GOTHAM CITY'S OTHER HEROES

can Gotham City survive without Batman I think this is an interesting question to ask because there's so many semantics involved what do you mean by Batman Bruce if Bruce isn't around we'll get some kind of replacement dick first probably Tim after that because Jason went nuts the first time Bruce went missing Daman would probably take over four or probably just murder Tim for the cowl after that and even if these four are in different locations at the time of this hypothetical there's three bat girls a Batwing a bat Hound a bat cow this signal who's

Bruce's approved daytime hero for Gotham and the gcpd which really isn't helping much in the grand scheme of things that's not to mention Bruce's many allies that come in and out of the city like zatana The Outsiders the Justice League and all of its flavors and of course the odd etrian appearance Bruce Wayne is a character surrounded by allies famous for taking a Revenge field quest for vengeance after the death of his family and turning it into a worldwide Crusade for Justice building a new family in the reubel of the old if there's no Bruce

Wayne as Batman in Gotham City of course there would people to fill that role so what happens when there's no bat family no Ally to call on from out of state or the known Galaxy what if it's just the cops the crooks and the multiple secret societies really shaping what's right or wrong in these streets would Gotham survive a major super villain attack without the shadow of the bat now Gotham is no stranger to Vigilantes while Bruce historically is the character the town is associated with in printed Beyond there have been multiple attempts at placing

eccentric costume crime Fighters since its very creation Allan got the original Green Lantern was at one point the head of Gotham Broadcasting Company placing him in Gotham post World War II as their City's Defender the JSA themselves even used a Gotham City Brownstone as their base of operations during the Golden Age golden age Bruce would be made an honorary member alongside Superman but was never considered part of their main roster that would change with Bruce's daughter Helena and Dick Grayson who joined the Justice Society as Huntress and Robin respectively then the first crisis happened they

both stopped existing and while Allan Scott certainly persisted his f was clearly not on Gotham anymore the JSA had long since moved away and he's not typically shown to be fighting alongside this much younger Bruce so who else is there who else could keep this city safe what is that do you hear laughter the creeper was created by Spider-Man co-creator Steve dicko originally debuting in DC Showcase number 73 in April of 19 68 dicko fresh off his time spent at Charlton Comics creating characters like the question or the second Blue Beetle went to work for

DC for the first time to see if working for his former employer's competition would do him any favors notorious for not taking any form of interview or explaining any of his work dicko wouldn't write the dialogue for the comics he'd produce at DC relying on the Marvel method to fill in word balloons the first outing the creeper would be written by Don Sagal a playwright and screenwriter who was also employed by DC at the time the creeper himself is the secret identity of one Jack r a talk show host who was fired from his own

show after owning the lives and by extension their advertisers while Jack's weirdly Cal about the idea of unemployment he's quickly given the position of troubleshooter by head of network security Bill brain troubleshooter in this context is just another way of saying investigative reporter but Bill brain really insists on this local TV personality sneaking into a gangster Halloween party that very night all in the hopes of finding one Dr yats a brilliant scientist who was smuggled into the us from the Soviet Union by communist sympathizers going to a costume shop and purchasing a box of begotten

costume pieces given the short notice he had Jack dresses up like whatever the [ __ ] this is and sneaks into the party a party where his former advertisers rub shoulders with the Communists and gangsters that are holding Professor y's hostage in this Mansion Jack finds the good doctor despite drawing the attention of gangster Angel devinsky gang yats doesn't want his Newfound inventions a covert military grade Transportation device and an experimental serum to fall into the hands of the Soviet Union so he sh shoots jack up with the vile of ogr spunk and shoves the

teleporter inside an open wound instantly healing him and giving him the ability to not only quick change with the Press of a button but also kick some ass however the gang break down the wall to the lab they were keeping yats in killing him instantly so using his odd appearance and Newfound healing factor to his Advantage Jack puts on an act of an otherworldly Insanity to strike fear into the hearts of his would be Killers laughing maniacally as he fights to distract his foes he manages to escape the grasp of the police after his crade

is said and done and the police who catch Ryder just passing by ask who the lemon line popsicle of a man was Ryder responding he's the creeper the police ask why the creeper cuz he creeps brilliant the gcpd puts out a proper warrant for the creepers arrest as the other crime families in Gotham put out a hit on the man for anyone to cash in the power vacuum left in Jack's wake becoming the least of his worries at the end of the issue Jack laments how long these Powers May last he loves them but he

wonders if there's any side effects while the subsequent miniseries beware the creeper written by Denny O'Neal touches on that lightly Jack's priorities are very quickly changed the aformentioned mini sought to expand the creepers Rogues gallery and Supporting Cast introducing characters such as rip cord a fellow reporter and friend of Jack who later askes his roommate when his apartment is burned down as well as Vera sweet weather girl and wannabe talk show host who's just as opinionated enough to have a personality but not enough to be Charming so Jack just sticks her in closets and treats

her generally like [ __ ] despite originally being assigned to protect her from her wouldbe ass salant got to love that 60s misogyny though the series focuses initially on the hit out on Jack Ryder the main antagonist of the book is primarily a mass criminal mastermind and totally not the chameleon produs Proteus takes the form of not just the creeper to defame Jack Ryder but the various people he knows in his life to cause Jack further Strife will try and to service his greater goals Jack Ryder however has a nose for the truth and while

Proteus Reveals His secret identity when he believes Jack is is as good as dead Jack found all the signs too obvious surprise it's Rick cord either way Proteus is plan as a mysterious criminal Overlord is blind revenge on the populace of Gotham by at first impersonating fictional New Jersey governor Harley Ellison before deciding [ __ ] it I'm going to destroy the damn Proteus is launched into the drink Jack questioning if he'll even live through that sort of fall and walking away into that cruel cruel night ending the mini surprisingly this whole ordeal is emblematic

of a running Trend with some of these gothamite Heroes the idea that there are greater conspiracies at work in the city Bruce Wayne clearly isn't privy to and if he is he's trying to handle it in his own calculated way it makes more room for characters like the creeper in a city as big as Gotham giving them the opportunity to save the day and be the hero while justifying their existence in said City however as time goes on you start to wonder how many of these secret societies or criminal conspiracies exist and how Bruce would

have dealt with them if this was his story but again this isn't about Batman even though the creeper in his sporadic appearances after his miniseries does meet him and by extension some of his Rogues even appearing very briefly in jli during the greyman arc by the very edge of the80s however the moments that truly changed and redefined the creeper came in the 9s with his debut in the new Batman adventures where Jack's origin was revised to be merely a victim of the same chemicals that made the Joker and the excellent but shortlived the creeper by

Len Kaminsky and Steven martinborough in it the origin of Jack Ryder is heavily Revis and the aforementioned side effects of the serum that altered him is explored much more in depth Jack Ryder was originally raised in Westchester New York by a wealthy but neglectful father as well as an abusive diagnosed schizophrenic mother as a child Jack's mother would warn him that if he was a bad boy the creeper would come out of the forest behind their family home and punish him for his misdeeds this constant threat of an imaginary enemy a freak that haunted his

nightmares imprinted onto Jack as his mother was institutionalized and later passed on Jack would grow up with a sizable inheritance he didn't want becoming an investigative journalist de feed an evergrowing desire for the truth while he put on puff pieces like interviews in the film industry and the like Jack grew a reputation for his Curt and Unapologetic Pros about the subjects he tackled that of course led him to the same party run by Angel devinsky du The Disappearance of Dr yats using a costume he was gifted from a friend/ former interviewee who worked as a

special effects artist he's then ruied taken into the laboratory underneath the mansion and strapped to a table as Dr yats revealed he's actually but Proteus who used the identity of Angel devinsky to fund his illegal experiments and find worthy test subjects in those who sought him out yats believes the conscious mind can actively alter the Flesh of a human body previously experimenting on himself to prove his hypothesis however he doesn't want to create an exact copy of the same experiment he wants to put jack through something far more extreme injecting him with you guessed it

experimental serums to alter his body's chemistry in a device Lodge in his skin to activate the transformation Jack's repressed trauma and family history of latent mental illness manifests in a split personality one modeled after the costume he wore in the visions of the creeper he imagined as a child Jack gained super strength agility and an earpiercing laugh The partially insane creeper personality manifesting with a Simple Touch of her wrist after briefly Escaping The Mad Scientist and working as the Vigilante we all know Jack Ryder's work takes him to a South American country overrun by Civil

War The Creeper being gunned down by a resistance group trying to earn their freedom and as dying moments the creeper returns Jack's form and Consciousness to the surface forcing him to crawl out of the dirt and back into the United States the trauma of being buried alive in his jumbled memories leading him to a mental health facility whose head therapist is of course Proteus in Disguise while he escapes the facility and tries to regain a sense of normaly in his life Jack is confronted with the origins of the Creeper's personality the personality's own desires and

painful needs and most importantly how Jack cannot live without the creeper and vice versa well the series is technically just 11 issues outside of its finale in DC's 1 million crossover this is the ideal version of Jack Ryder and the creeper given how weirdly mature it handles its subject matter the mental health issues that Define Jack Ryder aren't his entire personality and he tries working on those issues through medication and attempts at self-help his mental illness is not a motivation or a superpower but an aspect of himself that he's repressed and only manifests in a

specific way it's mirrored in this series by an arc taking place during no man's land where Jack interviews The Joker and the creeper Force Arkham under lockdown due to a meeting of the mindes while Jack escapes the hell Hoven Asylum he's left with Batman believing he's gone too far and the Joker believing he stole a stick which isn't necessarily wrong but it isn't right either Jack's goal is to seek the truth in everything he comes across including his own circumstances so that need for coexistence with the other side of his broken mind is constantly debated

and explored in interesting ways throughout this run while Jack Ryder could easily be called a good guy Joker he's much more than that given the war he constantly under goes with his other half while the series ends with the two personalities coinciding believing their Partners rather than disperate souls in the same vessel the appeal of the creeper is similar to The Hulk or any other Jackal and high type of figure the other half is powerful Primal able to take anything down but at a disadvantage without the human aspect leading the charge making sure they aren't

persecuted for the actions of the monster now I know what you're thinking how can someone this insane reasonably protect a city as big as Gotham on occasion sure the creeper could reasonably save the day but the question of how much chaos the creeper can cause is a point of contention not just that Jack Ryder's own motivations are selfish to a degree motivated by a desire for the truth at all costs even if that means hurting those around him so if the creeper can't necessarily protect the city like the big bat who else is there who

can strike fear into the hearts of criminals while still keeping their neighborhood safe ragman was originally created in 1976 by writer Robert Kiger and Artist Joe cubert but the version we all know today was cified in 1991 by Keith gfin Robert Lauren Fleming Pat bodrick and Anthony Tolen while some aspects of the origin remain the same between the versions the '90s interpretation of the character is the one DC Comics tends to use for reasons we'll get into ragman is at least in his current form Rory rean a Vietnam War veteran struggling from post-traumatic stress disorder

Rory and his Russian immigrant father Jerry own and operate a pawn shop known as rags and tatters in an especially rough neighborhood in Gotham it's never named take your pick which neighborhood my head Cannon is that it's Burnside before gentrification happens you'll see why after his father is murdered in Cold Blood by gangsters connected to a corporate conspiracy running deep within Gotham Rory is left to die in an Alleyway as he hallucinates himself as a soldier walking through the Warsaw ghettos amongst the dead Rory comes across the legendary Golem of Prague the Hebrew word emth

ET a cross their face Rory awakens in a back alley doctor's office due to the efforts of a kindly local homeless woman named Betty Rory plans to break into rags and tatters which has undergone new management of his surprisingly unheard of non-blood rated aunt and uncle while he fails the break in he finds a box thrown out of the building that magically calls to him finding a costume of Rags within the suit wraps itself around Rory and indoctrinates him into a lineage of Heroes lasting far longer than just him and before him his father created

in opposition to the go of Prague who went berserked shortly after his creation the ragman was created to be wielded by just Jewish Warriors existing to protect the downtrodden and unjustly persecuted for the past Century at least Rory's father Jerry was the ragman of the Warsaw ghettos rallying together resistance Fighters while protecting a third of the survivors from concentration camps Jerry fought for his people during the worst point in their history wished Away by the magic Rags when the battle itself was nearly over while the Jews who suffered at the hands of the Nazis languished

in camps until they were potentially liberated those who survived long enough remembered the legend of the ragman that protected them even in their darkest hour with the help of Jerry's swarmer friend and Rabbi who's come to teach him about the soul sucking ability copying powers of the magic Rags Rory seeks revenge on not just the criminal Enterprise that killed his father but anyone who harms his local neighborhood he inevitably uncovers the conspiracy being headed by one Howard Sprat a former gutter kid from the same neighborhood manipulating the violence between two street gangs in order to

justify raising the neighborhood from the ground leaving it not only right for genter fun but to Forever erase the memory of it from sprat's mind well Rory isn't the one to kill Sprat that would be the head of the gats Rory is no stranger to murder given the suits Primal impulses working symbiotically to punish the wicked Rory is forced to concede with the possibility of ending lives routinely including that of the very Gollum the suit he wears was made to counter the gollum after years of silently fighting to protect others has developed his own sense

of identity and is close to becoming human acknowledging it even more so when he's around Betty the same homeless woman that saved Rory and hangs around rags and tatters so when the gollum confronts Rory Rory decapitates the clay shadow of a man as he declares his love for the woman with slurred speech with this the suit is granted its full power as Batman comes across the scene of the fight keeping track of Rory's movements until they finally meet face to face at the same time as this fight with Batman the N Immortal Rabbi finally dies

on a plane back to Israel Rory immediately knowing the moment it happens it throws him off course Rory fighting to The Bitter End as Bruce Wayne proves that all the combat training in the world means nothing to the bat though Rory could have been thrown into Arkham then and there the people of the neighborhood he's protected Shield him from Batman as he attempts to finish the job Betty tells Rory that the rabbi would have been proud of him and as she does the rags whisk Rory out of Gotham City the neighborhood now under the protection

of the bat family with Rory Landing in New Orleans the rags telling him that there's work to be done which he'll gladly do even if it's not his neighborhood Rory would go on to not only fight various magical foes but join the cult favorite series in dark magic Team Shadow packed in the early 2000s the character inevitably returning to Gotham right before the new 52 reconciling with his father's death and a strain relationship with the Jewish faith and while there's a modern version of the character introduced in 2021s ragman miniseries by Ray Fox and anaki

Miranda this is the version used at least as inspiration for the various spin-off appearances of the character personally this is my favorite character amongst the ones we'll talk about because a I'm Jewish B I love this original miniseries and C the character has a cult following for a reason he's almost like DC's Venom with a Biblical twist a character struggling to keep their living costume from taking control while still honoring its intentions to do good or something not so good a problem with Rory and his Technicolor Dream Coat is that the character may have technically

debuted in Gotham City but he isn't always there as a Mystic hero he doesn't really represent Gotham City as well as the bat does even if he does embody those most susceptible to the city's chaos though the idea of a hero wandering a Gotham neighborhood keeping people safe without Batman's intervention does sound more realistic than protecting an entire city something that if pulled off well could launch a separate long running series that's critically acclaimed across all boards exploring aspects of Gotham's culture we as readers would never consider and even grow to save the city without

Batman's help earning their respect if not reluctantly but we're not talking about that we're talking about Simon dark Simon dark was created by writer Steve Niles and artist Scott Hampton the writer of which rot a creeper miniseries post 52 in the late 2000s though that miniseries is not necessarily the best representation of the character its use of body horror and further integration of Batman lore Justified his talent enough to create a separate edgy hero to protect Gotham City one whose body horror elements are kicked up to 11 and whose art style is sharp distinct and

perfectly Moody Simon dark is a Frankenstein's monster composed of the body parts of 20 some odd teenage boys created by mad scientist Gustav farmer and commissioned by the super special secret society really running Gotham circuit 2007 geop populace using both science and Magic to bind these disperate parts together farmer failed several times before finally making life from death and in turn Awakening a primal force that served geop polis's greater goals in an amnesiac runaway with nowhere to go Simon dark disappears from the clutches of geop populus and finds safety in the catacombs of an abandoned

church the neighborhood he settles in simply called The Village a crime-infested hellhole like the rest of Gotham City where Batman never makes his presence known in his place Simon does becoming an urban legend that children whisper about under hush tones in criminals fear due to his instinctual ability to kill on site well I just exposed the major Mysteries behind Simon dark the journey is worth the destination in the case of this particular book throughout the 18 issues of Nile's run Simon in the surrounding Village is explored decently as the Eternal teenager comes to understand not

just the nature of his powers or his place in the greater world but also who he is as a person made up of several other people struggling to maintain a human face without his mask for long Peri perod at time Simon lives like a popper saving people for scraps or loose change as he keeps his straight cat alive and pickpockets copies of Moby Dick from local homes one of these pickpocket victims is Rachel Dodd no relation to Wesley who is saved by Simon from the serial killer known as Eddie the machete long before homicide detective

and secret geop populist Frankenstein Tom Kirk could even lay a finger on him working in a will they won't they partnership with Tom is coroner Beth Granger who becomes keenly aware of Simon's extraordinary abilities after he revives himself on her autopsy table while at first Simon is not necessarily aware of the differences between himself and regular humans he grows close to all three of these allies over the course of the series gaining insight into not just his Origins but who he can be and what is socially correct in any given situation will Simon find peace

as a warrior of the dark will he just become a tool for others to use in search of justice is Simon necessarily a hero or just another superpowered monster in a city full of them and most importantly is Simon human or everything else geop populace intended him to be all this and more is solved in Simon dark's 18 issues and while the conclusion is clearly rushed due to an unceremonious cancellation The Vibes of Simon dark from beginning to end are Immaculate watercolored Strokes strong Line work great scares and Revelations about our characters Simon dark had

the potential to be DC's New Constantine if done correctly or at least as teen sidekick for JN and Bruce to run into on occasion the problem sadly comes down to some cliche writing decisions both female characters only exist as love interests for our two leading male ones geop populous is goals remain vague outside of destroying Gotham until the very end and some of the many interesting ideas brought up early in the series such as Simon not being the first of his kind are either rushed to completion by series end or dropped entirely the series ends

with Simon of course defeating geop populus but sacrificing a fraction of his power set to save Gustav who for some reason stayed in the village as a local grocery store owner purposfully hiding his identity from Simon despite taking his money for stolen stock look there was a housing crisis things were very different back then whatever Simon is now able to keep a human face for long longer than an hour being called the mayor of Gotham given his control over the magical creatures coming in and out so instead of sticking around to protect the town he

just saved from Annihilation he leaves with Gus and his three shape-shifting demon familiars with ner a note for the rest of the Supporting Cast which I get for character reasons but just felt really disappointing it was an excuse to shuttle this character out of Gotham so Batman and his clan can remain the dominant species even though Simon 100% saved the city when Bruce failed to detect any sort of demon infestation which given his resource he could have found out regardless there are heroes capable of protecting Gotham without a bat there to save it but for

some reason they can never coexist with the bat or find justification for sticking around when Batman is already there if only there was a hero that not only Justified their existence as a uniquely flavored vigilante but gain the respect of the bad enough to not just deal with threats on their own but act as an ally he can call upon as his substitute as an equal mother Panic is that answer originally created by Gerard Way and artist Tommy Lee Edwards for DC's defunct mature readers label young animal mother Panic was fleshed out and actually headed

by writer jod Hower who delivers the voice Gerard Way particularly wanted for this series as a delightful balance of Gotham maab and angsty superhero melodrama that deserved far more than it got given its solid setup and interesting attempts at delivering yet another street level hero fighting in Batman's Gotham Violet Pig's father was the CEO of a major publishing company based in Gotham solidifying their place in the Upper Crust in all of its flavors including a group called The col ctive which you guessed it aims to control Gotham on a major scale from the Shadows the

major difference between the collective and something like geop populist is that they aren't a bunch of old white guys becoming Immortals through magic instead the series's major antagonist Gala acts like an artist using Gotham as her canvas for acts of violence that ultimately grow the collective's influence on a hunting trip with her father Violet fails to kill a simple deer and is dissuaded from using a gun again later that night however Martin attempts to sell his mentally ill wife to an associate connected to the collective due to her Loosely prophetic abilities misunderstanding it as an

attempt to sell her mother through sex trafficking Violet kills her father with his hunting rifle while the incident was chocked up to be an accident Violet's brother Victor saw things differently after Victor took control of their family's company he sent his mother to an impatient facility and violet to an experimental boarding school on the outskirts of Gotham known only as gather house the school funded by the collective in the hopes of creating better citizens for their City Violet was given cybernetic implants and trained in the art of combat before finally Breaking Free gather House's mental

programming Burning Down the school and leaving few survivors Violet seeks revenge against her brother and the people responsible for her and her mother's tragic Fates using the help of former gather house bioengineer Dr Varma Violet maintains her cover as a controversial hard partying socialite by day acting as a ruthless high-tech vigilante By Night taking the name of the nun who directly controlled her in gather house violent acts as mother Panic denying the idea she's anything more than just a girl looking for Revenge she isn't a hero or at least she doesn't want to be however

with the collective's grip on the city growing and villains from her past at gather house making themselves known Violet is forced to reconcile with her selfish desires to fight for the greater good even if the Batman doesn't necessarily believe she's doing so at first Violet is a fun take on the Bruce Wayne Persona she actively engages in debauchery not just to cover her tracks but as a coping mechanism for unkempt trauma while Violet tries to act as a loner with a desperate quest for Revenge she has to take care of her frail mother and the

people supporting her Mission while she wants to be a coldblooded murderer and has killed in the past she's incredibly reluctant given her trauma about killing her father and the people she killed at gather house it's almost like Stephen amel's version of Oliver Queen mixed with the bisexual disaster Allah kachu from Strangers in Paradise her character trained in the most lethal of Senses but holds back du to the people that keep them human just like Bruce with Alfred and later dick and the rest of his found family Violet's sense of normaly is constantly threatened with enemies

such as the inhumanly perfect pretty or the reformed super villain known as rat catcher who uses his rats to eat the face of the deranged killer there's teases of inappropriate romances between Dr Vara and violet explorations of Violet's mother's precognition and of course enticing action that keeps you entertain throughout the first 12 issue run Violet going from a violent Vengeance fueled anti-hero into something resembling a typical DC street level good guy including a temporary defeat of Gala who alludes to the fact that she isn't the only one in charge of the collective all of this

plus Violet's interactions and outright approval from the bat family show she not only has a place in Gotham City but can be relied upon by Batman in case of of great emergencies if there's any hero that Rivals the bat for stopping deranged gothamites and reality altering super villains mother Panic seems like the perfect secondary option and then she was flung into the far future in an alternate version of Earth where she and her Newfound magic milk altered sidekick fenic fox are trapped in a collective controlled Gotham one that Gala is the head of and where

her alternate future self is trapped in a tube barely clinging to life this is all part of the six issue second season of mother Panic called Gotham ad a followup to Young animals crossover milk Wars which relaunched every book in the line for a shorter six issue runtime after encountering a reality altered Bruce Wayne who rebuilt gather house as a means of creating a sidekick Sanctuary Violet is stuck in a dystopian version of Gotham where her brother Victor Works intimately alongside Gala a resistance group led by Selena Kyle hopes to liberate the city from the

collective's influence but are met with resistance by another faction led by Jason Todd the last remaining Robin after the Joker killed every single member of the bat Family Once the Bruce of this reality disappeared this Jason hope to not only fool the children under his control that Batman will return but act as Batman in Bruce's dead worshiping the idea of a messiah saving their City Violet's mother in this reality is kept under lock and key in Arkham Asylum which has been made into a new gather house to experiment on various inmates for gala's installations and

in order to save her Violet must rebuild her base of operations while adapting to the strange new world one that isn't nearly as kind as the Gotham she came from and certainly not as sane now I'll admit Gotham ad is a big swing for a second season of mother panic but despite the absurdity of what I just described it's a genuinely good book which deserved more time to breathe in order to tell its story properly plot points like the Gotham City sirens and their resistance Fighters or Jason's Redemption after crucifying any villain he comes across

are certainly rushed but could have worked better if given time to breathe it sucks because Violet had a really good status quo established in the main timeline and had to rebuild to reach that point in her new one no chance of ever returning no chance of ever seeing her real family again nothing she's simply stuck rebuilding acting as a hero despite her insistence that she isn't and training a sidekick who she had saved twice before milk powered Bruce Wayne altered a genetic composition so if Mother Panic is stuck in a Gotham of the future with

no Batman in sight as well as her insistence on focusing solely on her own issues how can someone like violet pige reasonably protect Gotham in Batman's absence someone who isn't dead whistle a new Gotham hero is the DC ya graphic novel written by E lockart and drawn by Manuel prano focusing on Willow Zimmerman a Jewish ninth grader in the Gotham neighborhood of down river with a cancer-ridden mother and plenty of bills to pay the little social activist attempts working part-time at an animal shelter and feeds whatever food scrap she has to a white great D

she calls libowitz surprised one night with a puzzle box by former family friend and surprise Hebrew Edward nigma Willow is offered the opportunity to be the Riddler's secretary for as many illegal poker games while she slowly drifts away from her friends and Newfound love interest field Logan no relation Willow debates whether or not what she's doing is necessarily right as random buildings in down river are greened by poison ivy all a part of Riddler's plan to gentrify down river through illegal means funding it through his poker games and the various crimes he commits throughout the

city on one night in particular for Willow she's suddenly attacked by Killer Croc who is guilty of murdering several Riddlers prior bookies failing to fight off the monster before he's run off by Ivy's plants Willow and Lio Soul Bond granting Willow the awesome ability to speak to dogs wanting to set things right despite the money she's making to pay for her mother's radiation Willow trains in secret with levowitz to become the local superhero known as whistle and the Hound tracking down Poison Ivy's next scream bombing to a local delicatessan Willow and libowitz managed to temporarily

stop Riddler and Ivy through the collective might of down River's dog population allowing them to be arrested by the gcpd and stopping their plans for good at least temporarily while Willow has indeed done a mitzvah for her community she can't help but continue helping people just like she did as a social activist only this time taking to the streets and making sure her neighborhood is safe one whistle at a time whistle is a really fun character sure her story is really low stakes and contradicts pre-established characterization for the bat family but her book is fairly

isolated from the rest of Gotham City's chaos while still maintaining this feeling that this is indeed the DC Universe Willow is resourceful and responsible but Annoying for those not so politically involved she's hardworking and passionate but gets too absorbed in the idea of help helping people she's a loving and kind person but also hardened to Gotham City's vile crimes just like every other citizen more than anything Willow just like Duke Thomas before her represents Gotham on a local scale much better than the rest of the bat family and that's further cified in Canon with her

appearance and Titans Academy considered a possible option for the new Teen Titans before Titan Tower is blown up yet again your character not even being seen since before dark crisis though there are obvious problems with Willow being a canonical character her power set is really limited she has no proper combat training Beyond local kickboxing gyms she's in danger of losing her cancer-ridden mother to the endless string of city-wide takeovers by super villains Etc and while all those problems are indeed valid I can't really think of another hero who best represents the city beyond the bat

and his many allies someone who rolls with the punches fighting for the city they've grown up with hoping that the future will be brighter for those she fights for each Hero on this list has had some kind of defining tragedy or on transformation that forces them into a position of helping their City proper whether it be a constant search for the truth or a secret society pulling the strings the heroes of Gotham City have enough in common with one another that they can justify their involvement in cleaning up their streets well you can argue none

of these Heroes I've mentioned could individually protect Gotham from itself if they work together to protect each and every corner of the city or at least their respective neighborhoods the cape Crusader would have a much easier time stopping the infinite string of criminal activity and maybe just maybe earning just as much respect as the city holds for the Batman or you know Tommy monigan could save the city again I miss you King hope hell's warm thank you for watching