Harley Quinn’s costume design was based on the Joker character in a typical pack of playing cards.
In this post I’m going to do something I’ve wanted to do for a while: analyze Batman villain names.
Batman has been all over the place for the past three decades, and plenty of folks have seen the shows, the movies, the parodies, the comics (which comprise only a small part of the franchise now), the video games, the Legos, the fashion dolls. The mythology has grown exponentially. Yet the the major villains’ names (that is, their given-at-birth names) remain the same, and 99% of the time there’s some pun involved relating to their criminal identity. That is what I’m going to examine here.
Take Harley Quinn. Introduced in 1992 in Batman: The Animated Series, she has proven so popular it now seems she’s been in the Batman world from the beginning. Her bold, curvacious design and murderous smile, combined with a whimsical confusion — as if continually stoned on nitrous oxide — make her into a manic pixie dream girl taken to the extreme. Dr. Harleen Frances Quinzel, Ph.D, was a psychologist treating the Joker while he was in Arkham Asylum and was gradually warped into becoming as criminally insane as he was; from there it was a hop, skip and a jump to becoming Harley Quinn, his girlfriend and sidekick. But, in a reflection of the relationship between Krazy Kat and Ignatz the mouse, the Joker spurns her devotion, causing her to become even more insane. She’s the ex-girlfriend from Hell, another trope popularized in the 1990s. And, like put-upon Tom of Tom & Jerry fame (for what is Tom and Jerry but a replay of Krazy and Ignatz?) she wields a giant, cartoonish mallet as a weapon.
The creation of Harley also began a theme of the Batman villains interacting amongst themselves and creating storylines with nary a good guy to be seen. For example, there’s one of Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy being lesbian lovers, and others where Harley renounces criminality and becomes a force for good (sort of) teaming up with Batgirl. Anything for a buck!
One of the things I don’t like about Harley Quinn, however, is her birth name: Harleen Frances Quinzel. That is way too obvious. Why couldn’t she have been named, oh, I don’t know, Susan or something? That sounds more natural while giving a hint of her future identity. AFAIK, no one’s named Harleen, even in the deep South. Charleen, maybe. And Quinzel, what the heck kind of surname is that?
It’s a common problem the Batman villains suffer from, names and backstories that are way too matchy-matchy and stretch one’s sense of belief. It cheapens them for me. It might have been well and good up to the 1960s, when Batman was still for kids, but the franchise has matured since then, become more adult. Batman’s world shouldn’t still be so punny, in other words.
Batman villain names, analyzed and critiqued
| Alice in Wonderland Villains | Over the years there’s been many Alice in Wonderland themed villains who often formed a themed gang. The first of them was The Mad Hatter, real name Jervis Tetch, who made his debut appearance in 1948. That name was an old-fashioned, Dickensian one that fit him perfectly back then, as the Victorian Age wasn’t long past. Criminals born in that era, and the decade past it, would still be living.
But the problem here was with his gang, whose names matched all too well the criminal identities they chose. For example, two underlings named Tweedledee and Tweedledum had the birth names of Dumphrey and Deever Tweed, which is less than subtle. |
| Black and White Bandit |
Roscoe Chiara. Chiararosco, get it? It’s hard to believe this villain dates from 2001 when writers should have known better. Roscoe was an artist who went colorblind by using an untested paint pigment, leading him to a crime rampage born of revenge. This is what I mean by being too matchy-matchy! |
| Calendar Man | Julian Gregory Day. Get it? Calendar Man was one of the minor, very silly villains that populated Batman’s early comic days. In the Lego Batman movie, he’s little better than a pest for this very reason. But, this is a case where the matching name and identity makes sense. Dimbulb Julian Gregory Day decides to be a master criminal, but needs a catchy moniker. “What shall I call myself? Oh, Calender Man, it’s so obvious!”
In the DC comic world Calendar Man has been re-imagined several times as a more serious, disturbed criminal. But his name remains the same. |
| Catwoman | Selina Kyle. Not bad. Selina implies night; Selina was an ancient Greek goddess of the moon, and of course cats go about by night. It’s also very feminine sounding and Catwoman is uber femme. |
| Clock King | William Tockman. See Calendar Man.
As punishment for having such a punny name, Clock King was made fun of for many years in the DC universe, such as appearing in a villain team known as the Injustice League which was periodically trounced by the Teen Titans. He’s received several re-imaginings in recent decades that have turned him into a more sinister character and a name change from WIlliam to Billy, but the Tockman has persisted. |
| Great White Shark | Warren White. It’s a pun, but makes sense. His backstory is he was a crooked investor who got sent to Arkham Asylum, and during a prison riot he got locked in Mr. Freeze’s cell where he lost a great deal of his face due to frostbite. Now lacking lips, he filed his teeth to points and named himself after the shark of Jaws fame. This origin story holds water (sorry for another pun) to me of how a run of bad luck leads to a minor villain’s reinvention into something major. He could have become the White Ghost, or the White Whale, but his former occupation pushed him firmly toward Shark. |
| KG Beast | Anatoly Knyazev. He’s an ex-KGB assassin so his name, though it contains a pun, makes sense, something a native Russian speaker would make up on the fly. |
| Kite Man | Charles Brown. Also known as Chuck. A rare cross-comic meta reference to the Peanuts character who battled with a kite-eating tree every summer. Kite Man appeared in 1960 when the Peanuts cartoon strip began to become popular. He was considered a joke by DC artists and writers for many years, even to the extant of uttering “Rats!” whenever a plot of his was foiled. He’s still around though, going through many incarnations over the years, whereas the original Charley Brown is not (Charles Schultz died in 2000 and the Peanuts strip was discontinued. The old ones are still syndicated.) |
| Mr. Freeze | Victor Fries. Fries is a perfectly good German name, but going from Fries to Freeze, plus considering his pre-villain job as a cryogenics expert, makes this one too matched. How he must have been teased about his name matching his profession while in grad school! |
| Penguin | Oswald Cobblepot. OK, penguins are funny in how they waddle back and forth, and “cobblepot” certainly describes their walk in an onomatopoeic way. But the Penguin is a dangerous criminal with mob affiliations, and IMO he shouldn’t be mocked with having such a silly-sounding surname. Penguin likes gambling, tailored suits, fast women, shmoozing, fine whiskey. Give him a last name with classy, British feel, like Chesterfield or Derbyshire. That he founded the Iceburg Club before he “came out” as the Penguin could be why he decided on that moniker.
For the record, I also disliked Tim Burton’s Penguin re-imagining as a pathetic carnival freak with fused fingers. It just doesn’t fit the character. |
| Poison Ivy | Pamela Lillian Isley. Too obvious. Why couldn’t her first name have been something else? |
| Riddler | Edward Nygma. Riddler is another of the main group of villains, appearing multiple times in media over the years. Like Joker, he is more insanely evil than criminally evil. His green costume covered with black question marks, paired with a derby hat, cravat, and walking cane, is iconic. But giving him the name of E. Nygma just overdoes it. |
| Scarecrow | Jonathan Crane. It matches, but it’s subtle. Crane harks back to Ichabod Crane, the colonial schoolteacher who was scared out of his wits by the Headless Horseman, and Jonathan is a nice old-fashioned touch. |
| Two-Face | Harvey Dent. I like this one. It’s perfect. Implies he’s been an accident, which he was — his face was deformed — dented — by some acid a disgruntled client threw at him. The word dent also calls up images of fender-benders where the victim hires a crooked lawyer to sue the other vehicle owner for an outrageous sum. |
I know there’s many more villains than these; I just chose the obvious ones.
