Tom King Wants To Raise Up D-List Villains

Tom King wants to do more than just change Batman, he wants to make all of his villains major threats

Batman has always had a main rogue’s gallery of some of the most interesting and deadliest villains in comic book history. Guys like the Joker, Killer Croc, Two-Face, Clayface, Ra’s Al Ghul and so on. But Batman has also had his share of rather lame villains. You are bound to rack up a fair amount after being around for 7+ decades. But new Batman writer Tom King wants to change all that. He wants to make every Batman villain, no matter how silly they were before, a top tier villain that is a deadly force to be reckoned with. He did it in the first post-Rebirth issue of Batman, making the formerly lame Calendar Man a much more mysterious and deadly enemy than he’s ever been. And Tom King doesn’t plan to stop there:

"I wanted to do some redefining of classic villains, which you’ll see over the next two years. I wanted to bring back some of the crazy, C & Z-level villains, like Calendar Man, and make them as frightening as The Joker and Riddler can be."

Tom King also mentioned that when new writers take over a book, they often introduce new villains (i.e. Scott Snyder brought about new but still memorable villains such as The Court of Owls and Mr. Bloom). He aims to flip that with new superheroes, specifically the recently introduced Gotham and Gotham gal, the first super-powered heroes to really reside in Gotham.

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That is something the classic Batman: The Animated Series did a great job with, taking silly villains and making them really interesting and threatening. If Tom King could actually do that with some of Batman’s lower tier villains, his run on the title could be considered one of the best. Can you make Condiment King a serious threat, Mr. King? I’d certainly like to see someone try…

h/t Gamespot