Mobsters and Plainclothes Criminals
Besides his infamous rogues gallery of supervillains, Batman has also faced more "ordinary" enemies, such as assassins, mobsters, and terrorists.
In alphabetical order (with issue and date of first appearance)
| Villain | First appearance | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Alfred Stryker | Detective Comics #27 (May 1939) | The first criminal Batman faced. |
| Brainy Walker | Detective Comics #242 (April 1957) | Brainy Walker was paroled after three years for counterfeiting and immediately set out to commit fresh crimes. This time though, he used counterfeit thousand-dollars in bills as a distraction. He first planted the phony bills around Gotham City and broadcast clues to there whereabouts. The streets were choked as citizen sought the money. This kept the police occupied with crowd control and traffic control, allowing Walker to commit robberies in relative peace. Walker then tricked Robin into accidentally telling the location of the Batcave. Batman worked with Alfred Pennyworth to make Walker believed Robin's slip of the tongue was part of a plan to trap Walker and his men. When Walker gave up seeking the secret headquarters, he and his gang were finally apprehended. |
| Bruno Groft and Lekkey | Batman #128 (December 1959) | Bruno Groft was a foreign agent and assassin-for-hire whose gang kidnapped the Prince, Princess, and Ambassador of Morania. Batman and Robin defeated the gang and prevented Lekkey from assassinating the royal couple. |
| Catfoot Regan and Beetles Branagan | Batman #134 (September 1960) | Batman and Robin apprehend Catfoot Regan trying to rob jewels from the movement of a huge clock at a clock fair. Clues on Regan's clothes lead them to the thief's boss, Beetles Branagan, operating a crime-ring from above the city in a huge advertising balloon. |
| Falcone Crime Family | Batman #404 (March 1987) | Led by Carmine Falcone (also known as The Roman) and prominent in the storylines of Batman's early years, including Year One, The Long Halloween, and Dark Victory. In the comics, as well as the feature film Batman Begins, the Falcone family and Carmine Falcone, in particular, are portrayed as all but completely controlling Gotham City before Batman's arrival. Falcone was killed in The Long Halloween by Two-Face. |
| Ernie Chubb | ' #134 | Ernie Chubb is a criminal currently incarcerated at Blackgate Penetentiary. |
| Frenchy Blake | "Detective Comics" #28 (June 1939) | |
| Gentleman Jim Jansen | Batman #134 (September 1960) | Gentleman Jim Jansen was an orchid fancier and smuggler whom Batman and Robin discover trying to smuggle hot diamonds inside orchids. |
| Graham | Batman #130 (March 1960) | Graham was an expert builder of replicas of ancient weapons for movies. He begins leading a gang that uses ancient weapons such as ballistas and caltrops to loot banks. |
| Gregorian Falstaff | Batman #317 (November 1979) | A reclusive billionaire and business rival of Bruce Wayne who time and again tries to put Wayne Enterprises out of business. He once tried to kill Batman with an energy gun, but was pushed by Talia al Ghul into the gunfire, which instantly killed him. |
| Henri Ducard | Detective Comics #599 (April 1989) | Henri Ducard was once one of Batman's teachers in the art of crimefighting. Years later, however, Batman learns that his former mentor is a master criminal. He appears in the three-part miniseries "Blind Justice" in Detective Comics and a few other times later on. |
| Joe Chill | Detective Comics #33 (November 1939) | Joe Chill is the mugger who murdered Thomas and Martha Wayne in front of a young Bruce Wayne, inspiring Bruce to become Batman. He first appears in Detective Comics #33, but is not named until Batman #47 (June/July 1948). |
| Matt Thorne | Batman #62 (December 1950/January 1951) |
An American criminal that brought several fellows felons with him to England to search of hidden Nazi treasure. They were thwarted in there efforts by the United Kingdom protectors, The Knight and Squire, aided by the Dynamic Duo. |
| Mr. Lyon | A criminal who frames the Joker for placing people in animal enclosures that echo their names. He claims the Joker sent him a note threatening to place him in a lion cage, and uses this as an excuse to get bodyguards inside a secure area, which he uses to commit a robbery. The Joker hears of his framing, and places Lyon, Batman, and Robin inside a lion cage, but the Dynamic Duo are able to escape with Lyon, who is arrested along with the Joker. | |
| Lew Moxon | Detective Comics #235 (November 1956) | A mob boss who hired Joe Chill to kill Thomas Wayne, which sparked Bruce Wayne into becoming Batman, as well as bringing the villain Zeiss to Gotham City. |
| Maroni Crime Family | Detective Comics #66 (August 1942) | Led by Sal "The Boss" Maroni, the Maroni family are a prominent crime family in Gotham. In the early years of Batman's career, the Maronis often vied for power and control of the Gotham underworld with the Falcone family. In the majority of Batman's incarnations, Sal Maroni is widely known as the mob boss who threw acid onto the face of District Attorney Harvey Dent during a trial. The resulting injuries and scarring transformed Dent into Two-Face. In The Dark Knight, Maroni plays the role of one of Gotham City's mob bosses. In The Long Halloween, Maroni is shot in the head and killed by Alberto Falcone, the Holiday killer. |
| Ruby Ryder | The Brave and the Bold #95 (April/May 1971) | The world’s richest woman and top female tycoon, based in Gotham City, Ruby Ryder is also a femme fatale and a full-fledged big time criminal. Three meetings with Batman ended in defeat and prison. She also encounters Metamorpho, Green Arrow, the Metal Men, and Plastic Man (the latter of whom falls in love with her). |
| Rupert Thorne | Detective Comics #469 (May 1977) | Prominent head of one of Gotham City's top smuggling gangs. He is also the boss of "Matches" Malone, the criminal whose identity was taken over by Batman. |
| The Squid | Detective Comics #497 (December 1980) | The Squid (Lawrence Loman, also known as Clement Carp) is a Chinese crimeboss in Gotham City. He takes control of the underworld and almost succeeds in defeating Batman before apparently being killed by Killer Croc, a former member of the Squid's gang. However, the Squid returns alive in the pages of 52 #25 (October 25, 2006), only to die again as one of the crime bosses killed by Bruno Mannheim. |
| Sterling Silversmith | Detective Comics #446 (April 1975) | Sterling T. Silversmith (alias The Sterling Silversmith) has been obsessed with silver since childhood and now, as a silver-haired older man, has amassed a fortune in stolen goods. Bullets bounce off Silversmith thanks to a silver alloy woven into the fabric of his white suit. Batman has fought him twice, and once prevented Silversmith from murdering the Crime Doctor. |
| Tony Zucco | Detective Comics #38 (April 1940) | Tony Zucco is a mob boss (or simple low-level thug, depending on the continuity) who is responsible for the death of Dick Grayson's parents. Despite some variation, the basic recurring themes are that Zucco tries to extort the circus the Graysons work for. When the ringmaster refuses to pay him, he sabotages the act causing the highwire ropes to break and sending Dick's parents falling to their deaths. Dick Grayson heard him before, and becomes Robin to defeat him. |
| Wylie | Detective Comics #42 (August 1940) | Wylie was a millionaire who was suffering from bankruptcy. He was vacationing in Europe when he fell in love with the artwork of one Pierre Antal. He purchased a number of the paintings at relatively inexpensive prices, despite his shaky finances. Wylie then concocted a scheme to bring Antal to America, get his work noticed, and let the value of his Antal collection appreciate so that he could sell the works and restore his lost wealth. He took the plan a step further by letting Antal paint a series of portraits of Gotham wealthiest citizens. After each painting was finished, Wylie would desecrate each image in a specific way that depicts a murder. Disguising himself with a green skull mask, Wylie then murdered the painting's subject in the way that was shown in the desecrated portraits, in the process creating great notoriety for Antal. To make sure the trail doesn't connect to him he made it seem as if the murderer try to kill him (and barely escaping with a shot arm.) When he tried to kill his fourth victim he was stopped by Robin. Meanwhile, Batman (suspicious of Wylie) laid a trap in the form of Bruce Wayne to get a self-portrait done by Antal. When Wylie broke into the mansion, he placed a gun on Bruce Wayne's head and fired point blank just as Batman arrived and captured him (The Bruce Wylie shot was just a dummy.) Rather than be tried for his crimes, Wylie shot himself to death. Batman would later note that he considered this to be the Dynamic Duo's first major case. |
Two of Batman's mobster foes have donned costumes and crossed over to become supervillains:
- The Hangman: A serial killer (during the Dark Victory storyline) who murders police officers on every holiday of the year, leaving behind a version of the children's word game "Hangman" (with key letters missing) with each new victim. All of the victims are police officers who, in one way or another, helped Harvey Dent rise to his position of District Attorney. In the end, the Hangman is revealed to be Sofia Falcone Gigante, daughter of the late crime boss, Carmine Falcone.
- Holiday: Mysterious serial killer who murders mobsters and others over a year (during The Long Halloween storyline). The killer's weapon is a .22 pistol (using a baby bottle nipple as a silencer) with the handle taped and the serial number filed off. Also, every crime takes place on a holiday and a small trinket representing each holiday is left behind at the scene. Alberto Falcone, youngest son of Carmine Falcone, admits to be the Holiday killer, but then Harvey Dent says there were two holiday killers. Batman deduces that since he killed Vernon on Halloween with a .22 pistol, he was in fact the second holiday, however later in a lone monologue Gilda reveals herself as the second or technically first Holiday, who was responsible for the first three murders.
Read more about this topic: List Of Batman Family Enemies
Famous quotes containing the word criminals:
“Why inspire in us a horror of our being?... To look upon the universe as a prison cell and all men as criminals about to be executed is the idea of a fanatic.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)