WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Batman #113 by James Tynion IV, Jorge Jimenez, Tomeu Morey, Clayton Cowles, on sale now.
The Fear State is upon Gotham City, and it’s offered new insights into the Scarecrow’s motivations as well as the true origin behind his chosen name. But while Jonathan’s Crane early work on the fear state was shown within the memories of Ghost-Maker in Batman #113, by James Tynion IV, Jorge Jimenez, Tomeu Morey, Clayton Cowles, that wasn’t the first time his origins were explored.
The Scarecrow’s earliest understandings on the power of fear were fully unveiled in 2005’s Year One: Batman/Scarecrow by Bruce Jones and Sean Murphy. And even though these two origin stories were published years apart from one another, they work together to reinforce how the Fear State theory was based on Crane’s earliest experiences with fear.
In this story of Batman’s early days, his hunt for then-new supervillain Scarecrow shed light on the origins of Jonathan Crane. Crane was born out of wedlock to Karen Keeny and Gerald Crane. Karen belonged to the Keeny Family, a once-prominent family of socialites that had long since fallen on hard times. The instant Jonathan was born his grandmother wanted him buried outside, but his great-grandmother had other plans for him.
She raised him as her own, but not out of benevolence or guilt. In his adult years, Scarecrow would theorize that his great-grandmother, who was completely insane and instilled with a fanatical level of faith, most likely kept him around to either spite her daughter, who she blamed for squandering what little remained of their family’s wealth, or simply to play the role of a pious woman giving an undeserving child her apparent generosity. Regardless of the reason why, young Jonathan Crane was subjected to an abusive upbringing where his grandmother would terrorize and even injure him to keep him in line.
All of this abuse came back to haunt her when he was old enough to understand how she maintained such control over him. She was the young Crane’s gateway into understanding the power of fear and control. Eventually, Crane turned the tables on her, killing her with the very tools she used to torment him all his life. But even free of her existence, the lessons were burned into his mind, and he would apply that knowledge to all his future endeavors. These concepts of fear and control are the underlying principles of the Fear State that Crane is in the process of building in Gotham.
Scarecrow is manipulating all of Gotham City, from its heroes to the Magistrate and especially its people. He’s controlling what they see, hear and think, without even using his chemistry skills, overwhelming them with fear to push them through the worst moments of their collective lives. Crane believes that this will have a transformative effect on Gotham’s population that ultimately makes them stronger. Despite the brutality of his methods, both Scarecrow and Batman’s own traumatic experiences suggest that there’s at least some validity to this idea. Now, Crane believes that the people of Gotham just need someone to project that fear to them and then control how they go through it. With that in mind, it’s not hard to see how Fear State is the culmination of a lifetime of planning for Crane.
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