Post your 4 favorite Batman villains and explain why

>he desperately needs to be in more stories.
Correction: he desperately needs to be in more good stories.
Two-Face gets featured prominently enough as it is, the problem is that far too often writers have a fundamental misunderstanding of him as a character or don't write him as anything more than a crime boss with a 2 fetish.

I thought his appearence in the latest Deathstroke arc was actually the best usage the character's seen in a long time. I really wish we could get something out of it.

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Wasn't that a fake Two-Face though? Or was the fake one the one who stayed in Arkham?

>Mr. Freeze
got a thing for tragic villains, he's kind of the poster boy for that. Plus i like ice powers and his look is cool
>Two-Face
same thing as Freeze, but you throw in some discussion about the duality of man and the nature of justice. Also dig the look
>Solomon Grundy
not that much of an interesting character, but the idea of Batman fighting against a fucking zombie gangster is so cool i can't help but love him
>Mad Hatter
mind control is a cool power for a villain, add the creepy pedo vibes he gives off and you have a villain that really gets under my skin
BTW this thread really makes me wish there were more Batman stories that focused on his other villains instead of just the Joker all the time, i mean, i like him, but give the other guys a shot.

The fake one stayed in Arkham with Hugo and was killed.
The real one accompanied Rose to 'Nam

>Ventriloquist & Scarface
Arnold and his dummy (or Scarface and his dummy) are pure, distilled comic book weirdness, and I love them for it. I feel a character like this could ever really work in this medium. They're usually treated as a joke, and they kind of are, but there's much more to them. People tend to forget Wesker's tragic backstory and Scarface's vaguely supernatural origin.

>Professor Pyg
Definitely one of Batman's creepiest and most deranged foes and perhaps the only one who is actually, legitimately insane. His special brand of craziness is difficult to get right though, which probably explains why he is so rarely used. Although Pyg has been featured a lot more since Rebirth.

>Penguin
I've had a soft spot for Ossyever since I saw Batman Returns for the first time when I was a kid. Among Batman's A-list rogues, I think he might be the most underrated, next to the Riddler. I'm still unsure whether giving him the Iceberg Lounge and turning him from a straight-up supervillain into a mob boss was the right decision for the character or not, though.

>Hugo Strange
Before the Joker, there was Strange. The first bad guy to figure out Batman's secret identity. Seriously underrated and completely underutilized. Priest wrote a terrific Strange in the recent Deathstroke: Arkham storyline.

>Freeze
I like him best as that glacially focused man who is willing to do whatever it takes to get his revenge or keep his wife safe who still has sympathitic reasons for being who he is.
>Deadshot
I love him for being an entirely different flavor of crazy then the usual Batman rogue, and because that one storyline where Batman races to discover not Deadshot’s location but to find who HIRED Deadshot to outbit him because he knew he’d never succeed in actually stopping the assassination (only arresting him after the deed was done) is one of my favorite examples of Batman actually being clever rather then just punching his way through problems like he seems to end up doing these days.
>Riddler
Eddie is just really fun to read. He’s such an overblown prick and his ego is hilariously large. I actually liked him as the world’s most annoying PI.
>Killer Croc
I’ve always wanted to read or write a story from his point of view taking place over the years as Croc gets more and more monstrous and mutates worse and worse as we see him go from the big dude with scales he started as to the huge freakish animal he is now.

>I actually liked him as the world’s most annoying PI.
PI Riddler was really fun and an idea that should have been explored further. I'd totally read a miniseries about Eddie solving crimes while being a dick to Batman and the GCPD.

>outside of "When is a Door" I don't think there's ever been a truly great Riddler story
If I had to name a truly great Riddler story it would easily be "Questions Multiply The Mystery", which was the origin story Chuck Dixon gave him. It's easily the most in-depth look into his character and how he should be written.
I'd also point out "Riddle of the Jinxed Sphinx" by Doug Moench, Run Riddler Run by Gerard Jones and his appearence in Impulse #48. His appearences in the DCAU comics might be the most consistently great even.

I hate "When is a Door". It's not a bad story, and I can even kind of agree with what it's trying to say, but ultimately it's just Neil Gaiman using Riddler as a mouthpiece to complain about Batman fans' insecurity about the Adam West show and painting him as the face of a bygone, saccharine-sweet era where the villains were harmless, turning Riddler into a trash-dwelling, toothless and annoying has-been, never-was and never will be.

Not only has Riddler been a callous murderer since his first appearence, but he was easily the most unhinged character in the Rogues Gallery in the 66 show, the only villain who could be genuinely menacing as well as hilarious. He had much more in common with The Joker as we know him today because Bronze Age Joker took the best traits of this Riddler and left the comic Riddler with the scraps.

It's really frustrating to watch "When is a Door" be held up as the only good Riddler story when he not only has many other better stories, but that story is the one most responsible for his downfall as a character.

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>The Riddler
He's an entertainingly smug, calculated, and deep villain. The Telltale series and Gotham version of him are my favorite.
>Scarecrow
I was always fascinated by this character and how he has a deep parallel with Batman in terms of using fear as a weapon. I also like his design, his origin story, and his personality too.
>Man-bat
I just find the concept of his character funny and entertaining a literal Bat man as a villain.
>Killer Moth
Same thing with Man-bat except I don't really find him funny, I just find him interesting. The idea of an anti Batman that helps criminals and terrorizes Gotham is actually pretty cool. He's like a Reverse Flash or a Bizarro Superman.

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So about two years ago we did a "favorite Batman villain" poll.
I wonder how different the results would be now

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Ventriloquist, Ratcatcher, Cornelius Stirk and Victor Zsasz, because they were created by Alan Grant and I want them to be used more often so maybe he can get some royalty money.

In what voice do you read the villains as ?
Because of the Arkham games I just can't unhear Wally Wingert as Riddler. And I actually prefer John Glover's performance but Wingert is the perfect blend of smug and pathetic for the character.

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>In what voice do you read the villains as ?
Do people really do that? I've never read any character in any voice in my whole life, either comics or books.

I doubt he means literally reading them out loud while doing a funny voice, but I usually have a voice in mind for a character in my head when I'm reading something like a comic.

>Joker
Regardless about my views about often he's used, he's arguably the most iconic super hero villain period and with good reason
>Riddler
I just fucking love 60s Batman. Frank Gorshin does such a great job and I wish modern incarnations would use his performance as a template for him
>Poison Ivy
Like most popular Batman villains, her personality and gimmicks get very muddled over time. Still, I like her a lot. She's very iconic both in looks and in powers.
>Mr. Freeze
Heartbreaking in all the right ways

Tony Jay for Hugo Strange.

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>Scarecrow
Cool antithesis to Batman, uses fear as a weapon on the innocent.

>Man-Bat
I love tragic monsters.

>Hugo Strange
The best Batman adversary, in my opinion. Intelligent, resourceful, doesn’t rely on a gimmick, pretty much just a superior Riddler.

>Mad Hatter
This could’ve gone to Professor Pyg, but I love Hatter for being legitimately insane, and there’s always an air of creepiness about him.

I read Black Mask in Clancy Brown's Red Death voice.
It makes the stuff he says in Under the Red Hood even funnier

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IMO Kings of Fear is the only time I've ever seen Scarecrow live up to his potential and was genuinely scary

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Kelly Jones is the only artist who should ever be allowed to draw Scarecrow.

Kelley Jones art is either fantastically gorgeous and moody or poor man's Bernie Wrightson with no in between.
Has he ever drawn a story with Clayface? Considering how the characters he draws often shift and look like they are melting he seems like the perfect artist to really deliver on Clayface

all your choices, good taste. id prob add ras, freeze and old harley to that list.

I'm pretty sure Clayface appeared in Batman: Gotham After Midnight which Jones illustrated.

And I generally agree with you about the wonky quality of his art, but when he does get it right, he can deliver some really amazing artwork.

I know he doesn't mean out loud but I don't do that thing in my head either. I just read the things. It sounds weird to me but it's not the first time I've seen someone saying that so I was wondering if it's actually a common thing and I'm the outlier.

In no particular order

>Ra's al Ghul
I've always had a soft spot for master planner/moriarty/chess master villains; always satisfying to see their plots come to a close. Plus Ra's can work for smaller stuff or a JL villain.

>Bane
I don't think I've seen him done right outside of comics, but I loved Knightfall and his stuff in No man's land/Secret Six. A subversion of the typical bruiser type.

>Two Face
He can actually be pretty fun, actually crazy unlike a lot of rouges, and the cliché fallen friend/brother thing works for him.

>Joker
He has way, way, way more bad appearances than good ones, but when it's well done, you remember why he was so popular in the first place.

> Mr Freeze (dcau version mainly)...

> Joker (ledger & endgame versions mainly)...

LOVE the idea of him being a ageless Candyman like Phantom with multiple potential origins. My jaw fucking dropped when Gordon saw the old photos.

> Two-Face...

> Court of Owls...

>I'm still unsure whether giving him the Iceberg Lounge and turning him from a straight-up supervillain into a mob boss was the right decision for the character or not, though.
I think it's one of those things that worked very well for it's time but then overstayed it's welcome and suffered from misuse.

Chuck Dixon's introduction of the Iceberg Lounge and him being a mob king was a great way to update the character and give him a new hook, and given how a lot of Batman's sillier or older villains were getting offed or getting edgy reboots back then, I'd argue Penguin needed this kind of thing to finally shake off the Adam West stigma and survive intact. And back then it was great, because in that storyline (Odds Against) he was still a colorful, clever bastard with all the tricks and panache that make him loveable and hateable at once, and he had a number of great storylines in NML afterwards.

The problem was that when Batman storylines became more and more obsessed with grimdark and "realistic" sagas around the 00s, Penguin was relegated to relegated to a shady nightclub owner and little else. He can't go up against Batman, or embark on ridiculous quests for fame and fortune or stage ingenious attacks on Gotham City. Now, the Iceberg Lounge and mob thing is his character, and it shoes him in a "realistic context". Penguin's always had a hard time being taken seriously and I guess this finally takes care of that. He's gritty and realistic and serious and with the mobster cliches and psychotic revenge sprees to prove it.

But personally I just find it to be a cowardly and unimaginative misuse of a great character.

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Anybody else thinks Two-Face should become an anti-hero?

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Riddler
>His riddles and puzzels are fun to solve and watch.
>A perfect Foil for a man called the worlds greatest detective.

Killer Moth
>No matter how many times he looses he gets right back up.
>Two words Moth Mobile.

Poison Ivy
>Capable of being funny, intimidating, and sympathetic.

Firefly
> add a cool design and being a total psycho together and you get a really entertaining villain

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Kind of.
I think Two-Face is the one character in the Batman mythos that can conceivably be both an anti-hero and an anti-villain at once, and his better portrayals have placed him on both spectrums. But I often see the idea that he should become a vigilante like Batman and it just feels unnecessary to have another gun-toting anti hero vigilante in Gotham. He is more unique than that.
I think his Golden Age version had the best balance by depicting him as someone who genuinely straddled both sides of the law, choosing between acts of charity or robberies and so on. I don't know why this idea was never expanded on and instead they gave him an obsession with the number two. If played right this could truly make him unpredictable, on the crosshairs and in cahoots with everyone in Gotham, whether they be hero or villain.

If I were to make him an anti-hero I'd make him an attorney again and play with how Harvey's career is affected by him becoming Two-Face and how his new role affects his relations with the rest of Gotham. Atticus Finch and Saul Goodman at once.

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Phantasm

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I've actually personally always hated the Scarecrow, but we can agree to disagree

Scarecrow
>looks cool I like the idea of inducing hallucinations of fear on others

Mr. Freeze
>Ice powers are cool and he's sympathetic

Harley Quinn
>her old outfit and voice get me rock fucking hard I'd fuck the crazy out of her.

Black Mask
>just fucking evil

Condiment King
>I like ketchup and mustard

Kite Man
>fucking kites are brutal

Calendar Man
>Has a cape

Catwoman's weird bro
>He wanted to fuck his sister

Let's flip the script a bit.
What are your top 4 most hated Batman villains?

>The Ventriloquist
I like how unique he is and how well he embodies much of what I love about Batman
>Riddler
I really like Eddie's aesthetic and humor and how he challenges Batman. I wish they'd stuck with him as a P.I
>Penguin
I really like his origin and personality
>Mad Hatter
I exclusively like the TAS version. I find him to be a great mix of endearing and creepy and McDowall's voicework is excellent

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>Firefly
Horrifying, flying arsonist. Only in Gotham could you walk down the street and be lit aflame or fucked up by agent orange.

>Riddler
Instead of Damien i wished that we had a reformed riddler team up with batman and provide some sass but also competency. We have enough Robins and Jason did the crazy Robin way better.

In no order

>Bane
What makes Bane so compelling is how he represents the twisted aspects of a man with Batman’s sheer power of will, and the symbolism of hope. He was born in a prison, no formal education, no mother, no money, nothing but other inmates. So from that he learned to hone his mind and body, become a beacon to the prisoners of Santa Prisca, and in turn become one of the deadliest enemies of one of the world’s greatest superheroes. He represents a challenge on levels Bruce generally never handles at once, which whenever written well makes for some of the best Batman stories.

>DCAU Mr. Freeze
I guess a bit of a cop out answer, but I’d be lying if I didn’t put him. The BTAS interpretation of Freeze is one of the most tragic, yet interesting interpretations of any Batman villain to date. New Adventures flubbed it a bit, but Beyond gave him the perfect ending. I still get sad thinking about his speech in his cell.

>The Joker
Has he been overexposed? Yes. Has many recent interpretations been bad? Definitely. But even with those aspects, you can’t have any list of Batman Rogues without him. He’s the Moriarty to Bruce’s Sherlock, the ultimate punchline in villainy.

>Deadshot
Lawton’s that level of asshole that you can’t help but love. He might not be some big adversary to Bruce, or represent some important pathos in Batman’s story, but he’s always great. Every encounter with Batman is at minimum a fun read.

I need to read more Hugo stories.

Based and condimentpilled.

>Hush
Hush is the one exception to the "no bad characters just bad writers" rule.
A character so poorly conceived and unoriginal, so infuriatingly terrible, somehow both a Villain Sue and a walking punchline, and who became even more stupidly popular when Dini made him a serviceable prick.
There is literally nothing you can do with Hush that you can't do better with any other Batman villain. Not even the medical shtick (you have the Crime Doctor and Dr.Moon for that).

>Dr.Hurt
Hurt is the only character who is somehow more of a Villain Sue than Hush and I think even Morrison kind of understood how shitty this character was given how he was taken out of the story.
Literally no one wouls even remember this guy existed if it wasn't for Morrison's name attached to it.

>Poison Ivy
Ivy is a character I've always been very indifferent towards and that indifference just blossomed into dislike.
I've never liked just how inconsistent she is (even by Batman villain standards) and how shoddy her characterization is, and sure you can say it's just writers misusing her but it's not like they have anything to work with in the first place besides the most superficial stuff. Ivy has no great stories. At best she has good moments in decent stories like her owning an orphan sanctuary in NML which is like the big moment every Ivy fans goes to whenever talking about her (and even then that was a Clayface story but I digress).
I think what really makes me dislike Ivy though is how she's guilty of some of the worst crimes any Batman villain is guilty of, including repeated sexual harassment, and she gets a free pass for all of it, being made into an anti-heroine and god forbid you depict her as anything but. She is worse than Harley in that regard, and hell, she is abusive and mean to Harley too on top of it all.

>James Gordon Jr
A 100% generic psychopath with nothing even remotely interesting about him and whose existence is just one of Snyder's many big, ugly retcons

came here to post this

I wish we'd get more interesting interactions between the villains and the Batfamily

that's perfect

>Two-Face
He's just been in so many good things even as a secondary character or villain because his character is so versatile and most of it ends up good or we forget all the shit comics he's been in.

>Clayface
Maybe this is more of a potential thing than what they've done with him so far, but I feel like there's a lot more stories in this character still. I think a modern story of him impersonating Batman or other heroes as he commits crimes and kills people has some potential. Batman trying to find the impersonator while dealing with all the backlash of people thinking he's gone too far or something like that.Somethign about the fact that he;s a shapeshifter while also being powerful in his own right makes me like him.

>Owlman
He's the personification of Batgod wankery and all those 90s BTAS toys.

>Mister Freeze
People say he only has like 1-2 good stories in him. "muh wife needs a cure" "muh wife needs revenge", but then I remember the Batman Beyond stuff was good too. Maybe his character just works in animation better. Or maybe because the animated series made the most iconic version that writers are afraid to get too far from that.

The Joker: intelligent, nihilistic and with a wicked sense of humor.
The Scarecrow: intelligent, nihilistic and with a wicked sense of fear.
Bane: intelligent, nihilistic and with an extreme sense of pain.

>comic thread ded
>50 movie threads alive

>I need to read more Hugo stories.
There's not many of them, really. Just follow the ones in this list in order. And you have to follow them in order since Hugo, unlike the other Batman villains, has a linear progression from the Golden Age all the way to the early 2000's in, since he was used very sparingly and only by writers who were hardcore Batman fans familiar with his stories.
This streak was broken when Doug Moench wrote Terror, which directly contradicts the events of Transference and is a pretty lousy storyline, and later Matt Wagner would do his own retelling of the original Monster Men stories.

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Might as well post the other lists while I'm at it

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Killer Croc is my favorite batman villain by far. His brutish nature and his horrific visage make for beautiful scenes especially when artists embellish his features. Not to mention how his backstory is essentially just people making their own monster.
Besides him two face and Mr freeze are also fun to see.

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I thought one of Metal's biggest missed opportunities was the chance for them to tie Barbatos into the Bat-Demon of Bane's dreams.
Wouldn't it make much sense if Barbatos, in his plans to constantly test Bruce and strengthen him, came to Bane and tormented him to set him on collision course to Batman?

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Then again I do have a personal headcanon that Hugo Strange was behind the experiments of Bane with his Monster Men serum being used to make Venom.
To me it makes even more sense to pursue this thinking considering Hugo's Monster Men are based on a Doc Savage novel and Bane himself was conceived as an evil Doc Savage.

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>Anarky
He is not the villain of Batman, but of Bruce Wayne and the government. I think he works best in times were the gcpd don't cooperate with Batman.

>Azrael (Arkham Version)
He got brainwashed and trained just to become a better Batman than Batman. He takes advantage of Batmans trust.

>Mr Freeze
Most sympathetic villain.

>Scarecrow
I like how Batman is the only thing he fears, while he himself can give Batman nightmares.

I always thought it was weird how, who I'm assuming is Hugo, just makes an appearance in Bane's origin, and it's never tied back into anything, never mentioned again.