Hugo Strange
|
|
Hugo Strange is a fictional character in DC Comics and a nemesis of Batman.
He first appeared in Detective Comics #36 (February, 1940) and is considered the first recurring villain Batman ever faced. He preceded The Joker and Catwoman by a couple of months.
Hugo was originally a psychologist that was hired to use his skills to help bring in Batman. He eventually figured out Batman's secret identity, but instead of revealing it to the public, he kept it secret.
His greatest desire is to become Batman. To that end, he has tried several times to kill Batman in elaborate or peculiar ways, and then take his place, but all have met with failure. At one point in his career he was shot twice and dumped into a river; it was then assumed he had died. However, in Doug Moench's Batman storyline "Terror" he mysteriously came back. He decided to work with another of Batman's enemies, the Scarecrow, and use him as a tool to help him capture Batman. But Scarecrow, who abhorred bullies, had other plans, and turned on Strange, impaling him on a weatervane and throwing him in the cellar of his own mansion. The Scarecrow then made a plan of his own to use against Batman, and subsequently trapped him, injected him with his fear potion and placed him in Strange's abandoned mansion, where he would have to get past a series of deadly traps in order to escape.
Finally Batman was caught in one of Scarecrow's traps and fell into the cellar, but he grabbed Scarecrow and dragged him down with him. Scarecrow's trap was rigged to have the cellar slowly flooded, and now, as the water level rose, Scarecrow furiously tried to kill Batman. He was stopped by Hugo Strange, who had mysteriously returned to life. Suddenly the water pressure caused the cellar walls to crack, and the three of them were swept into a nearby river. In the ensuing chaos Batman caught Scarecrow but lost sight of Strange. Whether he died in the river or not remains to be seen.
In the animated Batman series, he once auctioned off this information to several famous villains, including Two-Face who had personally known Bruce Wayne, who later accused him of fraud.
In the new The Batman series Hugo appears fat and with hair in the episode Strange Minds with Joker.