10 Lame Batman Villains I Dare The Gotham Writers To Use

9. Signalman

I’ll give this guy an ‘A’ for moxie if nothing else. Phil Cobb’s entire goal was to make it big as a Gotham City crime boss, but no one wanted to join his gang. Undaunted, he decided that the best way to recruit was to become a costumed villain, and in fairness, that did seem to work out pretty well for others.

Alas, those other criminals chose gimmicks slightly better than the one Cobb settled on, which was to use all kinds of symbols as his calling card. Check out his cape; he’s got all kinds of stuff on there, and he’s probably lucky he didn’t get sued for what is obviously Pac-Man. Maybe the cape was supposed to give Batman and Robin headaches when they saw it flapping around?

After a slight career detour when he became the Blue Bowman and tried to become Green Arrow’s opposite number, Signalman actually pulled off his one significant career accomplishment, which was to trap Batman inside the Batsignal. The cover of that issue of Detective Comics made the bold claim that Signalman was back after 15 years and was 15 times as deadly, but as we all know, any number multiplied by zero is still zero. I’m guessing that’s how deadly he really was.

Cobb did get accepted into the Secret Society of Super Villains with no superhuman powers, so again, moxie. Since a big focus of Gotham is on the dynamic between rival criminal gangs, maybe he can appear as someone who tries to carve out some turf but is simply in over his head. But really, what’s the fun in that?

Next: No. 8: Penny Plunderer