Detective Comics & The Problem with Good Bad Guys

The story going on in Detective Comics can find its roots in the 2014 maxi-series Batman Eternal, a comic that celebrated the then-75 years that Planet Earth and beyond has been dealing with the Batman. It featured a menagerie of Batman heroes, villains, and mysteries. That story then led into Batman & Robin Eternal, which put more of an emphasis on the side-characters, allowing us to explore the people affected by Batman. By the time that book wrapped, we'd basically been introduced to all the major players in the Bat-family. Thus we have Detective Comics, a hodge-podge of great heroes...and several not-so-great villains.
When you think of Batman, what's the second thing you think of? Likely, if the answer isn't Robin, it's the Joker. The Joker is, without a doubt, one of the greatest villains in comic books. He's a chaotic force of evil, a relentless wave of anarchy. And he's often the ringleader for other fantastic villains: the Riddler, the Penguin, Mr. Freeze, Bane, Catwoman (not so much now, but still), Clock King, and who could forget the Condiment King?

If James Tynion's epic run with Batman over the last four years has proved anything to us it's that he knows these characters. Some people will claim that Scott Snyder did a lot of the work, but, I believe Snyder was little more than a story advisor on those. The scripting and the final say came down to Tynion, and he's been knocking it out of the park with characters like Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown, Cassandra Cain, and Kate Kane, who got her own solo book spun out of this one. She's proven so popular recently that she's even going to appear in the next CW crossover!

Clearly, Tynion knows what he's doing on the good side of things. But, for the villains?

Well, let's just say that things haven't gone so well since the big Cluemaster and Owlman reveals back in Batman Eternal. It's weird that they would be the highlight of everything, but, we live in a weird world. David Cain and Mother were an interesting duo, but, reflecting on this run of Detective Comics, and who are the standout villains?

The Colony (run mostly by Ulysses) and the Victim Syndicate. If I haven't made it clear in my weekly comic book reviews, let me just say it here: I am not a big fan of Ulysses. He exists as some sort of foil for Tim Drake that we don't need. The best arc of Detective Comics thus far remains the first one because it doesn't involve Tim Drake battling physical demons, but mental ones. He isn't sure what he wants out of his life, or if he can get anything more out of it. It was interesting because he had to go to complex places to contend with this, and it made his sacrifice all the heavier because he finally realized what he needed to be at all times, no matter what it meant: a hero.

The best villain of the entire series thus far has been his future self (who became Savior, so, we'll call them that rather than Future Tim Drake). Savior came in at just the right time both for DC Comics as well as Detective Comics. We'd just come off some boring stuff with Azreal and Batwing and needed a shakeup. Savior brought that, and brought back the complex dilemmas Tim Drake faced.

The proceeding story arcs though? Yeah...the Crime Syndicate and Ulysses returned...so...

Let's break down the problems here, though. Why does Detective Comics struggle so much to come up with bad guys in a story that is all about our heroes struggling to just do the right thing, whatever that means?

First I think it's because these are meant to be the twisted versions of a world they are trying to save. Ulysses, as I mentioned, is a version of Tim Drake that goes rogue with his mind, and the First Victim represents the ultimate failures of Batman and takes that to a whole new level to make sure there is never again a victim of Batman. It's a manifestation of the "Batman makes the villains" idea. Which, in and of itself, is neat.

But we already have a ticking time bomb that represents the ultimate failure of Batman: Clayface. It was obvious that Clayface would one day return to villainy, but I don't think it was necessary for him to be forced down that road when Tynion had been foreshadowing and establishing all along that Clayface would one day be stuck in this form. He would face that reality and, likely, lash out at the first person to blame: Batman. We did see that story unfold and it was heartbreaking and led to the best comic of the year so far (for me) with Detective Comics #975.

So, the First Victim really just comes across as another weirdo in a goofy outfit trying to kill Batman because he caused major damage. Again, this is a fair enough backstory, and it's been proven that it can be done well (see: Vulture in Spider-Man: Homecoming). The problem is that they have no personality. The point is that there is no person behind the mask, but, that doesn't mean anything if they're just a murder-happy person that wants to kill Batman. Dozens of others want the same thing but go about it in more interesting ways.

Instead, they go about in a way that has to service the narrative, that has to service the trajectory of the arc. The only reason that the Victim Syndicate works is as a means of taking down the Gotham Knights, which means in a world without them, they would never exist. The Victim Syndicate as a group does not function because they serve a singular goal in a narrow-minded narrative, whereas the story that Tynion wanted to tell was much larger than that. As a result, these villains essentially choke the story down to its fringes and force it to follow their path.

They serve as little more than a catalyst to move the next plot point in the narrative forward, to basically speed up the clock a bit on the destructive relationship between Batwoman and Batman that existed long before their arrival.

And Ulysses may be even worse, as he just lurks about in the background and essentially becomes an untouchable monster that knows everything. Maybe you could say he gets lucky by finding Savior's information and uses it against the Gotham Knights, or maybe you could say that we're just getting a second version of Savior, a character we got in two arcs just to hammer home the point that Tim Drake is a dangerous super-genius.

One of the better antagonists of the story is Colonel Kane, Batwoman's father since he has knowledge of Batman and is a wizened military man. He knows how to go about things strategically and how to systematically take things down. He also serves a dark counterpoint to Batwoman, but because we're so close to Batwoman, Col. Kane becomes all the more interesting the more they interact. He also has an inherent love for his daughter that he cannot overlook, which adds a crippling weakness to him. He cannot finish off the Gotham Knights because Batwoman has ties to them.

The Victim Syndicate, Ulysses, and the Savior do not have crippling weaknesses besides ones that the narrative brings up: the Victim Syndicate are unorganized because they have to be, Ulysses has an ego because that's what all super geniuses have, and the Savior is tripped up by the illogic of time travel. A good villain has a weakness, a weakness that pertains to the characters they stand opposite against.

Think about it: what is the Joker's one major flaw, the one thing that always makes him get beaten? It's his desire to play games, to tell jokes. He wants to keep things going. Even in "Endgame," where the Joker finally decides to kill Batman, the two HAVE to die together, otherwise, it's not worth it. The Joker's flaw is Batman himself.

This run of Detective Comics has been pretty great all things considered. If nothing else it's an interesting exploration into the minds and hearts of various Batman-related characters, including several you hardly think about like Azreal or Batwing, or bigger ones like Stephanie Brown and Tim Drake. At the moment it's DC's best team-book out there, and has been since the start of "Rebirth." The heroes are fantastic in this series and have major depth to them...

Though that is not because of the bad guys they must contend with. When I look back on Detective Comics, I'll look back on it with reverence for the heroes in it, not the villains. It's a pretty interesting look at how well to write good guys and how the villains can sometimes serve as little more than narrative fodder.


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