Fictional Character Biography
Maxie Zeus is a former history teacher who loses his mind when his wife leaves him. He becomes a gangster and uses his cunning and intelligence to rise to power amidst the chaos in Gotham City's underworld. He fights Batman on several occasions before being committed to Arkham Asylum.
Because Maxie seems less dangerous than the Joker, Two-Face, and other notorious Arkham inmates, Arkham's administrators do not commit him in the maximum security wing, despite repeated recommendations from Batman to do so (Batman and the Outsiders #14). Batman's concern is proven warranted when Maxie escapes to form a team of Greek Mythology-based superhuman agents called the New Olympians. He attempts to kidnap Olympic athlete Lacinia Nitocris and force her to marry him and become a mother to his daughter Medea. This plot is foiled by Batman and the Outsiders, who beat the Olympians in a series of Olympic-style games.
Maxie is one of the villains that escape Arkham when Bane brings down the walls of Arkham Asylum in the Knightfall storyline. Maxie's escape attempt is disrupted when he collides with a tree.
Some time later, however, he is drawn into a plot engineered by the children of Ares — Deimos, Phobos, and Eris (Ares' sister) to merge Gotham City with Ares' throne capital, the Aeropagus. The intent is re-establish Ares' rule on earth. Maxie is killed as a result of that plot, and his sacrifice brings about Ares' return. However, their scheme is foiled by Wonder Woman, Batman and their allies, and Ares himself banishes his children back to Tartarus.
In issues of Robin, a vigilante called Violet is trying to track down an illegal casino named "Maxie's", with chips bearing a Zeus-like profile. Presumably, Maxie has survived his encounter with the Children of Ares. After Violet is discovered by Zeus's guards, both Robin and Violet manage to escape unharmed, as detectives that Robin was working with on the case raid the casino and arrest Zeus, who surrenders without a fight after an officer physically threatens him.
Maxie returns in Kevin Smith's Batman: Cacophony. Apparently cured of his delusions, he has been hired by the Joker to use Joker Venom on random people on April First as an April Fool's Day joke, but instead mixes the poison with ecstasy to produce a new designer drug called "Chuckles". He uses the profits to fund his empire as well as building his dream of creating a public school that is run like a private school. The Joker, angry that his creation is being used for a noble purpose, swears revenge against Maxie. After witnessing the death of his nephew and a dozen other children when the Joker blows up a school, Maxie suffers a psychotic break and reverts back to his Zeus persona. After Batman rescues him from an attack by the Joker at a nightclub, he visits Maxie again at his penthouse. After temporarily restoring Maxie's sanity with a massive dose of antipsychotics, Batman convinces him to confess and turn himself in to the police. This move is later revealed to be part of Batman's plan to lure the Joker and Onomatopoeia out of hiding.
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