Ed Ranks Batman's Rogues Gallery

A couple of notes first:

• Deathstroke the Terminator? Yeah, he's awesome but he's technically more of a Teen Titans rogue.
• Joe Chill, Salvatore "The Boss" Maroni, and all those other common criminals/gangsters?  I'm not ranking them.  They're bad guys but they're not really, "rogues," are they? 
• Vandal Savage? Awesome AF, but I'd say he's a Green Lantern rogue more than a Batman rogue. 

So, here we go: 

Behold: A Stupid Character

25. Man-Bat - Awful. Can you imagine if Spider-Man had an enemy named ManSpider? If Wonder Woman had an enemy named WomanWonder? If Professor X had an enemy named XProfessor? 

24. Solomon Grundy - This is Frankenstein. Batman is fighting Frankenstein. DC Comics wasn't even trying.  Hugo Award-winning science fiction author Alfred Bester is credited with creating Grundy. Do you know who really created him? Mary Shelley. Because it's Frankenstein.

23. Black Mask - Another copycat... this time a fake Red Skull (but BLACK instead of RED!). How lame was this guy? He never even appeared in Batman: The Animated Series. And they dug deep and put, like, EVERY character into that show. 

22. Victor Zsasz - Created in the 1990's. He doesn't even have a cool code name. Similar to how wrestlers stopped having cool names like "The Undertaker" and "The Rock" and just went by their actual names like "Brock Lesnar." BORING. He's barely even a "rogue" and I almost left him off the list. 

21. Firefly - A boring pyromaniac. In about 5 minutes I could create a more interesting pyromaniac character with a better backstory. My made up character would definitely be a lady and when she sets shit ablaze she rocks YOU-KNOW-WHAT song by The Cult. That's right, you guessed it, Love Removal Machine. 

20. Calendar Man - Lame, cheesy 1950’s villain that’s only interesting or relevant to anyone these days because his somewhat "gritty reboot"-like reemergence in The Long Halloween. That limited series is critically acclaimed and was one of the key inspirations for Chris Nolan's Batman Trilogy. You know what character was removed when adapting that inspiration into those great films? Worthless, boring Calendar Man, that's who. 

19. Hush - Don't you hate it when a series introduces a brand new character and tries to make it seem like that character has been around all along?  In 2003 "Hush" was launched as a limited series and Bruce Wayne all of a sudden had a best friend since childhood that we're supposed to pretend always existed like when they added Dawn to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Then... WHAT A TWIST... that Bruce Wayne best friend is revealed to secretly be a villain! This could have all been done much better if they had actually taken an established character that was a good guy / ally of Batman and been willing to turn them evil. But then again, the whole "Batman's old friend is now his enemy" character already exists with TwoFace/Harvey Dent-- rendering this Hush guy completely worthless. 

Quake in fear, purveyors of organic textiles!

18. Killer Moth - Does the idea of a moth inspire fear for anyone? The only hero who should have a moth in their rogues gallery should be a  hero named "The Dressmaker." This shit character was created for the 60's Batman TV show and was meant to debut both in the TV show and comics around the same time. But the TV episode was never actually aired. Can you imagine how bad a villain must be if the 1960's Batman producers were like, "Nah... this guy is too campy. Let's do King Tut and Lord Marmaduke Ffogg instead." 

17. Ventriloquist - What would the world be like if Edgar Bergen was an evil bank robber who committed crimes with his imaginary, hand-controlled sidekick, Charlie McCarthy? Nobody cares. Nobody has cared about ventriloquists for over half a century. Most people reading this likely have no idea who Edgar Bergen is. This straight up seems like a terrible 1950's Batman villain... and yet shockingly this character debuted the same year that Die Hard and Beetlejuice came out. Because ideas for new rogues are HARD. 

16. Clayface - Clayface never sat well with me as part of the Batman universe. Batman rogues were always more "real," like normal people who lead a life of crime in some silly costume. Clayface is like a magical, super-powered shape-shifter. 

15. Killer Croc - Kind of the same as above, but a little better since he's just got some odd genetic mutation that gives him scaled skin. Slightly more believable. 

14. Mad Hatter - Yes, another stolen character. So why am I not giving Mad Hatter as much shit for being stolen from Lewis Carroll / Alice in Wonderland as I'm giving Solomon Grundy for being a Frankenstein ripoff? Because at least they admit it's a ripoff and work it into the story. This character is just supposed to be a crazy guy who's obsessed with Alice and and quotes it all the time. If we can let Tom Petty get away with ripping this off for Don't Come Around Here No More then we can let DC comics slide on it too. 

See? Neckbeard.

13. Hugo Strange - AKA Dr. Neckbeard. Slightly boring, but at least he's one of Batman's original villains (he debuted in February 1940... two months BEFORE the Joker) and was the first in the comics to ever figure out, "Hey I've never seen this Batman guy at the same time as Bruce Wayne." Batman: The Animated Series also redefined him as the guy in charge of Arkham Asylum, which made him more interesting and finally helped to explain the whole, "How the hell do all these wackos keep getting released from Arkham?" problem in Batman.  Because the guy who runs it is also a crazy villain. Sweet. 

12. Deadshot - A sniper. He's good at shooting things from far away. Okay, sure. 

11. Scarecrow - Cillian Murphy is awesome in Batman Begins, but other than this cool adaption of Scarecrow, when was he ever THAT interesting? I guess the whole "fear" thing is cool, but don't get me started on how fucking lazy comic writers are in giving characters "real names." Scarecrow is named Johnathan Crane and was, according to DC comics lore, bullied as a child due to his resemblance to Ichabod Crane.  FIRST OF FUCKING ALL... isn't it a  convenient coincidence that he just happened to have the exact same last name? Second... Ichabod Crane is a fictional character from a short story written in 1820. How many children make fun of other children by alluding to 19th century speculative fiction from a collection of 34 essays by Washington Irving? Those are some educated-ass bullies who tormented him. Obviously he went to a private school. Were the bullies also like, "Hahaha, you are physically unattractive as Hephaestus was described by Homer as in The Iliad 18.397."  How do these kids even know what Ichabod Crane looks like to say that Johnathan looked like him? Are they basing their comparison on Disney's 1949 film The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad? I really doubt any kid looks like that. The only person that looks like that is Prince Charles. 

Ouch.

10. Bane - Like the above, was never really that interesting until Chris Nolan made him interesting. He was just a steroided up Luchadore.  

9. Ra's al Ghul - Hey, this guy has a pit that can regenerate him like Wolverine! Oh wait... wrong comic company. 

8. Riddler - The concept of a rogue who leaves riddles as clues at his crime scenes is at least interesting. The riddles are quite often terrible though. And I don't always mean in a "bad pun" way (although sometimes I do) - but sometimes the riddles are super easy (yet Batman struggles with them) or super hard/obscure (and Batman somehow figures them out instantly).  Let's take shitty Batman Forever as an example: "If you look for numbers on my face, you won't find thirteen any place." It's a clock. Easy! Batman doesn't have to be a super detective to figure that out.  An eight year old can figure that one out. But then the movie also has that TOTAL BULLSHIT riddle with the numbers 13, 18 and 5 representing M, R and E.  The 13th, 18th and 5th letters of the alphabet correspond to M, R and E. Corresponding numbers to letters is easy and not that challenging. Sure, Batman could do that pretty quickly. Yet from those three fucking letters, Batman is somehow able to deduce that M, R and E stand for "Mr. E," which sounds like "mystery," and one synonym for mystery is "enigma." Therefore the villain must be "E. Nigma," which just happens to be short for "Edward Nigma" - the identity of the Riddler.  By the way, this is also another terrible example of a coincidental and convenient name. OH, THE GUY WHO MAKES RIDDLES JUST HAPPENS TO HAVE THE BIRTH NAME OF E. NIGMA! WOW!  Seriously though, that last riddle makes no fucking sense. Here is a similar deduction using the same bullshit, random, illogical "logic:" M-R-E must stand for "Meal, Ready-to-Eat," a lightweight packaged meal given to US military members on deployment. A synonym for M-R-E is "Field Ration." Therefore the villain must be named "F. Ration! Quick Robin, to the phone book to arrest anyone with that name!" 

7. Penguin - No way anyone has a nose that looks anything like this. I'd say that having an umbrella as a weapon is lame... but I'll be honest... every time I held an umbrella as a child I used to pretend I could shoot gas or bullets at people with it because the Penguin. So I guess that's cool. 

So. Much. Leather.

6. Catwoman - Someone who took the "cat burglar" thing a little too literally. IT'S A FIGURE OF SPEECH, SELENA KYLE! And the way she dresses isn't really that practical for committing crimes. Who commits crimes in tight leather? Doesn't the leather squeak and cause too much noise for stealth? However, her outfit is practical for earning several hundred dollars-an-hour to sexually dominate middle-aged businessmen. If you ask me, that sounds like a more stable and profitable line of work than stealing jewelry. And isn't it a bit sexist that a female villain always wants to steal jewelry? 

5. Poison Ivy - Awesome! She's like an aggressive PETA person but with plants instead of animals. The Uma Thurmon version was terrible though, and let us never speak of it again. 

4. Harley Quinn - Proof that a character created in recent history can actually wind up being awesome. Only created for the animated series in the 1990s, this character was the Joker's psychiatrist - who the joker slowly drove crazy over time until she was even nuttier than him. And while the classic "court jester" costume from the animated series with jingling bells is certainly iconic, I didn't see too many people object to the Margot Robbie version that wore... uhh... considerably less. 

ICE-Y WHAT YOU DID THERE.

3. Mr. Freeze - Old school Mr. Freeze is a pretty lame rogue and a "joke" villain. But beginning in the 1990's, the comics and animated series began to simultaneously make him more of a tragic figure and brilliant cryogenicist looking for a cure for his terminally-ill wife, Nora. The New Batman Adventures episode "Cold Comfort" is probably one of the most gripping, interesting stories about the downfall of a desperate and morally conflicted man that was ever produced. It's essentially a twenty-something minute version of "Breaking Bad" but with a blue freeze ray instead of blue meth. Oh, and also he turns into a robot spider.  Wouldn't it have been sweet if Brian Cranston turned into a robot spider at the end of Breaking Bad? The addition of the tragedy trope to the Mr. Freeze story made him much more interesting. Even the awful Batman & Robin film tried to use this rebooted depiction of Mr. Freeze - although they should have used an actor with a little more gravitas and subtlety than Arnold Schwarzenegger if they wanted to do it right.  Just imagine how well this character could be done in a Chris Nolan universe with a good actor and dynamic script? It would be up there with the Molina Doc Ock. 

2. Two-Face - Harvey Dent is awesome for the same reason the Mr. Freeze update was awesome - he's a tragic figure and fallen hero. Dent was the Gotham District Attorney who helped to put away the bad guys. Then he's deformed in a way that splits his face/body in half and turns into a villain. As part of the "half" gimmick he flips a coin. Everything is decided by random 50/50 chance. In the comics (and Batman Forever) the deformity is caused by a gangster throwing acid on his face in court. In the animated series, he's Bruce Wayne's best bud for a number of episodes with a repressed dissociative identity disorder that is set free after an explosion at a chemical plant scars half of his body. As always, the Nolan Batman Trilogy probably told the story best when they adapted the Joker's The Killing Joke story from the comics and adopted it so that the Joker drove good-guy Harvey Dent into madness. Whatever origin story for Dent you think is the best, the end result is cool-looking, interesting rogue who is obsessed with chance and fate. 

1. Joker - This is sort of obvious, isn't it?