One of the easiest sources for obscure comic book characters is the rogues gallery of everyone's favorite overused crime-fighter, Batman! For every one of his serious villains, there's a forgotten oddball. A blacksheep. A bad egg. Well, they're all "bad", but for the sake of the pun-hmm, I guess "bad" is a matter of perspective-oh! Uh, today's Z-Lister is Egghead!
Created by William Dozier and played by the late-and-great Vincent Price (you know, that horror movie legend your grandmother remembers) this character was one of many to be invented for the 1966 "Batman" TV show. The one starring the amazing Adam West as Batman and the just-as-amazing-but-severely-underappreciated Burt Ward as Robin. Egghead was designed to be an intellectual equal to Batman-perhaps smarter. He is the self-described "World's Smartest Criminal" which parallels "The World's Greatest Detective".
Egghead's first appearance was in the season two episode "An Egg Grows in Gotham" where he teams up with a Native American tribesmen named Chief Screaming Chicken (not as hilarious as he sounds) in an attempt to help Screaming Chicken claim the land Gotham was built on as being Native American land. For helping him, the Chief would let Egghead run the city. He was of course stopped by Batman, but his next plot was even crazier. First of all he teamed up with the exiled Bessarovian, Olga, Queen of The Cossacks. With her help Egghead hatched a rare dinosaur egg in "How To Hatch a Dinosaur" and planned on feeding Robin to it. However, the dinosaur attacked Egghead instead. It was revealed at the end of the episode the dinosaur was Batman in disguise as the real egg had been switched out. The last appearance of Egghead was in "The Ogg Couple" when he and Olga stole The Sword of Bulbul and The Egg of Ogg. Egghead appeared in later episodes, but had a stand-in perform as the character.
Egghead's egg-themed technology varied from oil-filled eggs to an egg-shaped radar. His most potent egg weapon was an egg bomb containing tear gas. He claimed to have fed chickens a diet of onions to produce such eggs. That at least makes him an above-average chicken breeder. But, like I said, Egghead's greatest weapon is his mind. Egghead actually discovered Batman's true identity! He did it by common deduction: To be Batman one has to be rich. There are three people in Gotham rich enough to be Batman (within the 66' universe). One has a French accent, Batman does not. The other is left handed, Batman is right handed. So, by default it must be Bruce Wayne! And yet Hugo Strange and Lex Luthor took so long figuring it out. Oh and Egghead's only significant comic appearance was in "Gotham Academy #14" as a school teacher. Yay.
I won't talk up Vincent Price (pretty sure that's why I keep Shae around), but as far as silly villains go Egghead is not at all scary, but kind of threatening. I mean, he weaponizes chickens! And being one of the only Batman villains to put the identity together? Mr. Freeze was a scientist, Scarecrow was a psychologist, Two-Face was one of Bruce's friends and none of figured it out! The Riddler is one of the smartest villains in DC Comics AND has figured it out before, but denied it because of his obsession with questions that can't be answered. By and large, Egghead has an impressive feat. I'm actually glad nobody has touched this character. Let the great be great, you know? One thing's for sure: for as goofy as Egghead is he's just another Vincent Price character I'd hate to match wits with.
Thanks for reading!
How do you take your eggs? Comment below!
No comments:
Post a Comment