I’m a big fan of Batman,and not too long ago I bought and played through Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City. Good, solid games I have to say, not without their flaws of course, but the good things about those games generally outweighed the bad I’d say. I haven’t read or seen much of anything about the upcoming game in the series, Arkham Knight, but since there’s only a month or so to go before its release, I decided to make a little list about a couple of characters I’d like to see in said game. This is really off the cuff, like I said I have barely any knowledge about Arkham Knight and who is in it, but I haven’t written an article in a while and I wanted to get back into the groove. This is the result.
God help us all.
5. Killer Moth
As storied and popular as Batman’s Rogue’s Gallery is, only being matched by heroes like Spider-Man and the Flash, even the Caped Crusader has faced some downright ridiculous and outright stupid villains in his 70+ year history. The Penny Plunderer. The Condiment King. Crazy Quilt. Catman (before Catman became a badass of course, that Secret Six series a few years back ain’t half-bad). I mean sure, the best kind of villains are those who act as as twisted reflections of the hero, but in a world where superheroes are a thing, and fantastical powers are one lab accident or traumatic event away, it only makes sense that not everyone who decided to put on colorful pajamas and rob banks would be Justice League-level threats. Some want the glory without having to have their atoms replaced with wood or their brains transplanted into robots.Some are just schmucks looking to score some easy money and evil groupies (Harley Quinn set the bar way too high).
Case in point: Killer Moth, a.k.a. Cameron von Cleer, a.k.a. Drury Walker, a D-list supervillain who’s really an A-list criminal who is in actuality a Z-list criminal. Relatively lackluster even amongst nondescript thugs, Drury Walker was captivated by the riches and glory that came with being a costumed villain, and decided to become one himself, first by adopting the identity of Cameron von Cleer and then by becoming the dastardly Killer Moth. Unfortunately, due to his lack of intelligence, less than stellar physical prowess and the fact that his costume looks it was made from a shag carpet, Killer Moth has very rarely been able to rise above being the joke of the collective DC Universe, which is a pretty harsh criticism considering one of the strongest beings in that universe is named Reverse Flash. The fact that a dude like Killer Moth is still around though, still plugging away at the supervillain thing despite the whole world against him, is kind of inspiring in a way. If that guy can reinvent himself without being murdered by the hundreds of villains and vigilantes out there, why can’t the rest of us?
Although there have been several iterations of the character that could be considered a legitimate threat (the version from the Teen Titans cartoon comes to mind), I’d be perfectly happy with plain old goofy Drury Walker hanging out in the game. Perhaps he could act as the first major rogue that Batman encounters in the game, much like Zsasz did in Asylum or Two-Face in City, a threat that gets you used to the mechanics but with minimal risk. And unlike Dent or Zsasz, who were treated like jokes in the games, I don’t think anyone would mind if Killer Moth got totally bodied. So throw him in there, and let us have some fun with him.
4. Owlman
Perhaps expecting Rocksteady to jump into the multiverse for Arkham Knight might be asking too much, and perhaps the ‘evil version of the hero’ angle is overdone at this point (even for this list, as you’ll see), but I can’t think of a better enemy for Batman than well, Batman. A Batman from a universe where every the allegiances of every hero and villain is reversed, and thus destined to fail by the rules of comics, but a Batman nonetheless. They already have enough on their plate with the whole Scarecrow thing, probably don’t want to overwork the horse.
I have no great love for the character of Owlman, but it did inspire what I thought could be an interesting idea for a boss fight: a mutual predator room. It would make sense that Batman and Owlman would have the same level of technology, and the same emphasis on stealth, which means you’d basically be fighting against yourself. Every time you’d try to sneak into the open you could be risking a owlarang to the head, any vent or ledge could possibly be a death trap. Maybe even disable detective vision, so you’d have to rely entirely on visual and audio cues to track your opponent down. It’d probably be a pain to do correctly, but if it was ever done correctly it would be fucking awesome.
I’d settle for a Owlman skin though.
3. The Ventriloquist
Ever since the days of Batman: The Animated Series, I’ve always had a soft spot for Arnold Wesker and Scarface, a.k.a. the Ventriloquist. A mild-mannered milquetoast completely dominated by his own puppet, a puppet that shows a surprising and deadly aptitude for criminal activity? It’s so completely comic book that I can’t help but love it, and even fear it, a bit. Even in a city populated by murderous clowns and crocodile men, I find the idea of the Ventriloquist very unsettling. Inhuman, I suppose you could say. Maybe I’ve seen a bit too much of the Twilight Zone. And that one episode of Tales from the Crypt with Bobcat Goldthwait.
Although Arnold Wesker has yet to appear in the Arkham series (admittedly I have only played the first two games), Scarface has made several appearances in the games, being used as the Joker’s toy in Asylum and appearing the Penguin’s gallery in City. However, in my opinion if Arkham Knight came and went and the Ventriloquist remained the equivalent of an easter egg. Yeah he’s a bit of a goofy character, but it couldn’t be any more ridiculous than the way they’ve handled Bane. Man, poor Bane.
In fact, the Ventriloquist might make for a interesting challenge when it came to predator maps. You have Wesker walking around the map, much like Two-Face and Harley in City, and you have to sneak around to take them out. However, in this case you’d have to take out Scarface to do real damage, and both Wesker and Scarface have fields of vision. Twice the challenge, twice the fun. Don’t ask me how Scarface can see things Wesker can’t, he’s a comic book character in a video game, roll with it.
2. Hush
Much like his childhood friend Bruce Wayne, Tommy Elliott was also the only son of a respected and wealthy family in Gotham. Unlike his childhood friend Bruce Wayne however, Elliot was a complete and utter sociopath who cut the brake lines to his parent's’ car in order to get his inheritance. When that plan failed (due to the efforts of Thomas Wayne, Bruce’s dad), Tommy blamed Bruce and, since this is comic books, became a supervillain in order to get his bloody revenge. As Hush, Elliot has come as close to killing the Batman as any other of his major rogues, including a infamously convoluted plan involving Poison Ivy and Superman that helped to poison discussions of the character for years to follow. For a ‘modern’ addition to the mythos goes he’s okay, has a decent enough backstory and a cool enough look to make him worth revisiting. Not as cool as the Ventriloquist of course, but still cool.
Technically speaking, Hush did make an appearance in Arkham City, and if you played the game and know the portion I’m talking about, you know it was almost entirely a potential sequel hook. Whether or not it was an actual sequel hook or a one-off thing I can’t say, but it does seem like it fits neatly into the all-out shitstorm that Arkham Knight is building up to, what with Scarecrow (and most likely Harley) trying to destroy Gotham. Of course they built up a lot of things in Arkham City, so it’s hard to say what all is on the drawing board. Maybe they can cut a hundred Riddler trophies or so to make sure they get some Hush. There’ll still be like 500 of them, it’ll be fine..
I don’t believe this series iteration is quite the physical and mental equal of Batman as he tends to be, but I imagine a Hush boss fight to occur much as I described the Owlman fight. Stuck in a room, trying to out-predator each other. Maybe add the caveat that your gadgets are disabled, forcing you to track Hush down and subdue him. There’s definitely potential there to make an interesting fight there, and if Hush does make an appearance in Arkham Knight, I hope they manage to do something worthy of the character.
1. Man-Bat
My love for Batman: The Animated Series might be rearing its head, that my number one choice on this list happened to appear in ‘On Leather Wings’, the pilot episode to that infamous cartoon. Although Batman’s rogues gallery is no stranger to the academic, they tend to lean towards the Frankenstein school of mad science. Kirk Langstrom, on the other hand, was more of a Jekyll; A man with a deep enough obsession with bats and a thorough enough knowledge of genetics that he turned himself into a gat-dam bat monster. His level of coherence in his transformed state, and whether he’s a victim or a villain (The Batman cartoon did a fairly interesting evil version of Langstrom, as I recall) tends to vary in Batman media, but whenever he appears, he tends to be a pretty deadly threat to the Dark Knight. Plus we get some hot Bat-on-Bat action, and who doesn’t love that.
Is it just me, or should Man-Bat have been in the Arkham series from the very beginning? When I was going through Arkham Asylum, and they introduced Penelope Young and the TITAN formula that turned people into giant video game monsters, the opinion I was left with was that this was the perfect opportunity to have introduced Kirk Langstrom and Man-Bat. The TITAN thing made sense, but it was also really...dumb. Dumb because they used the same ‘TITAN thug plus dudes’ setup way too often in Asylum, dumb because they made two of the boss fights in the game (including the final boss) this ‘TITAN thug plus dudes’ setup, thus cheapening the boss fights in a series that already has problems with boss fights, and dumb that something that produces ugly God of War monsters could have such far-reaching effects on the series. Just straight-up dumb, and for a comic book video game that’s certainly saying something.
I’m not saying that those problems with TITAN would have necessarily have been solved by using Langstrom, but I think it would have been a lot more palatable had that position been filled by a character from the comics. You could still have the mutated thugs, just have it be a side effect of the Man-Bat formula instead. Bane’s inclusion in Asylum would no longer make sense, but then he didn't really add much to that game in the first place, and could easily be replaced with some other boss. Wouldn’t it have been far more poetic (and darkly ironic, which is what matters to the Joker), if the Clown Prince of Crime was attempting to destroy Gotham with an army of bats, rather than generic thug monsters? Wouldn’t it have been far better if SPOILERS the final boss fight with Joker in Asylum and his subsequent death in City was because of him trying to become a bat-man to kill a Batman? SPOILERS Maybe Rocksteady suffered from the same Bat-embargoes that have affected far too many DC products over the years, which is why they didn’t use him, but the fact that Man-Bat doesn’t even get a riddle dedicated to him is a damn shame. You’re telling me Prometheus and Ratcatcher get a place in the Arkham universe but one of Batman's more well-known rogues (not A-tier, but definitely a solid B) gets the shaft? I hate to do it, but I have to call shenanigans on that. Include Man-Bat in some way Rocksteady, and we’ll see about removing it from your record.
I don’t know I’d like a Man-Bat boss fight to play out, but I definitely know a phase of it: fighting the beast as it flies across the map, hanging on for dear life as you try to find a way to stop Langstrom without killing both of you. I’m not sure what the best way of realizing that vision is, hopefully not with quick-time events, but then I’m not a dude who designs video games for a living. I’m just a guy who enjoys video games and comic books, and have have read and played enough to know the good from the bad. Arkham Knight will no doubt be a fun game, the culmination of a series that managed to emulate the feeling of being a superhero far better than any other games before or since, and when I finally get around to playing it I will probably enjoy it immensely. Add these five characters into the game though, and I might like it even more
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