Best Batman Villian

This does NOT incude the idiotic movies (though I personally think Nicholson and DeVito did a good job) . . . . I am thinking comic books, old TV series, and animated series including "Beyond". If you give your votes I will post a winner on this MB in a few days.

My vote ?

Easy, Edward Nigma, aka

"The Riddler".

I love that green suit with the green derby and the black tie with the green "?". Great suit. Plus he has the best traps.

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"Solos Dios basta" . . . but a little pizza won't hurt.

[Arnold Winkelried]

Poison Ivy. Someone who loves gardening can't be all bad.

I would kiss her, but no tongue.

[Eve]

Oh, Tallulah Bankhead as The Black Widow—hands down, dahling!

[WIU Wozman]

I agree, Black Widow was the best

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View every exit as an entrance someplace else

[psycat90]

Eartha Kitt as Cat-Woman. I grew up wanting a black latex suit because of her. (Yes, I have one.)

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Always be ready to speak your mind and a base man will avoid you.
-William Blake

[shantih]

Julie Newmar as Catwoman. My idea of feminine beauty was strongly formed by her. I expected that I would look like that when I, too, grew to womanhood.

And dammit, it's gonna happen someday!

[Ukulele Ike]

I was always partial to Two-Face. Could never tell which way he was going to swing.

Unfortunately, he never made it onto the TV show. Of that group, I'd have to choose Vincent Price as Egghead.

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Uke

[Bucky]

toss-up between Joker and Catwoman (starring Eve as Catwoman!).

Catwoman because of the mutual attraction between her and Batman. The whole, in another world we might have..." (which they do in some Elseworlds, Earth 2, etc.).

Joker because he is the most consistently deadly and dangerous. he MIGHT just be out for larks one day, the next he might kill someone. He's already killed a Robin and crippled Batgirl.

Oh, Two-Face is pretty cool, too.

The only true Batwoman is Eartha Kitt, Julie Newmar, or that other one on the show--horrible paraphrase of Adam West on Simpsons.

Bucky

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Oh, well. We can always make more killbots.

[fuzzy-wuzzy]

I vote Julie Newmar as catwoman also. She was the role model for beautiful evil women.

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"Do or do not, there is no try" - Yoda

[Sylence]

Joker, hands down. When the writers know what they're doing he's one of the best villains in any comic book.

Though I have to admit being partial to R'as Al'ghul (or however the hell you spell his name).


-- Sylence

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I don't have an evil side. Just a really, really apathetic one.

[elelle]

The Riddler always filled me with glee!

[Padeye]

Lee Meriwether was the other Catwoman but I have to give the nod to Ertha Kitt. For a while my brother had the same agent as E.K. and thought it was the coolest thing in the world.

I will have to find one of the episodes where Eli Wallach played Mr. Freeze. That's beyond bizarre.

[APB9999]

Julie Newmar, definitely.

[jab1]

George Sanders as the original TV Mr. Freeze, was so classy, so debonair, he made villainy so... cool. (No other way to describe it!)

Best Batman Villain Based Upon a Real Person: Grant Walker in the "Deep Freeze" episode of Batman: The Animated Series.

"WHO?!?!?" you may be asking. Lemme tell ya:

He was a multi-millionaire who made his money building theme parks, according to Robin. He was obsessed about the future and he built a future city offshore from Gotham City. He was getting old and it occurred to him that he may not live long enough to complete his plans. How to gain immortality...?

Break Mr. Freeze out of prison! With robots! And use his vast knowledge of cryogenics to make Grant Walker as immortal as Freeze! And use the freeze ray to freeze the entire world except for a hand-picked few living inside the domed future city.

Grant Walker is obviously based on Walt Disney, who also built theme parks (including Epcot, originally intended to be a working, futuristic city) with attractions that make extensive use of robotics; worried that he'd die before completing his life's work; and, according to urban legend, had his body frozen so that he'd be revived at some future date. (The only deviation from this model is that Grant Walker apparently never made animated cartoons nor did he start his own movie studio.)

When I saw that episode, I laughed my fool head off! It's still one of my favorite Animated shows.

The proper name of Batman's immortal villain is Ra's Al Ghul.

Julie Newmar is the best Catwoman EVER.

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>< DARWIN >
____L___L__

[Sealemon88]

In his own titles, I have to go with Bane. He is just too damn cool.

In JLA, I'd have to say Promethius. He's basically Evil Batman.

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You say "cheesy" like that's a BAD thing.

[MrKnowItAll]

I have to agree with Sylence. The thing that makes The Batman so interesting is his remarkable villains, and The Joker is the best of the best. Unpredictable, mischevious, murderous, and perhaps best of all, there is really nothing known about his life before the accident that made him who he is.

We don't know his real name. (Forget all that "Jack Napier" jazz, that has never been supported in the comics, which is the true cannon.) We don't know what he did for a living. We don't know squat about his childhood. He history is probably the best kept secret in all of comic-dom.

[Guy Incognito]

Definitely the Joker, but a close favorite for second place would be Grendel (Hunter Rose) who appeared in a two-part mini series written by Matt Wagner.



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"I know a place where dreams get crushed, hopes are smashed, but that ain't much."

[TheUnforgiven]

Make it three Jokers in a row... That laugh just made him. And nothing beats using razor-sharp playing cards as a weapon. He's also funny as hell.

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"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."
-H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

[Kamino Neko]

Noone has mentioned the Scarecrow?

tsk tsk

A villain who uses his victim's own minds against them. Beautiful.

I'm also partial to R'as Al Ghul (I think that's the correct spelling...).



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Eschew Obfuscation

[Kamino Neko]

Originally posted by Tengu:
I'm also partial to R'as Al Ghul (I think that's the correct spelling...).

Or, rather, the way jab spelt it is.

I should read more thoroughly...


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Eschew Obfuscation

[JoeBlank]

Fan of many mentioned, including Catwoman, Ra's Al Ghul, Scarecrow. Guy, I dig Grendel but don't think he counts as a Batman villian. (Short hijack, you a Mage fan, also by Wagner? Now in movie development.) Other than the fact Bane broke Batman's back, he's not that great a character.

Hands down Joker is the best. He is overused and watered down by writers who don't know the character. Remember, NOT an Earth 2 or Elseworlds story, not a serious injury but they got better; Joker KILLED Robin. And he crippled Batgirl, she has been in a wheelchair for years (but there is a new Batgirl recently). Also, didn't Joker just kill Jim Gordon's lover? His insane rampages have consequences. When you read a Joker story you don't know what is going to happen. All this and an unknown past.

[RealityChuck]

Batman certainly had the best gallery of villains over the years (followed by the original Flash and Spider-Man).

Comics:

1. The Joker
2. Two-Face
3. The Ventriloquist (I think that's his name. By far the best of the more recent villains).
4. Catwoman
5. R'as Al Ghul

Movies/TV:

1. Jack Nicholson as the Joker (sorry, but he's a class beyond the rest. Extra points for making him the killer of Thomas Wayne.)


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"East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does." -- Marx

Read "Sundials" in the new issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction. www.sff.net/people/rothman

[TwistofFate]

Mark Hamill as the Joker in "Mask of th Phantasm" one of the greatest animated films evermade. Absolutley amazing storyline and acting. Class

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John Larrigan

"82.35% of all statistics are made up on the spot"--Vic Reeves

[Guy Incognito]

JoeBlank,

Yep, I like Mage--what little I've seen of it. I bought the three volume squarebound collection years back. I did collect quite a bit of Grendel, though. Glad to hear Mage may come to the big screen. Hope Grendel does the same.

I'd like to add Two-Face to the list of most-liked Batman villains. The treatments that the Joker and Two-Face received were excellent in Frank Miller's The Dark Knight series, and I thought that the possible Joker origin shown in The Killing Joke was terrific.

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"It's only common sense,
There are no accidents 'round here."

[JoeBlank]

Apparently Kevin Smith, of Dogma, Mallrats and Clerks fame, as well as writing an excellent run of Daredevil comics, agrees with you Madpoet. His daughter, born within the past 6-8 months, is Harley Quinn Smith. Kevin confirms that the reference is intentional.

batarang to the top, surely everyone has an opinion on this

[jab1]

I hate to break this to you, Chuck, but The Ventriloquist first appeared in The Animated Series. His real name is Arnold Wesker. The same actor, George Dzundza, does the voices for both Arnold and his dummy, Scarface. Dzundza is also the voice of Perry White on the Superman series.

I agree that he's definitely one of the best new villains and I think he's also the most plausible one.

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>< DARWIN >
____L___L__

[Inkz]

I like "Bane". It's nice to know I'm not the only person with a fondness for those nutty old Mexican Wrestler movies from the fifties.

"...He's using an ancient form of Judo on me! Regardless, I must prevail, to restore the honor of my people and my ancestors!!"

Inky

[cmkeller]

Actually, Jab, the Ventriloquist was in the comic books first.

As far as I know, the only Batman villain who originated on the aminated TV series was Harley Quinn.

My favorite? Two-Face, for real good stories. But for dangerous goofiness, I like the Ventriloquist (he was hilarious in the Knightfall story).

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Chaim Mattis Keller
ckeller@kozmo.com

"Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks."
-- Douglas Adams's Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective

[jab1]

cmkeller, you're absolutely right. According to www.batmantas.com/ , The Ventriloquist first appeared in Detective #583, February, 1988, which is well before the Series premiere in 1992.

Read before posting, read before posting....

[confession] I haven't regularly read any comics in years. I stopped buying them when they went to $1.25 an issue. What are they up to now, $1.75?[/confession]

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>< DARWIN >
____L___L__

[cmkeller]

jab1:

] I haven't regularly read any comics in years. I stopped buying them when they went to $1.25 an issue. What are they up to now, $1.75?

We wish. Try 2.25-2.50 (depending on which title) and counting.

I only buy four titles a month on a regular basis, and that's going to drop to three soon.

For good, cheap fiction, I read on-line fanzines in the mean time. I do some writing for one, too, called [PLUG] http://www.fanzing.com [/PLUG].

Chaim Mattis Keller

[Lumpy]

Another vote for the Joker. He and the Batman share a strange karma. According to the accepted canon, the Joker was inadvertedly created by Batman on one of his first missions. One time when Batman was missing and presumed dead, the Joker decided to retire. More than once, Batman has prevented the Joker's death to prove to himself that he'll never kill or deliberately let someone die- even the Joker.

The only other villain to get under Bat's skin like that is Catwoman. And these days, she's more chaotic than evil. (Interesting comparison with the Huntress- still not sure if she's willing to be a "good guy" rather than a vigilante.)

[MadPoet]

What? No one for Harley Quinn? Some of Joker's nuttiness, some of Catwoman's sexiness... perfect villian. Sure, she's not as classic as the others, but she's sure cute.

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http://www.madpoet.com
Computers have let mankind make mistakes faster than any other invention, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns.

[Ukulele Ike]

Lumpy:

re: Origin of the Joker

You're referring to the "Red Hood" story, from the early '50s?

[Lumpy]

Originally posted by Ukulele Ike:
Lumpy:

re: Origin of the Joker

You're referring to the "Red Hood" story, from the early '50s?

Yuppers. Which was reiterated as (possibly) the Joker's origin in The Killing Joke.

[curwin]

http://www.brunching.com/ratings/rat...nvillains.html

[Skelji]

For me, it's a toss-up between the Joker and the Penguin.

[Agrippina]

The Riddler and The Joker.

[Tygr]

Joker and Two-Face

I'll admit I was a Batmaniac in that I started reading the comic books when the first movie came out. A friend loaned me "The Killing Joke" and that formed my impression of what the Joker was supposed to be - unpredictable and lethal. And I'm a huge fan.

A few years later the "Legends of the Dark Knight" title started coming out and it had one or two excellent Two-Face storylines which explored his psychosis and formed my impression of what he was supposed to be as well.

FYI - What's really cool is that Mrs. Tygr is as big a fan of Harley Quinn as I am of "Mistah J". Would love to get both of those as Halloween costumes some year. I recommend reading "Mad Love" to find out what Harley's all about.

Side note: I'm not a fan of the old cheesy TV series, but I do remember thinking that the guy that played The Riddler on it should have been playing The Joker instead. He had the manic energy and the laugh for it.

[Spoke]

I've always thought The Scarecrow was a great (and underutilized) villain. Think about it: he turns Batman's own weapon (fear) against him. (The whole point of the Batman outfit was to "strike fear in the hearts of criminals," who, as we all know, "are a cowardly and superstitious lot.") Scarecrow gives Batman a little of his own medicine.

I want to see The Scarecrow on the big screen.

[UncleBeer]

This looks like it will fit the IMHO forum ... now that we have one. Away it goes, SPLAT!! POWIE!! BLAM!!

[jab1]

Originally posted by spoke-
I want to see The Scarecrow on the big screen.

I agree. Imagine the opportunities for a good filmmaker to create Batman's nightmares and hallucinations. The Animated Series was pretty good at that. It would be like Batman meets Freddy Krueger.

[rjung]

Hands down, it's the Batman: The Animated Series version of Mr. Freeze. Anyone who disagrees is welcome to sit down for a half-hour with the Emmy-award-winning episode "Heart of Ice" and be convinced.

Close second and third to the B:TAS versions of The Joker and Harley Quinn.

And as a quick mention, I'm sure I'm not the only one who prefers the B:TAS versions of the villians over the live-action ones? Especially after how the recent bat-movies have completely fsck'd them up...

[Esprix]

My this is an old thread...

I want to see Patrick Stewart play the Scarecrow in the next Batman movie. <heh heh heh>

My favorite villan? The Riddler, and not just because of this.

Esprix

[jab1]

Did you know that they considered Patrick Stewart to play Mr. Freeze? But instead of going for a good actor willing to work for less than $25 million, they went with a well-known, but inferior, box-office draw. I don't think I need to point out how THAT strategy backfired. The movie just might have worked with Stewart. You could have believed Freeze's torment was genuine. Ah-nuld always looked like he was faking it.

[PolishSausage]

For the animated series, the top two for me are Clayface then Mr. Freeze. I love the animation and the character of Clayface. does he appear in the comics?

Joker is the best in comics. For sure.

~t

[Freakunique]

Without a shadow of a doubt: Joker.

That SMILE! That maniacal laugh... the HAIR!

He's just so darn TWISTED.

As for his past, I can't remember if it was an Elseworld but I remember a story in which the Joker was a regular, happy man with wife and kid and in financial deficit. Tangles with the underworld ensues for 'easy' money thus resulting in the unfortunate loss of his dear family and insanity.

The freakiest rendition of said villian? Hats off to Dave McKean in Grant Morrison's "Arkham Asylum". Highly recommended, has a handful of Joker's buddies too.

[Saint Zero]

Animated: Hearts of Ice is a fantastic Episode. I shivered watching that one. Arnie didn't do a bad job as Freeze, but yeah, Stewart would have been cool. Arnie does one liners better tho.

Otherwise, you have to give credit to Mark Hamill for having way too much fun as the Joker.

Comicwise, I haven't paid attention, due to the fact that all of DC's core hero's are getting to the "godlike" stage again. But there, I much prefer the Riddler. Though I liked the Batman/Punisher crossover Miller did, with the Joker and Jigsaw. Almost a perfect pair.

[Kamino Neko]

Originally posted by spoke-
I've always thought The Scarecrow was a great (and underutilized) villain. Think about it: he turns Batman's own weapon (fear) against him. (The whole point of the Batman outfit was to "strike fear in the hearts of criminals," who, as we all know, "are a cowardly and superstitious lot.") Scarecrow gives Batman a little of his own medicine.

I want to see The Scarecrow on the big screen.

I agree. (See my post from the original incarnation of this thread.)

My favourite episode (well, one of 2, tied) is a scarecrow episode. He gasses Barbera Gordon/Batgirl, who then has a hallucination that she falls to her death, starting a feud between her father and Batman. Alfred, Nightwing, Robin - all end up in jail, though Batman manages to avoid capture, so Gordon releases Bane to track him down (O_O). Bats and Jim reconcile, but Gordon, of course, has no control of Bane - who knocks the BOTH of them off the roof of the building they were on, just as Barbera wakes up. She decides she has to tell her father about her night job. It appears, from his 'In this case, I CAN'T know' line, that he knows (And really, how could he NOT), but as it is, he has to pretend he doesn't.

That was a GORGEOUS episode.

(The other favourite was the Creeper's origin.)

[JonScribe]

Hmm, so many to choose from, and I have to mention some of the lesser-knows:
• John Astin as the Riddler, although it's hard to top Frank Gorshin;
• Shelly Winters as Ma Parker,
• Uncle Miltie as Louie the Lilac;
• Victor Buono as King Tut;
• Vincent Price as Egghead;
And, yes, my favorite villian,
• Liberace as Chandel.