Friday Five – Batman Villians

Welcome to the Friday Five! Each week I help you get to know me a bit better with the assistance of a classic top five list! This week’s topic: Batman Villains.

Everyone loves Batman, how can you not? He is simply a total badass. He’s one of the few superheroes who has no real powers of which to speak of. His super power is really just lots of money and time. But even so, he stands toe to toe with some of the most powerful heroes of all time, like Green Lantern or Superman, and he’s managed to beat both in fights in various media, using nothing but his smarts.

Well, almost everyone loves Batman. He has a vast array of enemies in his rogues gallery who want nothing more than to see him dead. Out of all of comicdom, I would have to say Batman has the deepest and most interesting set of arch nemeses. Some say they only exist because Batman encourages them. Some say Batman only exists because of them. Maybe we’ll never know, but one we we do know for sure, we love us some awesome villains!

I’ve never really read a lot of Batman books. Sure, I’ve owned them and knew about them, but never read them. Most of my love of Batman comes from Batman: The Animated Series, which was a truly fantastic show, that I have seen every episode of many many times. Picking just five villains from Batman’s rogues gallery is a challenge.

1. Bane – He’s actually a very crappy villain, but he’s here on my list mainly for the historical significance. I’ve been reading all of Knightfall as prep for the movie, and in the beginning he’s awesome, playing all kinds of psychological games with Batman, breaking him down mentally before breaking him physically. But then he’s beaten by the Jean Paul Valley Batman in pretty much the same way. He attacks Bane after he runs out of Venom, so Bane loses all his strength, and then Batman breaks his back in return. Bane had all kinds of weird adventures after his big break, and later went on to even be a hero for a while.

 

2. The Joker – You can’t really have a list like this without including the Joker in some capacity. His part in the Batman Mythos is just too great. He crippled Batgirl, he killed Jason Todd, and he’s pretty much just batshit insane. My preferred version is of course Mark Hamill (good for him finding such awesome and long lasting work after Star Wars), but credit too to Heath Ledger.

 

3. H.A.R.D.A.C. (Holographic Analytical Reciprocating DigitAl Computer) – I’m a sucker for acronyms, and even now, twenty years after the episode, I know what that stands for off the top of my head. Karl Rossum (named after Rossum’s Universal Robots, the play which first introduced the word Robot) makes an Artificial Intelligence so smart, it almost defeats Batman. In fact, it later actually made a duplicate robot that thought it was Batman and tried to replace him.

 

4. The Phantasm – Posited as Bruce Wayne’s first true love in the animated movie, so of course she later tries to kill him. Isn’t that just like a woman? I remember there was a bit of controversy back in the day because Kenner released an action figure of the Phantasm without the mask on, basically giving away the twist ending.

 

5. Killer Croc – Though it wasn’t actually him, he get’s the best line in one of the best episodes of The Animated Series – “I hit him with a rock . . . It was a big rock”

JohnScott is the proud owner of a life size replica Captain Kirk Chair. He is a hoarder of Comic Books, Transformers, and Star Trek action figures. He attended Space Camp as an adult. He has taken vacations to the closing of the Star Trek Experience and the final night Shuttle launch. He has been known to yell at his television when the kids can't put together the damn statue in the Shrine of the Silver Monkey. When not writing for InsufficientScotty, he is a Software Engineer for a major healthcare communications company. You can Email or follow on Twitter @NotEnoughScotty or Facebook