To finish off 2017's 'Month of Horror' I thought it would be good to end with a Batman villain considering one of the greatest comics to ever be written was
Batman: The Long Halloween. I thought we should look at my personal favorite Batman villain who uses the shared weakness that we all have: fear. Scarecrow uses our primordial and irrational fears against us making him one of Batman's most endearing foes. Appearing in Christopher Nolan's
Dark Knight Trilogy (played by Cillian Murphy) and the spectacular
Batman: Arkham games Scarecrow is truly one of Batman's best foes.
Real World Origins
The Scarecrow was actually made by the same pair who made Batman, Bill Finger and Bob Kane. In 1941's
World's Finest Comics #3 Batman first faced the Scarecrow but he was fairly different from his current version. Instead of using his famous fear gas to instill fear he instead used a gun. However, he was only seen twice during the Golden Age of Comics and he had to wait until 1967 to appear again. In Gardner Fox's
Batman #189 in a story which also marked the debut of Scarecrow's fear toxin. During this story Scarecrow manages to use his toxin to make Batman and Robin scared of heights - later on his toxin would be changed so you see your own worst fears - and they manage to defeat him using his own fear: the fear of being caught. Unlike during the Golden Age Scarecrow made more regular appearances with him returning the following year in
Batman #200 by Mike Friedrich. Here Scarecrow makes the Dynamic Duo scared of him so Alfred has to help them become resistant to Scarecrow's toxin, as well as making Scarecrow fearful of them. Since then although he hasn't appeared as regularly as the Penguin, Joker or Riddler he has remained a key figure in Batman's Rogue Gallery.
Origins
Scarecrow actually has three origin stories. Unlike Marvel - which has a sliding timescale - DC has rebooted its timeline twice. His first origin was explained in both
World's Finest Comics #3 and
Batman #189. Professor Jonathan Crane was a university professor teaching psychology with a particular emphasis on fear. He was disliked by his colleagues for his strange appearance, eccentric demeanor and shabby clothes because he spent all his money on books. To make a point about fear and drive it home to his class he shot a gun during one class which got him rightly fired. This enraged Crane and he decided to take revenge adopting the moniker of Scarecrow combing fear, (as scarecrows are used to scare away birds), and poverty. He would take revenge on his colleagues who fired him and would also commit a series of robberies using his gun, and later fear toxin, to scare guards/Batman into submission.
Following the
Crisis on Infinite Earths which rebooted the DC timeline Scarecrow gained a new origin story in 2005's
Batman/Scarecrow: Year One - it was assumed by fans that he had the same origin story as his pre-Crisis incarnation until that point. Crane was abandoned by his parents leaving him with his emotionally manipulative and religiously fanatic grandmother who would abuse Crane. When she disapproved something that he did she would make him wear a suit dipped in a concoction which made crows go made, made him go into the family chapel, and then would be attacked by crows. His school life was equally traumatic. For his lanky and disheveled appearance he would be bullied, and unlike most bullies his bullies seemed to know literature nicknaming him 'Ichabod' after the protagonist of
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Crane started dabbling in chemistry and psychology, and after being bullied after being declined by a popular girl he decided to take revenge. Using an adapted version of his grandmother's concoction, and while dressed as a scarecrow, he attacked the girl and the bullies. One bully is partially blinded by crows, the girl is killed, and one bully is paralyzed thanks to a car crash. This would inspire Crane to later on kill his own grandmother and frame it as an accident. Years later he would become a professor of psychology at Gotham University and like his previous incarnation he would be fired for firing a gun in class to teach fear. However, unlike his previous version who was fine with just stealing from those who wronged him, this version opted to murder them. He would then become head psychologist at Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane while working at a psychiatric clinic on the side. There he would torment patients under his moniker of Scarecrow. To his dismay Batman was investigating the university murders and stopped Crane.
The final incarnation is the currently canon origin which has actually partially inspired Scarecrow's appearance in the TV series
Gotham. When the DC Universe was rebooted with the New 52 they decided to rewrite Scarecrow's origins, which were told in
Batman: The Dark Knight Vol.2 #13. This version of the Scarecrow has Crane living with his father who is a scientist working on weaponizing fear for the US government. Unable to procure test subjects he used his own son as a guinea pig. To test fear Dr. Crane would lock the young Jonathan in a basement full of creepy objects like replica dead bodies. Except one day he died of a heart attack leaving Jonathan trapped and traumatized until the police found him after a few days. Growing up traumatized he decided to gain controls of his fears by trying to understand fear itself and he becomes a professor of psychology at Gotham University. Although he would do unethical experiments on patients during his psychology work resulting in the creation of his Fear Gas and one experiment got him fired. A coed suffered from arachnophobia so he decided to try and cure it with an extreme habituation by throwing a box of spiders on her. He later became a psychologist with a private practice where he continued his experiments until he killed a patient which made him properly become the Scarecrow.
Appearances
To my dismay Scarecrow is often relegated to the sidelines so, unlike Joker or Two-Face, he does not have his own one-on-one story arcs with Batman. Instead he is often has a minor role so we'll go through a few of these today.
Batman: The Long Halloween
The first story that we shall talk about is his appearance in Jeph Loeb's fantastic
The Long Halloween. Starting on Halloween Gotham's crime family is being killed off on holidays so Batman goes to see Calendar Man in Arkham to see if he has any clues on Mother's Day. There an inmate escapes and the terror in the voices of the guards indicate that it can only be Scarecrow. Head of one of Gotham's crime families, Carmine Falcone, and the Mad Hatter manage to break Scarcrow out of Arkham. When Batman goes to grab Crane it turns out to be a dummy loaded with his toxin which drives Batman so insane that he is resorted to crying while clinging hold to his mother's gravestone in an extremely powerful image drawn by Tim Sale. In this story Scarecrow is portrayed as deranged singing nursery rhymes constantly as he makes his toxin with Mad Hatter's help. We then find out Falcone freed Scarecrow so he and Hatter could rob the Gotham Bank Depository on Independence Day using the fireworks as a diversion, and Scarecrow's toxin to defeat the guards. However, Batman, and to an extent Catwoman, prevent the robbery.
Knightfall
The villain Bane wanted to break Batman mentally and physically, so he launched a raid on Arkham Asylum to free each of Batman's enemies so he would mentally exhaust himself tracking them down. Scarecrow was freed and he made an alliance with another villain: the Joker. Together they kidnap the mayor, after Joker's failed attempt to kidnap Commissioner Gordon, utilizing Scarecrow's toxin with the mayor's fear of snakes to bring Gotham to its knees. While they have him they make him cancel a request from the governor to get the National Guard to help keep Gotham safe, told the papers that Gordon's poor leadership caused the Arkham breakout, and told the president of the firefighters union that he plans to reduce wages. However, their disagreements over whether to destroy Gotham or Batman first allows Batman to easily defeat them. Later on when Azrael becomes Batman he tries to use hypnotized students to distribute his gas across Gotham until Azrael-Batman stops him.
Batman: Hush
Hush revolves around a new villain named Hush, I won't reveal his identity, uniting all of Gotham's villains against Batman. We find out that Crane was Hush's therapist but instead of helping him he made his condition worst. Working with Hush and Riddler he compiles a dossier of all of Gotham's villains exposing their weaknesses allowing the duo to control Batman's Rogue Gallery. He later uses his fear gas to turn Huntress and Catwoman against one another, but is eventually defeated by Jason Todd.
Blackest Night
This is a Green Lantern story where a new Lantern Corps, the Black Lanterns, made up of the dead intend to wipe out all life. However, they see in emotions but due to years of neglect, trauma, and exposure to his own fear toxin Crane now lacks emotions. He can only feel fear but the only person who can make him scared is Batman. To combat the Black Lanterns each of the Lantern Corps make several people new members and Scarecrow is made into a Yellow Lantern: the Corps which utilizes fear. This is short lived as Lex Luthor wielding an orange ring of avarice steals Crane's ring from him. After the Blackest Night has ended Crane starts murdering LexCorp interns in revenge. Supergirl and Robin try and stop him only to find his fear toxin is powerful enough to work on a Kryptonian. Both managed to overcome the toxin and defeat him.
Other Media
Scarecrow has had several appearances in other media; most notably the Christopher Nolan
Dark Knight movies where he was played by Cillian Murphy. My personal favorite appearance is in the spectacular
Batman: Arkham games. In
Arkham Asylum he helps Joker create his Titan formula but is apparently eaten by Killer Croc near the end of the game, as well as featuring some of the most creative parts of the game. He later appeared in
Arkham Knight as one of the two primary antagonists where it was revealed that he was mauled by Killer Croc and now wants revenge on Gotham/Batman. Scarecrow also made several appearances in
Batman: The Animated Series as well as other animated DC shows. He has also appeared in the TV series
Gotham where his New 52 origin has been partially adapted. Finally he appeared in the fighting game
Injustice: Gods Among Us as a background character in the Arkham Asylum stage, as well as the prequel comic where it was revealed that he helped make a toxin to make Superman hallucinate. He was a playable character in the sequel
Injustice 2 where he was voiced by Freddy Krueger himself, Robert Englund.
Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you as well for reading 2017's Month of Horror. For future blog updates please see our
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