WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Batman #106, The Joker #1 and Batman: Urban Legends #1, all on sale now.
In the Batman mythos, it’s hard to deny who his top two villains are. On a personal and emotional level, no one has tormented the Dark Knight more than Joker, as “Joker War” proved, not to mention other times before with the assaults on Jason Todd and Barbara Gordon. As for Bane, “City of Bane” murdered Alfred and almost crushed so many of Bruce’s family, transcending when he crushed the hero’s spine.
But now, come Batman #106, we’re slowly seeing signs that Scarecrow could surpass them and become the Caped Crusader’s most dangerous villain.
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Batman thinks Dr. Jonathan Crane’s dead in A-Day, the attack on Arkham Asylum that seemingly killed Bane, which many suspect is due to the Clown Prince of Crime. However, this doesn’t seem to be the case because not only is Joker alive in Belize and stunned to know of this siege, Crane’s also apparently alive and running experiments of his own.
He’s messing around with his fear toxin, draped in a sadistic new costume as well, and given that Mayor Nakano has the old one, many are wondering if this is the start of Crane working with Simon Saint on the Magistrate Program. And given that Infinite Frontier is all about challenging heroes again, Crane would be smart to use his ‘death’ to work from the shadows, becoming an even more serious threat.
He’s got the right background to psychoanalyze the Bat and other vigilantes, studying key areas to attack similar to the Riddler. And what’s more intriguing is Crane can tinker with and perfect his chemicals, which was recently used to make Cheerdrops, a pill that ironically throws people into a suicidal euphoria. The point is, Crane can become a new Scarecrow and per the recent attacks on the city, using different versions of his fear toxin, Cheerdrops, or even Joker’s gas to tear the city apart.
After all, the one thing other villains haven’t done is inflict proper fear into Bruce. While Bane and Joker have been both cerebral and brutes, they haven’t reached this level yet. Scarecrow can achieve this with his brilliant concoctions, however, taking the hurt, anguish and fear to a whole new level. And the chemistry he deals in can bring back the trauma of Bruce’s childhood in Crime Alley, the multiple times’ members of the Bat-family or Justice League have died, and lastly, Crane can damage his brain with the thought of Selina Kyle/Catwoman dying.
With the Unsanity gang running through Gotham too, making people paranoid, it’s the perfect setting for Scarecrow to step in and break them. Simply put, it’s never been about physical and temporary damage to Crane, but mental and permanent ones. Once he’s out of the public eye, he can bring Gotham to its knees, which he admittedly thinks will evolve the people. Thus, once he renders the principles and philosophies that create civil citizens in society extinct, he will crush what Bruce is repairing and rebuilding, driving the ultimate dagger into the Bat’s heart and overall psyche.
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