Four Batman Villains with Medical Degrees

Lately, I have been working on getting through Batman: Akrham City when I have time (which is not much). One of the major villains of the game is Dr. Hugo Strange who has been the mastermind behind the development of Arkham City.  I've come to realize that there are an inordinate number of Batman villains with medical degrees, let alone an army of comic book supervillains that have higher degrees. Interestingly enough, most of evil physicians are either surgeons or psychiatrists. Luckily, I do not have much interest in either specialty. Here is more on five Batman villains that are physicians.


1. Dr. Hugo Strange

Dr. Hugo Strange, from the teaser trailer for Batman: Arkham City

Not to be confused with Dr. Stephen Strange, one of my favorite Marvel characters, Hugo Strange is a psychiatrist that, in the classic stories, is obsessed with Batman and deduces his true identity (an element preserved in Batman: Arkham City). Although Strange is a genius, he is also a little psychotic and even dressed up as Batman. Another one of the classic Dr. Strange stories is his involvement in the creation of what has become known as the Monster Men. This hearkens back to the original Batman comic series in the 1940s and has been retold and referenced over and over again.

For the most part, Hugo Strange has been largely unknown to the general public but I imagine that Batman: Akrham City will solidify his legacy as one of Batman's greatest adversaries. One of my favorite appearances of Dr. Strange was in a television show that defined my child hood, Batman: The Animated Series. In the episode, "The Strange Secret of Bruce Wayne", Strange runs a sham spa for wealthy and prominent individuals to learn their secrets using a machine he has developed. When he discovers that Bruce Wayne is secretly Batman, he tries to auction off the information to Joker, Two-Face, and Penguin, a nod to a similar storyline from the comics. Batman being Batman, cleverly discredits Strange and gets the rogues to turn on him.

 Dr. Matthew Thorne, the Crime Doctor

The Crime Doctor, art by Bob Kane

This one is a little more obscure.  In Post-Crisis contunity, the Crime Doctor is the brother of crime boss Rupert Thorne.  He is a physician that treats criminals for money. 

I mostly know this one from Batman: The Animated Series from the episode "Paging the Crime Doctor."  The wonderful creators of the show did a retake on the character (as they did for many of the Batman villains) as a former classmate of Dr. Thomas Wayne, Batman's father, and Dr. Leslie Thompkins, one of the few people to know that Bruce is Batman.  Thorne lost his license to practice and is working for his brother Rupert to get it back.  

 

Dr. Thomas Elliot, Hush

Thomas Elliot is a childhood friend of Bruce Wayne that is both spiteful for Bruce's father saving the life of his mother and is envious of the life he leads.  Elliot tried to kill his parents when he was a young boy by cutting the brake lines in his father's car.  While his father died, his needy mother survived and he was forced to care for years.  Elliot hated the Waynes for his fate and, once he figured out that Bruce was Batman, he planned a very elaborate revenge. I am not going to lie.  I am not really a huge Hush fan.  I know a lot of people think that Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee's Batman: Hush is one of the greatest Batman stories ever.  Personally, it was another Jeph Loeb parade of charaters that was prettied up by Jim Lee's art.  It isn't bad but it isn't amazing either.  The subsequent Hush story lines have been just okay, too.  Usually he tries to come up with another elaborate plan that fails miserably, all while he constantly quotes Aristotle and further explorations of his mommy issues are flashbacked on.  That being said, I think that Paul Dini's retake of the character in Batman: Arkham City has some potential and perhaps he won't seem so stupid in the New DC Universe.

Hush, art by Jim Lee

Dr. Simon Hurt 



This guy actually has a bunch of names and his true identity is still a little obscured, probably on purpose given that he is one of Grant Morrison's characters.  Well that's not entirely true.  Grant Morrison actually took a very minor character from Batman #156 ("Robin Dies at Dawn") and gave him a name and a time spanning role in the DC Universe.  Hurt is the doctor who conducted the isolation experiment on Batman from "Robin Dies at Dawn".  In Batman: R.I.P, it was revealed that this was in reality a way to implant psychological cues in Batman's head.  I will probably leave it at that because explaining Grant Morrison's origin for why Dr. Simon Hurt is an apparently immortal ancestor of the Wayne family ties into a bunch of very complicated storylines that all tie into one another.  Suffice it to say it has to do with pretty much everything Grant Morrison has wrote for DC in the past six years.



Dr. Simon Hurt, art by Tony Daniel