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With the beginning of the fall and the changing of the seasons upon us, it seems that Gotham City is preparing to enter the Fear State. With Batman and his allies starting to find their footing again after the tumultuous Joker War event, Scarecrow has decided to swoop into town and launch a huge attack on the city.
The huge five-month event will tie in multiple different storylines, across a number of DC titles. The stories across Fear State will not only feature Batman and his many allies, but will also focus on Jonathan Crane, the Scarecrow, and show how it is the classic Batman villain came to this point in his life.
7 Fear State Definitely Leads To Future State
The upcoming Fear State event that is set to sweep through Gotham serves as a precursor to DC’s Future State, which was first introduced in the spring of 2021. Though the entire timeline isn’t clear, what fans know so far is that Fear State and Scarecrow’s team-up with Simon Saint and the Magistrate directly leads to the occupation of Gotham by Saint Industries and their Peacekeepers.
While the timeline leading to Future State has purposely been kept in the dark, the clues to Gotham’s occupation are slowly presenting themselves. With Scarecrow not actually featuring in any of the Future State tie-in stories released earlier in the year, there’s even more pressure on Fear State to piece the puzzle together and give readers more of an inkling as to how the Magistrate manage to fully take over Gotham City.
6 Gotham Is Already Paranoid
While Scarecrow is certainly manipulating the events of Fear State to his liking, Gotham City has already been victim to an onslaught of disaster in recent years. With the events of Fear State picking up right after the attack on Arkham Asylum, the feeling of paranoia in Gotham is at a record high, with its citizens afraid of any sign of oncoming doom.
With the city still recovering from the effects of the Joker War event, and the anti-vigilante sentiment on the rise, fueled by the actions of the newly elected Mayor Nakano, it seems Scarecrow has chosen the perfect moment in Gotham’s recent history to launch an attack on Batman and Gotham City.
5 He’s Working With Simon Saint
The big asset to Scarecrow’s plans is his partnership with Simon Saint, a former resident of Gotham and an incredibly wealthy industrialist. After growing up in Gotham City, Simon watched Batman take down the old-money criminals that ruled over Gotham such as the Falcone Crime Family and The Roman. But once the number of super-criminals started to increase in Gotham, Saint found that Batman was not the proper response to the problem at hand.
Wanting to exercise his own vision for Gotham City, Simon Saint has introduced his “Magistrate Program” to the highest-ranking officials in Gotham City, a military initiative to combat vigilantism in the city as well as to maintain order. In order to help Mayor Nakano come around to him, Saint has enlisted the help of Scarecrow to wear down the city of Gotham and increase the paranoia and lack of trust in Batman. However, it seems that Scarecrow has his own plans in mind, and is simply using Simon Saint as a means to an end.
4 Fear State Has Been An Old Ambition of Scarecrow
In Batman: Fear State – Alpha, a type of origin story for the Scarecrow’s machinations with Simon Saint, it is revealed that the Fear State is a concept Scarecrow has been developing for a long time. It is revealed that the “Fear State Theory” was developed by Jonathan Crane, the alias of the Scarecrow, back in graduate school when he was studying psychology. In his theory, Crane believed that societal evolution could be achieved if the society in question was exposed to a tremendous period of trauma, and managed to overcome that trauma.
Crane believes that the period of trauma has to be achieved “naturally, before it can be exploited,” which would explain why Scarecrow has been waiting in the wings, instead of attacking the citizens of Gotham directly. With the paranoia of the city starting to build, Crane is allowing the Magistrate to advance with their plans, framing the Unsanity Collective and antagonizing Batman, in order to bring Gotham to a tipping point, in order to usher in his experimental Fear State.
3 Scarecrow Got A Redesign for Fear State
Along with a starring role in the story, Scarecrow has also received a new character design, courtesy of Jorge Jimenez. Wanting to bring Scarecrow to the forefront in a bold new way, James Tynion IV and the creative team on the Batman series decided to tap into the horror-style elements of Scarecrow and redesign his costume, moving away from a regular man stuffed with hay to a truly terrifying villain capable of striking fear into Gotham City even without the use of his fear toxin.
The Scarecrow’s new design is certainly more modern and bizarre, with the character starting to look less like a traditional scarecrow and rather a kind of ghoul, with a more prominent gas mask and protruding needles on his hands, which are surely filled with fear toxin. The new design for Scarecrow is certainly horrifying and will help cement his status as one of the most terrifying members of Batman’s rogue gallery.
2 He’s Using New Tricks
While Crane is known for his famous fear toxin, a chemical cocktail he created after years studying psychology and chemistry, this time around he isn’t only relying on his toxin for his plans. In Fear State – Alpha, it is revealed in the private conversation between Simon Saint and Jonathan Crane that Scarecrow has acquired the technology used by Jervis Tetch, the villain known as the Mad Hatter. Scarecrow highly respects the function of Tetch’s technology, believing it to be incredibly important to his plans to bring about the Fear State.
The Mad Hatter’s technology is used to control the minds and apply a time of hypnotism to his victims. Scarecrow claims that this proves that Tetch has a very advanced understanding of how the mind works and can be manipulated, a very important asset in Crane’s plans to incite panic, manipulate the city, and break down Batman.
1 Scarecrow Is After Recognition
It’s been revealed in Fear State – Alpha that Simon Saint visited Jonathan Crane while the Scarecrow was still in Arkham Asylum, and the two laid down the foundation for their plans to take over Gotham. Crane made a list of demands, including 25 million dollars, an expansive list of necessary equipment, which also including the Mad Hatter’s mind-control technology. But along with this list of demands, Crane asked that if the Fear State was successful and Crane and Saint did manage to push Gotham City to its limits, Crane himself would get the recognition for the plan.
It seems that Scarecrow has become sick of being considered just another one of Batman’s rogues, and wants to set himself apart from the rest. His numerous trips to Arkham have given him a sort of inferiority complex, and despite his brilliant mind, Crane seeks validation more than anything for his studies in human psychology. A huge fatal flaw that seems to be easy for a mastermind like Simon Saint to manipulate, Scarecrow’s incessant need to be recognized may prove to be his undoing as the Fear State story moves along.
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