an opponent. If it doesn't work for you that's fair enough, of course, but it seems a little arbitrary to act like he's somehow significantly less a threat to Batman or less able to be taken seriously than any of the others, when they're ultimately all pretty unrealistic and requiring of a healthy dollop of willing suspension of disbelief in order to take seriously as a threat to Batman. Especially since at least Two-Face, unlike many of the others, actually would also likely be dangerous in real life.

[sadoeuphemist]

Sure, it's possible to create a villain whose unpredictability is his asset. Joker is supposedly so chaotic that he messes up Cassandra Cain's body-reading skills - which is still dumb to me, but okay, whatever, sure. But what Two-Face stories exist where Batman is genuinely befuddled by Two-Face's unpredictability? Whenever Two-Face does something "unpredictable", it's usually at his own expense - he abruptly gives up, or makes a heroic sacrifice, or turns on his own men, or whatever.

His vacillation between good and evil is also why his relationship with his goons differs from the standard supervillain-goon dynamic where they servilely accept all sorts of abuse from their boss. When Harvey flips good heads and turns on his goons, it is understood as him switching sides. So of course, they have to turn against him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0w1Ax3UESW0

I'm not saying Two-Face's 'superpower' is unrealistic, I'm saying they didn't give him a superpower. It's all negatives.

Also, no idea what you're talking about with the real life stuff. Half of his face is burnt off. In real life he would be half-blind and instantly recognizable, probably have trouble eating, speaking, maybe have respiratory problems.

[palgrave_goldenrod]

I mean, fair enough, we'll just have to agree to disagree for the most part. But just RE this:

Also, no idea what you're talking about with the real life stuff. Half of his face is burnt off. In real life he would be half-blind and instantly recognizable, probably have trouble eating, speaking, maybe have respiratory problems.

See my above post regarding "being locked in a room with an unstable, unpredictable gun-wielding maniac", which is what I'm clearly continuing on from when I suggest that Two-Face would be dangerous in real life. Obviously his scarring as depicted in the comics is highly unrealistic. Have to say, seems like you're just getting into pedantry a little bit there.

[sadoeuphemist]

Honestly really not getting this locked room scenario. Two-Face is not known for picking random people and flipping to decide whether they live or die. Most of his schemes have a 'justice' theme to them where his victims are chosen for a specific reason, and even then he usually gives them a 50% chance of survival.

If the gun-wielding maniac has no reason to want to kill/harm you, then there's no decision for Two-Face to make, no reason for him to flip the coin. If they do have a reason to want to hurt you, then Penguin, Joker, Scarecrow, Black Mask are all sadists, Ventriloquist would just shoot you, the generic mobsters would just shoot you, you have way worse than 50% chance with most of them.

[palgrave_goldenrod]

Yeah, like I say, I think you're just getting a bit pedantic now. I'm using the locked room "scenario", such as it is, to suggest why I think that Two-Face is potentially dangerous (as in the old saying "he's not someone I'd like to be trapped in a locked room with"), I'm not saying that's his standard MO, which I suspect you know. It kind of seems like you're just looking to have an argument, which I think I've made clear I really have no interest in. You don't buy Two-Face, I do, let's just leave it there.

[sadoeuphemist]

No, I just really don't get this locked room situation you're talking about. I would not want to be "tied to a chair in a locked room" with, say, a five-year-old child pointing a gun at me, because a small child is genuinely unpredictable and might pull the trigger without realizing what they're doing. But this is not going to convince anyone that a five-year-old is particularly dangerous. Of course, if you give anyone a gun, they're dangerous; it's a gun.

[palgrave_goldenrod]

For heaven's sake, dude, it's just an off-the-cuff hypothetical that you seem to weirdly fixated on picking apart for some reason (I mean, if you genuinely can't see the difference between being locked in a room with a five-year-old and being locked in a room with a psychotic maniac, there's no hope for you; again, I suspect you're just being pedantic and trying to have an argument). Now, I've made it clear I have no interest in discussing this further with you, so I'd appreciate it if you left it there. Please don't reply to me further.

[kjn]

Looking at his Garth Ennis's statement, it looks like he blames Batman's villains for not being credible threats, while at the same time identifying Batman as over-powered.

The best of Batman's villains aren't great because they are a threat to the superheroes anyway. They are great because they say something about our society, our cities, or our morality.

[lego_joker]

Unfortunately, what they say right now, as a collective, is more or less "Evil will flourish because your courts and police systems are too nice." Though ironically, I get the feeling that's a message Ennis 100% agrees with; so I guess his distaste for them boils down to a cheap "But they're so silly about it!", after all.

(Has anyone asked Ennis what his take on Lex Luthor is? I expect that's the one "name" villain he'd approve of, however tentatively, because he games the system in a Realistic(tm) way.)

[palgrave_goldenrod]

Or what they say about Batman himself.

[blueprintstyles]

Garth's comment reads like a fanfic writer really wanting to hype up his OC character. Has he even read anything with Batman's rogues gallery in the last 20 years?

[cyberghostface]

You’re absolutely right. By his own admission he doesn’t give a shit about anything in the past thirty years.

https://www.cbr.com/garth-ennis-batman-reptilian-dc-interview/

“Imagine that the last thirty or so years’ worth of Batman comics never existed. Because as far as I can recall, that’s how long it’s been since I actually read a Batman comic from start to finish, as opposed to just getting a rough idea of what’s happening with the character (it would have been the excellent Mad Love). So I really don’t know what’s been happening with Batman recently, especially since about 2000. Just think Dark Knight, Year One, Killing Joke and not an awful lot more. Think the late ‘80s to the early ‘90s.”

[tinygaylaura]

Why am I not at all surprised that Mad Love, the Killing Joke, Year One and Dark Knight are Ennis's idea of good Batman stories?

[palgrave_goldenrod]

Okay, while I'm rolling my eyes at Ennis's slightly-desperate "look at me!" edgelord contrarianism, I can't deny that it is kind of nice to see the Joker being taken down a peg or two.

[crabby_lioness]

Who's the artist? Looks like a Sienkiewicz fan.