Batman has unquestionably the best villains in comics: the
Joker, the Riddler, Catwoman, Scarecrow, Mr. Freeze, the list goes on and on.
But for every top-tier bad guy Batman battles on a regular basis, there’s a
corresponding crook who is completely out of his league taking on the Caped
Crusader. Here are 20 Bat-villains whose greatest danger is mainly wasting Batman’s
time.
1) The Ventriloquist
Or perhaps I should say “The Ventriloquist” and Scarface,
since The Ventriloquist doesn’t even try to be evil without his gangster
puppet. When he sticks his arm inside Scarface, the dummy becomes a crime boss
of reasonable talent, and is a hell of a shot with a gun — a tiny, puppet-sized
gun. Since Batman eats normal crime bosses with regular-sized guns for
breakfast, the puppet has yet to prove a match.
2) Condiment King
He’s called the goddamn Condiment King. Do you really even
need to know anything else to know how badly this guy got his ass kicked?
Actually, Batman didn’t even need to kick his ass, because the Condiment King
slipped on his own puddle of ketchup and nearly fell off the roof he was on.
3) Sterling Silversmith
So this guy is a thief who steals silver. Exclusively. He
actually thinks silver is going to be the next big thing, because he’s
super-confident that gold is going to somehow become obsolete. I am 99%
confident that if Sterling hadn’t murdered his own brother and stuck his corpse
in a statue of Batman, which broke at a charity auction and revealed the
skeleton inside, Batman would have never known this idiot existed.
4) Captain Stingaree
One of a set of identical quadruplets, the man who would
become Captain Stingaree was always the oddball of the family, and when I say
oddball I mean he started dressing up like a pirate and tried to find out who
Batman really was. His meager threat level is lessened when you learn that he
actually thought his three brothers were all Batman, meaning the real Batman
was completely safe. Batman, probably in a desperate attempt to make this
nonsense even slightly interesting, asked the guy’s three brothers to dress up
like Batman, ostensibly as bait for a trap, but almost certainly mostly just to
fuck with him.
5) Ten-Eyed Man
Ten-Eyed Man does indeed have 10 eyes, although the two on
his face don’t work. Instead, he has little eyeballs on the end of his
fingertips, which ostensibly allow him to see both in front of and behind him
simultaneously. Shockingly, having eyeballs on your fingers proves to be more of
a liability than a powers, as proven in this completely delightful line from
his ComicVine bio: “The Ten-Eyed Man is hired by unknown persons
to combat the Man-Bat, but is injured when a shrub is thrown at him and he catches it,
inadvertently wounding his ‘eyes.'”
6) Kite-Man
There was a long run where Bat-villains were apparently
created by DC writers looking out their office windows, and picking out random
objects. And thus Kite-Man was born, the criminal who gets to and from his
crimes with a hang glider type of thing. Sure, he made a few kite-based
weapons, but seeing as Kite-Man has literally been defeated by a tree before, they
hardly matter.
7) The “Made of Wood”
Killer
This guy has a bat. Seriously, that’s all he is. His
sporting goods store was destroyed, he got made, killed the mayor with a baseball
bat, and now he’s a Bat-villain.
8) Baby Doll
Although she looked like a child, Baby Doll was an adult
actress with systemic hypolasia, that disease where your body stops growing.
She was on a shitty but famous sitcom called “Love that Baby” as the
rambunctious title character, left the show when the producers added another
baby, couldn’t get other work, and then kidnapped her show’s cast and crew and
tried to somehow force it back on the air. Somehow, Batman was able to summon
up the strength to defeat what was an effectively a small toddler. Lindsay
Lohan is a more credible Bat-villain than Baby Doll was.
9) Polka-Dot Man
Despite the ridiculous name, Polka-Dot Man has a
not-entirely useless gimmick — the polka dots on his uniforms can transform
into weapons, traps, flying saucers for him to get away on, etc. Theoretically
this tech could pose a threat if Polka-Dot Man himself weren’t so lame. He’s not
in shape, he’s not smart, and he can’t fight. One time Detective Harvey Bullock
beat up Polka-Dot Man so much he was put in traction. How hard a time do you
think Batman had with this idiot?
10) The King of Cats
This guy is basically the male equivalent of Catwoman. He’s
a thief, he hangs out with a lot of cats, and he often commits cat-related
crimes. But since he’s not a hot chick he’s banging, Batman cuts him zero slack
and constantly kicks his ass.
11) Death Man
This villain, who inspired the awesome Lord Death Man in the
Japanese Batman manga and whom Grant Morrison imported back to America a few
years ago, had one power, and that was playing dead. It worked once, and then
Batman figured it out and Death Man was never a problem again.
12) Mirror-Man
The Mirror Master
is one of the Flash’s most powerful foes, thanks to his ability to enter
reflective surfaces and travel between them. Mirror-Man, on the other hand, is
just a dude who likes mirrors and is obsessed with finding out who Batman
really is. Shockingly, Mirror-Man succeeds at this thanks to some crazy mirror
set-up, and tries to tell the world that Batman is Bruce Wayne. This is
immediately rectified when Bruce Wayne has a press conference and Batman
(impersonated by Alfred) shows up. If
Batman can defeat you with a press conference, just give up.
13) Penny Plunderer
This guys steals pennies. Seriously, that’s it. I don’t even
know why Batman even bothered, except on slow nights. You know that giant penny
in the Bat-cave? That’s actually from one of Plunderer’s schemes. But here’s how
shitty Penny Plunderer is: It was so embarrassing for Batman to have ever
fought someone who sucked as much as Penny Plunderer that now DC says the giant
penny was from one of Two-Face’s schemes. Yeesh.
14) Sewer King
Sometimes Batman battles monsters with incredible strength,
fighting skill and resilience. Sometimes he fights diabolical geniuses who
attempt to kill everyone in Gotham City. And sometimes Batman fights a homeless
guy who lives in the sewers with a bunch of orphans he forces to steal shit for
him. Those last battles are the quickest.
15) Egghead
Despite being played by the incomparable Vincent Price on
the 1966 Batman TV series, the facts remain that Egghead is simply a criminal
who happens to like eggs a lot. Case closed.
16) Signalman
Remember how I said DC writers would look around for random
objects to think of villains? Well, apparently someone looked at a picture of
the Bat-signal, and was drunk, because that’s the only reason for Signalman to
exist. A small-time crook who wanted to join the big league, Signalman’s whole
deal was leaving symbols and signs to warn Batman of his crimes, and then
somehow using symbols and signs to commit his crimes. I don’t know how that
works, and I’m not sure it ever did, since Batman pretty much instantly
captured him whenever he reared his signal.
17) Crazy Quilt
After his eyes were injured in a robbery, Crazy Quilt
underwent an experimental procedure which resulted in him seeing nothing but
blindingly bright color. This, of course, turned him into an insane criminal.
How insane? Well, first of all, he tried to steal color itself, which no one
ever figured out how he planned to do. Second of all, his “powers” was
basically having a constant LSD trip, which affects exactly no one beside
himself. Even when Crazy Quilt got a helmet that allowed him to project his
crazy eye-color-lights at his foes, Cyclops-style, all Batman and Robin needed to do was reflect his beams back with a mirror, and he was done.
18) Maxie Zeus and
King Tut
Two men who occasionally believe they are a Greek god and an
ancient Egyptian ruler. Two men who have no other powers other than their
delusions of grandeur. Two men who easily and ceaselessly get their asses
kicked by Batman. Note: King Tut is so lame it took until 2009 for him to come
to the comics, while Maxie Zeus seems to think a Greek god’s chief priority in
the modern world would be to rob banks.
19) Sweet Tooth
Of all of Batman’s shittiest villains, the 1977 New
Adventures of Batman cartoon had to create one even shittier. Meet Sweet Tooth,
a fat man whose attacks revolve around throwing candy at his enemies, and whose entire
plan was to turn Gotham’s river into chocolate, giving all the fish diabetes or
something. Even Signalman thinks Sweet Tooth is a dipshit.
20) The Eraser
If you’re a criminal in Gotham City, it never hurts to
specialize, and particularly it never hurts to provide services to the scores
of criminals inhabiting the city. The Eraser covers up the tracks of other
criminals, thus making it harder for them to be caught, and for which the
Eraser earns a cut of the take. This would actually be pretty cool if the
Eraser didn’t dress like a giant pencil, and he didn’t use the “special” eraser
on his head to remove evidence, which makes him look ridiculous, even in a line of work
where a man wears a lime green tuxedo with purple question marks on it. Suffice
it to say, Batman broke this particular pencil.
