Batman has become the most popular superhero ever. There are people out there who will bring up Superman or Spider-Man or Wolverine or MCU Iron Man, and sure they’re all popular, but the Dark Knight has leaped over all of them easily. There are numerous reasons for this; the character himself is great, but there’s more to it than that. If it wasn’t for the many amazing stories over the decade, we wouldn’t love the hero so much. There’s more to a great Batman story than just everyone’s favorite bundle of mental issues, there’s also his supporting cast, one of the best in comics, and his villains.
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Batman has some amazing villains, but the character has been around since the days when comics were very different. For every fan favorite villain, there are ten or twenty who aren’t the best. Then there’s the really bad ones. There have been some terrible villains in Gotham City, including loads of what we would consider “classic” villains, bad guys who have been around for more than 30 years. Here are five especially bad classic Batman villains, antagonists that never caught on for numerous reasons (and there’s at least one that you might love).
5) Crazy Quilt
Crazy Quilt is a villain that has been around for a long time, first appearing in the Golden Age and battling the Boy Commandos and Robin (created by Jack Kirby!), with another version appearing in Quality Comics’ Blackhawks. Soon, he would become one of many gimmick Batman villains. Most versions of the character use machinery to manipulate colors and hypnotize people, which are certainly powers. He’d show up with some kind of outlandish plan, get his skull caved in by Batman and then would disappear, committing crimes that were often color-themed but doomed to fail. He was always a joke character, but the joke hasn’t been funny in decades.
4) Kite-Man
Tom King’s run on Batman is one of the most controversial. Fans can’t agree on whether it’s great or terrible, but there’s one thing that everyone agrees on: Kite-Man is great. Just not as a villain. Kite-Man was a kid-themed gimmick villain of the Silver Age, a lame villain who had a giant kite, a glider really, and stole things. However, King was able to make him into an actual interesting character, while still keeping him as one of the worst villains you can imagine. Since then, he’s become a character who everyone thinks is the worst and that’s the charm. DC has leaned into the fact that Kite-Man is terrible, and that has made the character a fan favorite, in his own way. He’s become famous for being the worst, and it’s allowed him to reach a level he never had before.
3) Cluemaster
The Riddler is one of Batman’s most storied villains. His gimmick is simple: he’s really smart and commits crimes where he leaves a clue to a riddle that will allow Batman to solve the crime. His entire MO is proving that he’s smarter than the Dark Knight. At some point in the Silver Age, someone (and by someone, I mean greats like Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino, so it’s especially weird) thought what the Dark Knight’s comics needed was a second villain that was just like the Riddler and so the Cluemaster was born. Most Batman fans know ho he is, but they mostly know him because his daughter Spoiler dated Tim Drake, became Robin for a short time, and then Batgirl. However, no one really has anything to say about the Cluemaster. There’s really no big story about the character that anyone likes. Some bad Bat-villains get beloved because they’re terrible, but no one feels anything for this guy, which is honestly much worse.
2) Zsasz
Victor Zsasz is a newer villain than the morts of the Silver Age, but that doesn’t make him a good villain. He’s a serial killer who scars himself every time he kills and that’s it. He’s not in town to make money or anything like that, he doesn’t want to take over he world or the city, and just kills people, goes to Arkham Asylum, escapes, then kills more people. He’s an “edgy” villain, and that’s pretty much all there is to him. Gimmick villains at least have a gimmick to fall back on; they sometimes have something about them that stands out. There’s really nothing special about Zsasz, nothing that stands out other than deplorable violence and psychopathy, and that makes him way more terrible than a lot of fans think he is.
1) Calender Man
Once upon a time, Calendar Man was a gimmick villain who committed holiday themed crimes. He had an ostentatious costume that was kind of interesting, but that was pretty much all there was to the villain. However, for some reason, starting with Jeph Loeb and Time Sale’s Batman: The Long Halloween, creators decided to make him into a more modern villain, to take a really bad gimmick and make it special. However, no one has yet succeeded. He’s just sort of there, a villain with a long history with Batman and Gotham City that just doesn’t work in the modern day, and that no one come up with a good modern gimmick for. He’s a classic villain that can’t be fixed, that isn’t bad enough to be so terrible he’s good. We never need to see Calendar Man again, but for some reason they dust him off and put him out there every so often.
Who is your favorite bad Batman villain? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
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