This edited collection centers Gotham’s villains and their importance for both Batman and the superhero genre. The analyses examining this varied rogues’ gallery raise fundamental questions about what it means to be in a relationship with others and possibilities for future pedagogical and scholarly inquiry.

While much of the scholarship on superhero narratives has focused on the heroes themselves, Batman’s Villains and Villainesses: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Arkham’s Souls takes into view the depiction of the villains and their lives, arguing that they often function as proxies for larger societal and philosophical themes. Approaching Gotham’s villains from a number of disciplinary backgrounds, the essays in this collection highlight how the villains’ multifaceted backgrounds, experiences, motivations, and behaviors allow for in-depth character analysis across varying levels of social life. Through investigating their cultural and scholarly relevance across the humanities and social sciences, the volume encourages both thoughtful reflection on the relationship between individuals and their social contexts and the use of villains (inside and outside of Gotham) as subjects of pedagogical and scholarly inquiry.

Introduction. Not Exactly a Cowardly Lot: Gotham’s Villains

Marco Favaro and Justin F. Martin

Chapter 1. Death, Monk, and Strange: The Predecessors to the Supervillain in Detective Comics

John Darowski

Part I. Arkham City: The Asylum, the City and the Ones Who Rule Them

Chapter 2. “This Place Isn’t a Prison”: Institutions, Choice, and the Case of Arkham Asylum

Tony Spanakos and Damien K. Picariello

Chapter 3. “You Can’t Fight City Hall!”: The Villains Hidden in Gotham’s Government

Ian J. Drake and Matthew B. Lloyd

Chapter 4. The Owls Nesting in the Bat’s City: Secrecy, Gotham’s Social Structures, and the Court of Owls

James C. Taylor

Part II. Confronting Batman: Outsiders, Doppelgängers and Parodies

Chapter 5. The Mutants, the Sons of Batman, and the Long Shadow of the Bat

Damien K. Picariello

Chapter 6. Bane: the Man Who “Doppelgängered” the Bat

Jesús Jiménez-Varea

Chapter 7. Outcasts and Oppressors: Killer Moth and Killer Croc

Jason D. DeHart

Part III Creating a Villainous Identity: Form, Function, and Reboots

Chapter 8. Flesh, Scars and Clay: The Role of Pain and Bodies in the Creation of Identity and Meaning

Marco Favaro

Chapter 9. Controlling the Appearances: Thomas Elliot’s Hush, His Masks, and the Desire to Dominate Perceptions

Sean C. Hadley

Chapter 10. “My relationship with Batman has never been what I’d call ‘stable’”: Catwoman’s Flirtations with Superheroism and Her Evolving Role as the Monstrous Feline Fatale. Carl Wilson

Chapter 11. “Kite Man, Hell Yeah!”: Revisionism, Masculinity, and the Role of the D-tier Supervillain

Nicholas T. James

Part IV. Dangerous Women: Victims, Vixens, and Villainesses

Chapter 12. From Good Girl to Bad Girl to…Something In-Between: Harley Quinn as a Morally Complex Character

Nathan Miczo

Chapter 13. “There Is One Thing You Have Never Understood About Me, Batman”: The Liminality of Talia al Ghul

Tosha R. Taylor

Chapter 14. Militant Earth Mother: Viewing Poison Ivy as an Ecofeminist rather than as an Ecoterrorist

Christina M. Knopf

Chapter 15. “Hear me Roar”: Trauma Representation of Catwoman in Comic Books and Cinema from 1983-1995

Sean Travers

Chapter 16. Arkham’s Sirens: Analyzing the Roles of the Body and the Transcendental Subject in Arkham’s Villainesses and Antiheroines

Marco Favaro

Part V. We Are What We Believe: Ethics, Theology, and Motivations

Chapter 17. The Demon’s Head and the Ethics of the Anthropocene

Daniel Goff

Chapter 18. Cold-Hearted: Mr. Freeze and Moral Development

Justin F. Martin

Chapter 19. The Pleasure of Fear: the Scarecrow as an Extremely Immoral, Vicious and Pro-Passion Character According to Stoicism

Francisco Miguel Ortiz

Chapter 20. Batman, Defender of the Status Quo?: On Anarchy and Anarky (Guest Villain: The Ventriloquist)

Eduardo Veteri and Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns

Chapter 21. The Hole in Things: Dr. Hurt’s Textual History, Religious Significance, and Role in Grant Morrison’s Batman Run

Matthew Brake