Hugo Strange
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| Professor Hugo Strange | |
 Art by Brian Bolland. |
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| Publication information | |
|---|---|
| Publisher | DC Comics |
| First appearance | Detective Comics #36 (Winter 1940) |
| Created by | Bill Finger, Bob Kane |
| In story information | |
| Alter ego | Hugo Strange |
| Team affiliations | Secret Society of Super Villains |
| Abilities | Genius-level intelligence, Master of psychology |
Hugo Strange is a fictional character and supervillain in DC Comics. He first appeared in Detective Comics #36 (February 1940) and is one of the first recurring villains Batman ever faced. He preceded The Joker and Catwoman by a couple of months.
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[edit] Fictional character biography
[edit] Pre-Crisis
Hugo Strange first appears as a scientist who uses a stolen "concentrated lightning" machine that he uses to generate a dense fog, allowing him to rob banks unseen. In his second appearance he escapes from the "city asylum" (later known as Arkham Asylum) with "five insane patients" and uses them as test subjects, turning them into hulking zombies by administering a powerful artificial growth hormone that acted on the pituitary gland; a side effect caused the victim to become a mindless brute. Strange administers it to Batman, but the Caped Crusader saves himself by creating a drug that prevented any abnormal secretions from the pituitary gland. In Detective Comics #46, a punch from Batman sends Strange falling to his apparent death.
He returned in the 1970s during the "Strange Apparations" story arc. Having survived his earlier "death," Strange is running a private hospital for Gotham City's wealthiest citizens — where he holds them for ransom. When Bruce Wayne checks into the hospital to recover discreetly from radiation burns he received as Batman, Strange discovers Batman's secret identity and attempts to auction the knowledge off to Gotham's top villains. Mafia boss Rupert Thorne tries to torture the information out of him, but apparently ends up killing Strange before he can learn the secret he holds.
As revealed in Batman 356 (Feb. 1983) Strange had not really been killed - he had used yoga methods to slow his heartbeat to an undetectable level.
Strange plots his revenge against Thorne and Batman. Strange creates a 'ghost' which haunts Thorne until he turns himself in to authorities. Through the use of drugs and robots Strange attempts to weaken Bruce Wayne before usurping him in the role of Batman. After failing Strange apparently dies when he blows up a replica Wayne Manor.
[edit] Earth-Two
The Earth-Two version of Strange also survives the fall he himself experienced; however, he is left paralyzed. After years of physical therapy, he regains enough movement to write out the surgical techniques needed to repair the damage to his body - and bribe a surgeon to perform the operation. However, the surgeon lacks Strange's skill, leaving him physically deformed (the surgeon dies for his failure). Strange uses one of his devices to capture Starman's cosmic rod, to use its power to attack everyone and everything Batman holds dear. He generates a storm in Gotham to obtain the device, which creates a dimensional doorway to Earth-One, bringing that universe's Batman over to Earth-Two and allows him and that world's Robin to join with the original Batwoman in defeating Strange. Strange realizes that he is in fact angry at his own wasted life and deformed body. Strange then uses the Cosmic Rod to commit suicide.
[edit] Post-Crisis
In the Post-Crisis continuity, Strange is reintroduced in the "Prey" arc as a psychologist hired to use his skills to help bring in Batman. He eventually figures out Batman's secret identity, but instead of revealing it to the public, he keeps it secret.
His first meeting with Batman is later retouched in Matt Wagner's Batman and the Monster Men. The character is introduced in the middle of a grueling workout, considering his lot in life:
| “ | "I am a product of this city. My early childhood scarred by trauma and grief. The experience has honed and directed me. I now seek to make the most of my ordeals for the benefit of others. I work tirelessly for what I see as the betterment of all mankind. To that end, I have rigorously trained my body. Attained its absolute peak of physical perfection. Unfortunately... there are certain genetic limitations to what I might achieve."
From Batman & The Monster Men #1, by Matt Wagner |
” |
As he exercises, Strange's features are obscured. This, and Strange's toned, fit body, leaves the reader to conclude that Batman himself is the speaker. Strange is then revealed to be the true speaker as he laments the genetic hurdles that prevent him from reaching perfection: he is short, balding, and homely. Strange is singularly driven to find a way to improve humanity at a genetic level. Throughout the graphic novel, Strange is presented as the darker mirror image of Batman.
According to Commissioner James Gordon, Strange was "abandoned as a child, grew up in state homes. A bright kid, but he apparently had a hell of a temper. Nobody knows how he put himself through college and medical school." (Batman and the Mad Monk) He was raised in an orphanage on the lower East Side of Gotham, not far from the infamous "Crime Alley", in the heart of a part of Gotham known as "Hell's Crucible". Strange became professor of Psychiatry at Gotham State University, but had his tenure suspended due to his increasingly bizarre theories in genetic engineering. At some point, he is approached by an Indian man named Sanjay, who seeks Strange's aid in curing his sick brother. Strange agrees to help, and Sanjay works loyally by his side from that point onward. Borrowing money from gangster Sal Maroni, who is in the employ of Gotham's criminal kingpin Carmine Falcone, Strange sets up a lab. He then bribes a corrupt orderly to give him incurably insane inmates from Arkham Asylum - who have been institutionalized so long that they will not be missed.
Strange's experiments have literally monstrous results, with his test subjects turning into gigantic, mindless "Monster Men", possessing superhuman strength and cannibalistic instincts. Strange uses these Monster Men to raise the money he needs to pay back his Mafia connections. Batman becomes involved after discovering some of the gruesome remains of the Monster's Men's cannibalistic rampages. When Strange sets his creations free at an illegal poker game, helping himself to the victims' money after the slaughter, his Mafia connections begin to grow suspicious. Batman tracks Strange down, but is captured by Sanjay and thrown to the Monster Men as an intended meal. Batman not only holds off the creatures, but uses them in part of an inventive escape. Strange is enthralled by Batman, believing that he has found a genetically perfect man. He creates one final Monster Man using a drop of Batman's blood, and while his creation still has many of the flaws of its "brothers", it lacks most of the grotesque disfigurements that had plagued Strange's earlier work. However, Strange is forced to destroy his lab in order to evade capture. Soon after, he turns the Monster Men loose, including Sanjay's brother (who had been mutated in a failed attempt to cure him), at Falcone's estate, where Strange's Mafia connections are staying. Strange wants a fresh start, and realizes that the Mafia is still a link to his experiments. In the battle that follows, all of the Monster Men are killed, along with Sanjay (who was attempting to avenge his brother). Strange escapes amid the chaos, and succeeds in eradicating all links between himself and his experiments. Confident that he can not be linked to them, he begins to appear on TV as a psychological expert on the Batman.
It is possible that the events of Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy's "Prey" story arc take place at this point. Partly due to Hugo Strange's appearance on TV as a psychological expert, Captain Gordon is ordered to put together a Task Force to capture Batman, with Strange working as a consultant to try to discover Batman's identity. As the investigation continues, however, Strange grows increasingly monomaniacal in his obsession with Batman. His greatest desire is to become Batman. To that end, he has attempts to kill the Caped Crusader, and then take his place. Strange eventually concludes that Bruce Wayne is most likely Batman, brainwashes the head of the police Task Force into becoming a lethal vigilante to turn public sentiment against Batman, and kidnaps the mayor's daughter. He is ultimately caught, shot twice and dumped into a river; it was then assumed he had died.
However, in Doug Moench's "Terror" storyline, Strange mysteriously comes back. He decides to work with another of Batman's enemies, the Scarecrow, and use him as a tool to help him capture Batman. Scarecrow turns on Strange, however, impaling him on a weather vane and throwing him in the cellar of his own mansion. The Scarecrow then uses Strange's mansion as a trap for Batman.
During a struggle with the archvillain, Batman falls into the cellar, but he grabs Scarecrow and drags him down with him. Scarecrow's trap is rigged to have the cellar slowly flooded, and now, as the water level rises, Scarecrow furiously tries to kill Batman. Strange, who has mysteriously returned to life, stops him. Suddenly, the cellar walls begin to crack, and the three of them are swept into a nearby river. In the ensuing chaos, Batman catches Scarecrow, but loses sight of Strange.
Both "Prey" and "Terror" are set during Batman's early years. In the modern timeline, he returns in a four-part arc that ran through Gotham Knights #8-11. He is posing as a psychiatrist doing standard stress evaluations at Wayne Enterprises. While Bruce Wayne is on the couch, Strange drugs him with a powerful hallucinogen in order to coax Wayne into admitting that he is Batman. Batman escapes and triggers a post-hypnotic suggestion in himself, forcing him to completely repress the Batman aspect of his mind until Robin and Nightwing can thwart Strange. Believing that his theory that Bruce Wayne has been disproved, and that he may have actually killed Batman, Strange had a mental breakdown and is taken to Arkham Asylum.
Following that, Strange reappears as the head of a gang of super-criminals attempting to take control of Gotham's East Side, then controlled by Catwoman. Catwoman joins Strange's gang, then allows its members to "find out" that she intends to betray them, faking her death when they attempt to eliminate her. Although she defeats and imprisons most of the gang, and even convinces Strange to leave the East Side alone, Strange still mocks her by pointing out that he had faked his own death far more often than she had.
In Batman #665, Batman tells Tim Drake that a huge man dressed like a combination of Bane and Batman had beaten him up, and he suspects the imposter had used "Hugo Strange's Monster Serum and Daily Venom shots" to gain his size and strength.
He is currently seen in Salvation Run amongst the villains imprisoned on another planet.
[edit] Other media
[edit] Batman: The Animated Series
- See also: The Strange Secret of Bruce Wayne
Strange is introduced into Batman: The Animated Series in the episode "The Strange Secret of Bruce Wayne", in which he is voiced by Ray Buktenica. In the episode, Hugo Strange is a psychiatrist running a rest hospital that he uses to blackmail Gotham's elite with secrets he finds out with a machine that reads minds. Bruce Wayne goes to the hospital and undergoes the "treatment," which allows Strange to discover his secret identity. He auctions off this information to a trio of Gotham's top criminals: The Joker, The Penguin, and Two-Face. Two-Face had personally known Bruce Wayne, and later accuses Strange of fraud when Batman switches the tape with one he had created that portrayed Strange as fabricating the secret identity. Strange tries to save his skin by simply telling the villains that Bruce Wayne is Batman, but they simply scoffed at the idea, thinking he was lying. Two-Face comments that if Bruce Wayne was Batman, he (Two-Face) was the King of England. The trio then tries to kill him by throwing him out of an airplane. Batman saves him at the last minute, however, and had Robin show up at the crime scene disguised as Bruce Wayne to discredit Strange's claims of knowing the Dark Knight's secret identity.
[edit] Justice League Unlimited
In Justice League Unlimited, Strange returns as a member of Project Cadmus. His appearance is brief, however: seated at the Cadmus table in "The Doomsday Sanction" with no lines. Producer/writer Dwayne McDuffie confirmed that Strange's appearance was intended to set up a later use of the character, presumably in "Question Authority", where a torture scene serves to have Cadmus need to pull information from the Question's mind. However, due to the production of The Batman and the inclusion of Hugo Strange on that series, Warner Brothers withheld most Batman characters from the final episodes of Justice League Unlimited. With Strange unavailable he was replaced in Cadmus by Dr. Moon.
[edit] The Batman
Hugo Strange appears in The Batman, voiced by Frank Gorshin (who played The Riddler in the 1960s Batman TV show) and later by Richard Green. In this series, Strange - a psychologist at Arkham Asylum - appears briefly in the episode "Meltdown", and as the primary villain in "Strange Minds". He is portrayed as being far more fascinated with the deranged criminals at Arkham and how their minds work than actually finding a cure for their madness, on more than one occasion provoking them to cause more mayhem. In this interpretation, he is a master chemist and programmer, and skilled at robotics. In "Fistful of Felt", Strange cures the Ventriloquist of his multiple personality disorder, only to turn him again into a criminal. In the episode "Gotham's Ultimate Criminal Mastermind", he does in fact design a robotic villain called D.A.V.E. to hunt down Batman. He pulls a gun out at Batman, thus sealing his reputation as a villain. He's currently incarcerated in Arkham Asylum, having been ironically dubbed insane by his former colleagues.
In "Strange New World", Hugo Strange, from his cell in Arkham, infects Batman and Robin with a toxin, claiming it to be an antidote. Under the drug's influence, the Dynamic Duo hallucinate that they are being pursued by zombies. Strange claims that he has distributed a chemical throughout town, making everyone into zombies that obey his every command. This is later revealed to be a lie, concocted in order to trick Batman into spreading the real chemical. Robin is cured about halfway through the episode. Batman realizes the truth at the last moment, and allows Batgirl to cure him.
Even later in the same season, Strange appears as one of the many supervillains held hostage by the vigilante Rumor. As Rumor moves to the machine he would use to execute all criminals at once, Strange asks him about his motivation. Rumor replies that he wants to kill them all in retaliation for an attack by The Joker that crippled his boss. Strange laughs, and tells him that the scheme is in fact motivated by his guilt over his failure to protect his boss rather than any sense of altruism or desire to protect Gotham from the captured villains.
Strange later appears in the series finale "Lost Heroes", working with The Joining, helping them to capture the Justice League and extract their powers, in return for ultimate knowledge of the universe. When Strange's work was complete, The Joining kept their promise, but the massive amount of information (delivered directly into his brain) overloaded his cerebral cortex, leaving him catatonic. Being that this is the final episode, it is unknown whether he will ever be cured, if it is even possible.
[edit] DC Direct
DC Direct is producing a Batman action figure with an interchangeable Hugo Strange head.
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