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DC One Million’s Batman just reappeared, and the far future Batman’s new story brings along four notable members of his personal rogues gallery.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the story “The Batman With No Name” from Batman: Urban Legends #7, on sale now from DC Comics.
The potential future of DC One Million proves the legacy of DC’s heroes lasts until the end of time, with variants of the classic heroes taking up the mantle of today’s heroes. It would only make sense, then, for some of Batman’s major villains to find themselves with successors in that time period.
“The Batman With No Name” by Kenny Porter, Baldemar Rivas, Alejandro Sanchez and Tom Napolitano from Batman: Urban Legends #7 revealed some prominent members of Batman One Million’s Rogues’ Gallery — and how they keep the legacy of some of Batman’s greatest foes alive well into the distant future.
“The Batman With No Name” focuses on four villains trying — and failing — to escape the prison planet Pluto, which in the distant future is the home of the new Batman. Holo-Body reveals she’s a former actress, famous across the galaxy for her performances. She even once got the chance to play Bruce Wayne himself and seems to have a deep appreciation for the original Batman. But following a fourth-dimensional surgery, she was transformed into a being of pure light, a “living hologram made of unstable cells projecting through multiple dimensions.” Thanks to her unqie new form, she’s capable of shifting and changing her shape and size at command. All of this makes her a clear stand-in for Basil Karlo — the former actor who became the original incarnation of the shapeshifting Clayface.
Hades reveals that he is the heir of two deadly villain’s legacies: the son of Vandal Savage and the descendant of Bane. Hades boasts the strength and endurance of both longtime villains. But while he may claim to have Savage’s blood in his veins, it’s clear that Hades is a bigger stand-in for Bane than anything else. Both of them have high opinions of themselves and are dangerously overconfident about their ability to break Batman. Notably, he also shares two unique connections to his famous ancestor. Like Bane, he is trapped in prison because he’s serving someone else’s criminal sentence and because he’s ultimately defeated by a Batman wearing the Knightfall armor.
Of the four villains, Reader is the one without the most obvious connection to a previous Batman enemy. An impressive telepath in his own right, Reader is able to reach into the subconscious of others and use their trauma against them. In many ways though, Reader feels like an amplified version of the kind of villain Mad Hatter or Scarecrow typically are — playing on the minds of others and targeting their fears and darker sides. He could even be seen as an heir to Hugo Strange, just as obsessed with (literally) getting into his enemy’s heads as the classic villain was.
Cry-O is perhaps the most obvious heir to a former Batman villain — effectively serving as her time period’s answer to Mister Freeze. Like Victor Fries, Jennifer was once a kindly scientist. But when her husband was almost killed in an experiment, she dedicated herself to trying to find a way to save him. Jennifer is notably the only one of the villains who just want to escape the prison instead of killing Batman, and the hero takes note of that. He even endeavors to give her a new role on Pluto, and gives her the equipment she needs to try and rescue her husband. It’s a sweet gesture, and similar to the way Mister Freeze can sometimes put aside his villainous side when Batman reaches out to him as a man instead of an enemy.
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