A protagonist can only be as heroic as his antagonists are wicked. This is one of the keys to Batman’s success and popularity. His comic have produced the world’s most memorable baddies. From their various ailments to their differing psychological diseases, the villains in the Batman comics truly make people love to hate them.
Batman’s villains can be classified in two major categorizes: those with physical enhancements and those with psychological warfare. The first group of villains, those with physical enhancements, represent the fantastical realm of possibilities within the comic book genre. Members of this order include Two-face, Poison Ivy, and Mr. Freeze. One of the physically enhanced villains, Clayface, was an actor who became deformed in an accident. Though he is not widely popular, this shapeshifter should be heralded as a champion for overweight and large people everywhere. While Marvel comics has their main shapeshifter Mystique (a skinny, nude, blue skinned mutant, most recently played by Jennifer Lawrence) as a sex symbol, any popularity attained by Clayface has come from his sheer villainy. Clayface should feel accomplished since he is not “selling sex” like other villains in the comic book genre. On the other hand, it is all but impossible to find a female villain not clad in skimpy costumes. Poison Ivy, for example, wears little more than underwear and plants (most recently played by Uma Thurman). She is a brilliant scientist and environmentalist who falls into chemicals and becomes mutated with the plant poison ivy. These villains tickle the imagination and come to life vividly in both cinema and cartoons.
The second group contains many more villains. The group founded on psychological warfare includes such villains as Ra’s al Ghul, Harley Quinn, Scarecrow, Edward Nigma a.k.a. the Riddler, and the infamous Joker. As the most famous of comic book villains, the Joker has become an icon in himself. As a patron of chaos and anarchy, the Joker represents complex and hypocritical ideas of social order through chaos (represented best on screen by Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight). Other villains compel the stories forward with nothing more than their regular human intellects. They show that one does not need fanciful gadgets or gene manipulation to be powerful; they only need their minds.
Many of these villains push Batman to face ethical, physical, and psychological barriers that challenge the reader mentally.
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