Scans_Daily

This is it. The big one.

It arrives at a moment where's it's suddenly relevant and topical to fan interests.With the release of the awesome new Arkham City trailer, the internet is ablaze with the question, "Who the hell is Hugo Strange?"

Hopefully, some people looking for answers will stumble upon these posts. It seems I've coincidentally been ahead of the game with these posts, perhaps even more so if the (unlikely) rumors turn out to be true, and The Dark Knight Rises will be based upon Batman: Prey.

Which, in either case, is the story I bring you today. In some ways, my entire Hugo Strange project has been building up to this: one of his two stories which defined his character for their generations. But while it's a different interpretation for a rebooted continuity, the threads to the original Hugo can be seen throughout. This Hugo is more perverse, more deranged, but just as brilliant and dangerous.





But like the best Hugo stories, Prey is ultimately about the heart and soul of Batman himself. What makes Hugo so great is how he pushes Bruce to the limits of what he can overcome, and by the end, Batman's triumph is always more than a physical one. Maybe that's why Hugo's the villain of choice for a handful of discerning, hardcore, old-school Batman comic fans.

If you can, I urge you to track down Prey either as a trade paperback or in the original issues of Legends of the Dark Knight #11-15, which I've seen in dollar bins. While Prey is a beloved story and a hot rumor du jour, it's also out of print. Again, WTF, DC?


( Until then, I present this inadequate edit of a great, rich Batman tale behind the cut... )

And with that last line, my thoughts once again turn to how perfectly this story would fit in the Nolanverse for The Dark Knight Rises. I still don't see it happening because most people just don't think of Hugo Strange as main villain material. Obviously, I disagree, but I don't represent your average film goer, nor even your average comic fan.

But either way, hey, maybe this'll finally encourage DC to put Prey back into print, along with Strange Apparitions. If I were an editor of collected editions at DC, I'd even throw in a bonus to the Prey TPB and include Moench's own Down to the Bone, because that one too deserves to be read and treasured.

This is Hugo's last appearance for about ten years, until Devin Grayson and Doug Monech decided to write their own sequels to Prey. Weirdly, I greatly prefer the former version to the latter, wherein Moench and Gulacy fail to recapture the lighting in a bottle. But we'll certainly be looking at both in the next couple posts.

At some unspecified point in the 80's, the great J.M. DeMatteis pitched a Hugo Strange story to DC, where Hugo "apparently kills Batman and, in his arrogance and ego, decides to become Batman, putting on the costume, taking over the role, in order to prove his superiority."

Of course, this is the story which became Spider-Man: Kraven's Last Hunt (and also informed JMD's own Batman: Going Sane, with the Joker). Can you imagine what that would have been like? The different characters right away demand fundamental changes to the story, but that had potential to be the character-defining storyline for Hugo, just as it was for Kraven.

Perhaps Denny O'Neill rejected JMD's pitch because Gerry Conway already started exploring that idea, once he revealed that Hugo was alive and well at the finale of the Rupert Thorne saga. I've decided to give Hugo's full return its own post, as it now represents a distinct shift in focus for the character.

So now that he's taken his revenge on Thorne, what's Hugo's next move? Head back to Europe and resume his lucrative life as a master criminal? Retire off to some remote island? Dedicate his life to using science to advance mankind? Ha, you're funny.

Oh wait. Hugo still knows that Batman is Bruce Wayne, doesn't he? Well, now. Something has to be done about that...





( Battle in the Batcave, behind the cut )

Seriously though, after all that build-up throughout the Rupert Thorne story, and all from Strange discovering Wayne's secret back in Strange Apparitions almost a decade earlier, this is kind of an ignominious death for such a major threat. Especially one as brilliant and methodical as Strange.

Clearly, Conway's successor, Doug Moench, thought so too. I was going to include that issue with this as a double-feature, but it deserves its own post, more so than even this story.

With "Interlude on Earth-Two," Alan Brennert was the first DC Comics writer to ask the questions, "If you go to a world where an alternate version of yourself got older, married, had a full life, and died... wouldn't that be kinda upsetting? Not just for you, but the people who knew and loved your alternate self?"

They're questions that no DC writer had considered by 1982, and Brennert answered them by throwing in an additional question: "What if that alternate Earth's Hugo Strange didn't escape unscathed from his final Golden Age adventure?"

This is one of the finest comics by Alan Brennert, who wrote only about nine DC stories over twenty years, including the wonderful Batman classic, To Kill A Legend, the great Deadman christmas story, and the post-Crisis origin of the Black Canary.

It is a testament to his abilities that I've had an insanely hard time editing these scans, so forgive this insufficient cut of a fine story. At least, until such time as DC reprints it someday (probably in a theoretical fourth or fifth volume of DC Showcase Presents the Brave and the Bold).





( When even the cover has to ask that question, you know it's either gonna be a confusing mess, or something awesome... )

As I said before, Alan Brennert only wrote nine stories for DC Comics over about twenty years. His career there rivals only Alan Moore's for most prolific body of work over a very limited tenure, and if there were any justice, fans would be clamoring for DC to publish a Complete DC Comics Stories of Alan Brennert collection. Doing this past makes me want to write about them all in a Brennert Master Post. Perhaps I will, once I've tracked down the last three I have yet to read.

He predates the Joker at Batman's first arch-nemesis, and he invented fear toxin before the Scarecrow ever came along.

He exploits Batman's secret identity in ways Ra's al Ghul never dared, attacking Batman in ways that Hush and Dr. Hurt would later try to less success. He even pulled a Kingpin-style tear-down on Bruce exactly one month before Daredevil: Born Again was released, and had already beaten Kraven in the plot to kill his enemy and usurp his identity.

He's made only a handful of appearances, two of which are considered among the greatest Batman stories of all time. By all accounts, he should be Batman's greatest enemy, and yet he resides in obscurity.

He's the Most Interesting Man in the World Professor Hugo Strange. That name, I realize, evokes one of two reactions. 1.) "Who?" or 2.) "Oh, yeah, that guy. What about 'im?"

Now, while I personally love the classic Bat-Rogues dearly--while I still consider the Joker to be the greatest and Two-Face to be my favorite--I've become increasingly intrigued by ol' Hugo in all his iterations. Particularly his original appearance, where--it became apparent to me--that Bob Kane and Bill Finger created Hugo to be the Moriarty to Batman's Holmes. A true Napoleon of Crime for the Depression Era.






So who was this first attempt at an arch-villain for Batman, and what set him apart from any of the other forgettable enemies from the pre-Joker era? Why did the Joker almost instantly usurp his place at Bat-Rogue #1? And what did he have that led him to be resurrected as a major threat a whole thirty-seven years later?

Let's find out together, as we explore the many lives of this mysterious(ly enduring) foe who can plague Batman like no other single villain can even today.

( The original Golden Age Hugo Strange trilogy behind the cut! )

Thankfully, Steve Englehart came up with a way to not just resurrect this notable but one-note villain, but to up his threat levels while also deepening his complexity. Indeed, as of this post, we've only scratched the surface of the great character that Hugo Strange has become.

If you're interested in these reading these stories in their entirety, they can be found reprinted in volumes of Batman Archives and, more affordably, Batman Chronicles.