Top 5 Batman villains

[johnnygobbs]

I've always thought of Batman Returns as being a sort of Penguin-centric version of The Killing Joke. Before that movie came out, nobody in the comic industry had really bothered to update Cobblepot or examine his origins in that level of detail. A lot of people still don't realise how big an impact that film had on the character.

For example, it always grates me when I read a comment from someone criticising the film for not portraying Cobblepot as an aristocrat like he was in the comics. But the fact is the Cobblepot's in the comics weren't an aristocratic family prior to the film's release. Oswald was an impoverished pet shop owner who turned to a life of crime so he could pay his mother's medical bills. It was Burton and Waters who came up with the blue blood angle, but nowadays everyone conveniently forgets that.

Another great post Silver Nemesis.  Like you say, the Penguin was an aristocrat in Batman Returns so it baffles me why people are using that argument against the film.  In the comic-books he was the bullied son of a pet-shop owner with delusions of grandeur.  A sort of pseudo-aristocrat but not the genuine article.

I think more recent comic-books have retconned his background so that he still descends from a once wealthy family who have subsequently fallen on hard times but like Cobblepot in the movie he is still raised in less than auspicious circumstances, albeit not quite as inauspicious as a sewer/circus.

[The Laughing Fish]

While we're on the subject of out top five, I'm going to quickly mention who are my top two WORST villains:

Not to argue the point over how lame those characters have been but I've long tended toward the belief that in general there are no bad characters; just characters that haven't had their time in the sun yet. Two Face wasn't one of Batman's major heavies until, what, 1987 or so? But now look how well-regarded he is.

While I see that some characters never had an opportunity to be fleshed out and steal the spotlight, I still believe that some characters should have no business in a superhero comic. Particularly about one where this hero abides to this moral code which is best suited to a Brave and the Bold-style cartoon (not knocking it by the way, it's a fine cartoon  ).

Zsasz is too irredeemable and too depraved for a comic that it just stretches the credulity that no superhero like Batman wouldn't end him for good. At least Two-Face doesn't keep a scoreboard for how many people he's killed all over his body.

Very true. It seems as though every writer wants to conduct their own exploration of "what makes the Joker tick", but none of them want to apply the same level of analysis to lesser know characters like Mad Hatter or the Cavalier. Who's to say those characters couldn't be just as interesting as the more famous rogues if a good writer would only flesh them out a bit?

I've always thought of Batman Returns as being a sort of Penguin-centric version of The Killing Joke. Before that movie came out, nobody in the comic industry had really bothered to update Cobblepot or examine his origins in that level of detail. A lot of people still don't realise how big an impact that film had on the character.

For example, it always grates me when I read a comment from someone criticising the film for not portraying Cobblepot as an aristocrat like he was in the comics. But the fact is the Cobblepot's in the comics weren't an aristocratic family prior to the film's release. Oswald was an impoverished pet shop owner who turned to a life of crime so he could pay his mother's medical bills. It was Burton and Waters who came up with the blue blood angle, but nowadays everyone conveniently forgets that.

Yep. Considering what he had to work with that was canon in the comics at the time, I don't begrudge Burton and Waters almost page 1 reimagining of the character. Even if the only thing it accomplished was to make reinvention an acceptable thing to do, it still achieved something. It's always confused me that Burton takes so much heat for so heavily rethinking the Penguin when I'd argue Paul Dini made changes at least as extreme to Mr. Freeze but gets nothing but praise for it.

I wouldn't be surprised that some people secretly didn't care for Penguin as a character to begin with, and thought the film was poorer with him as the villain. I was never a fan of the comic Penguin, so I had no problem with that grotesque version that Burton created. I must say though, I really did like that Cockney Arkham City version. For some reason, he reminds of Phil Collins...even if there was no resemblance. 

[Silver Nemesis]

Okay, fair enough. I'm at a loss to think of a Two Force story before the late 80's that I'd call mandatory (unless Neal Adams drew it if even then) but I'll take your word for it.

I see what you mean. And I agree that most of the best Two-Face stories are from the Post-Crisis period. But he was still a very popular villain in the Pre-Crisis era. And there are a few stories from that period that I'd recommend to fans of the character.

It's hard to recommend many stories featuring the Golden Age Two-Face, simply because Harvey Kent was only actually Two-Face for three issues:

•   'The Crimes of Two-Face' (Detective Comics #66, August 1942)
•   'The Man Who Led a Double Life' (Detective Comics #68, October 1942)
•   'The End of Two-Face' (Detective Comics #80, October 1943)

At the end of Detective Comics #80 he undergoes reconstructive surgery and returns to a law-abiding life with Gilda. In all subsequent Golden Age stories it's either the Paul Sloane Two-Face or some other imitator (Harvey Kent's butler Wilkins, or George Blake).

He then didn't appear again for seventeen years before finally returning in 'Half an Evil' (Batman #234, August 1971). You could say that this is where the modern Two-Face debuts. This story was very much of the same early seventies vintage as 'The Joker's Five-Way Revenge!' and 'Daughter of the Demon'. And while it may not be as good as those other stories, I'd say it's still a must-read for fans of the O'Neil/Adams run.

Another good story is 'Threat of the Two-Headed Coin' (Batman #258, October 1974), which sees Two-Face attempting to blow up Congress with an atom bomb. It's noteworthy for marking the first appearance of Arkham Hospital, later to be renamed Arkham Asylum.

One of my personal favourites from the Pre-Crisis Two-Face catalogue is a Marv Wolfman two-parter that ran from Batman #328-329 (October-November 1980). This is one of the best early stories to explore the relationship between Harvey and his wife Gilda; something I wish Nolan had tackled in The Dark Knight, as the breakdown of Dent's marriage and the heartbreak it causes Gilda makes his descent into madness seem all the more tragic.

Then there's 'Double Take' (DC Super-Stars #14, June 1977). This one isn't a great comic by any means, but it's worth a read as it tells the origin of the Bronze Age Two-Face.

There are plenty of other good stories, but these are just a few that stand out in my memory. The Bronze Age is my favourite era of the Batman comics, so admittedly I'm a tad biased towards these stories. But I agree with you that most of the best Two-face stories – the ones that really delved into the character's psychological complexity – weren't published until the late eighties.

It's always confused me that Burton takes so much heat for so heavily rethinking the Penguin when I'd argue Paul Dini made changes at least as extreme to Mr. Freeze but gets nothing but praise for it.

Double standards, I guess. When someone makes changes like that to a villain you have to ask did they enhance or detract from the characterisation. I think a lot of us would agree that both Dini and Burton added fresh layers of pathos and menace to characters that had otherwise grown stale. But evidently some people don't see it that way.

Much as I like Batman Begins – and Liam Neeson as an actor – I felt they really diluted the character of Ra's al Ghul in that movie. They stripped away almost all of his defining characteristics and left us with a rather bland and generic Bond villain. They actually made the character less interesting than he is on the printed page. Yet Nolan gets a free pass for that?

I think more recent comic-books have retconned his background so that he still descends from a once wealthy family who have subsequently fallen on hard times but like Cobblepot in the movie he is still raised in less than auspicious circumstances, albeit not quite as inauspicious as a sewer/circus.

That's true. Ok, he isn't outright abandoned by his parents in the current canon. But he is mistreated by his father on account of his appearance. That element of emotional distance and abuse is what drives him to murder his father and siblings (see Penguin: Pain and Prejudice (2011)), just as his alienation and dispossession in the film is to blame for his resentment towards Gotham. And both Pain and Prejudice and Batman Returns end with Cobblepot attempting to kill the children of Gotham as revenge for the way the city, and his own father, rejected him. The parallels between the film and the comics are undeniable, as is the impact of the movie upon the character's evolution.

[riddler]

1. The Joker - has to be #1 although I do feel he's being overused. He really is the polar opposite of batman, never takes anything seriously, seems to be there only to antagonize Batman. You get the feeling he'd retire if Batman ever left

2. The riddler - at his best when challenging Batman's title of 'the worlds greatest detective'.

3. Two face - born a hero, will die a villain. A true victim of tragedy

4. Mr. Freeze - I'm also hoping we get a serious treatment for the character on film some day. He doesn't see himself as a villain, he actually has a serious motive.

5. Clayface - mainly due to the potential stories which can arise out of his acting ability.

[zDBZ]

Joker
Catwoman
Two-Face
Scarecrow
Penguin

[gordonblu]

1. Two-Face. He's my number one favorite and it is the Animated Series that made him so. The movies have yet to do justice to the character.

2. Penguin. He wasn't one of my favorites at first, but I became obsessed with in recent years due to new appreciation for BR (which I wasn't too crazy about when I first saw it) and the Paul Williams version. Heck, I love Burgess Meredith's performance too.

3. Mr. Freeze. Michael Ansara's turn on the animated series (in addition to Paul Dini's writing) made him one of my favorites, the Freeze story in The Batman Adventures Christmas Special Issue cemented it. I enjoyed Arnold in B&R (for different reasons) but my favorite Live Action Freeze is George Sanders.

4. The Mad Hatter. I love Alice in Wonderland and as such I love the Mad Hatter. David Wayne was one of my favorites on the old show and Roddy McDowall (and Paul Dini AGAIN) was another winner for me.

5. The Joker. I hesitated to put him on the list because Joker on a top five (or ten) is a tad predictable. I can't help it though I really like the Joker (to counter-balance the obviousness I ranked him lower ). I always liked Cesar Romero's Joker, I LOVE Jack's and Mark's equally, and I thought Heath Ledger did very well even though Nolan monkeyed around too much with the character IMO. I even found things I like about the horrible bare-footed monkey-man Joker from "The Batman", mainly the red eyes and some of the writing.

honorable mentions go to

The Riddler (I hated Jim Carrey's version and was massively anti-Riddler for a long time after that film came out, but my vehemence has tempered)
Catwoman (I torn on which version of the character I like; elements of Pfeiffer, Kitt, and Barbeau all feel right, but I'm not sure even the comics really know what to do with the character)
Poison Ivy (I discovered her more or less through the animated series, but I think she runs the potential of being too gimicky. That said I love the Jeph Loeb/Tim Sale version)
Clayface( More specifically the original deranged murderous actor clayface not the shape-shifting one. Although the Feat of Clay two-parter in the animated series has my vote for one of the nastiest and intense episodes particularly chapter two)
Professor Radium (he's a character who's never been adapted in any of the shows, although one could argue Blight in Batman Beyond was inspired by him. I found myself deeply moved by the character in both the comic and the comic strip adaptation; he never meant to hurt anyone, and the guilt of accidentally killing both his fiance and his assistant, not to mention the poor bird he was kindly trying to feed in the park, drove him insane. Powerful stuff, even for a 40's comic.)
Ventriloquist (Along-side Two-Face I find Arnold Wesker one of the most plausible of villains, plus I find Ventriloquist dummies inherently creepy anyway. I would love to see Scarface on the big screen, but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting.)

[Azrael]

Joker, Two-Face, The Riddler, The Penguin... I'd like to add Man-Bat, Kirk Langstrom.

I'm not very familiar with this character outside B:TAS and the Man-Bat miniseries illustrated by John Bolton in the mid 90s, but I really like the concept. Man-Bat was the first animated episode I ever watched anyway, and it had impact on me. It's more or less Batman's "Lizard", only with a Gothic Horror vibe.

I'd like to see him included in the next-gen Arkham game (it's unlikely to ever see him in a movie - too fantastical and CGI-oriented for Batman movies that are supposed to be grounded and real).