A Doctorate in Death

When you think of Batman's first supervillain, who comes to mind? Perhaps The Joker? Penguin? How about Two-Face? Catwoman? Well, you'd be wrong on all accounts. Back in the Golden Age of comic books there was one villain set to be Batman's greatest foe, his first villain. This week's Z-Lister is DC's Doctor Death.

Created by Bob Kane in "Detective Comics #29" in 1939, Doctor Death is often credited as the first traditional supervillain to be fought by Batman. Scientist Karl Hellfern created a poisonous gas and the disguise of "Doctor Death" in an attempt to scare Gotham socialites into giving him money. Batman attempts to arrest the not-so-good Doctor, but is shot by Doc's henchman Jabah. Yeah, in the 1930's and 40's you often saw major villains having ethnic bodyguards. It was the times. Anyway Batman went after Doc again at his lab, but Doc caused an explosion that seemingly killed him and his henchman.

Doctor Death would appear one issue later attempting the same scheme with his new henchman Mikhail. Doc only managed to scare one person with his deadly gas, but she was a widower who's money decreased from The Great Depression. Batman successfully captures Doctor Death and discovers his face has been burnt by the aforementioned explosion.

Doc would appear in the 80's as a paraplegic attempting to use his gaseous scheme again. This time he had a henchman named Togo. Seeing a theme here? In 2003, Doctor Death came back as a biological weapon designer working with Gotham gangster Black Mask. He was also one of many mad scientists forced into working for The Suicide Squad.

In 2011, Scott Snyder did a new origin story for Batman called "Zero Year" where Doctor Death was reinvented as a scientist working for Wayne Industries. After Hellfern's son died on a military search mission for Bruce Wayne (this was during Bruce's worldwide training) Hellfern began working on a serum that could increase bone matter. Due to testing on himself, Hellfern became deformed and insane, becoming Doctor Death and using the serum to cause violent bone growth that would kill his victims. During his final battle with Batman, Doctor Death was hit with shrapnel and his bone serum's overgrowth killed him.

I can see why Doctor Death was forgotten as a Batman foe, he's far too simple. But back in the Golden Age simple wasn't a problem. Back then readers didn't expect anything impressive out of bad guys, all that mattered was that they were bad. Even when he was reinvented in 2011, Doctor Death was still very underwhelming. The idea of a serum that creates bone marrow is pretty cool and the horror aspect of the character is a visual plus, but at the end of the day he's just an old man with poison. Characters like The Joker, The Riddler, Bane, and Two-Face all started out simple, but under clever writing developed unique characteristics. The same could be done for Doctor Death if anyone cared enough to try. At any rate, Doctor Death set the bar for what a Batman villain could be and what more they could become.

Thanks for reading.

What do you think of Doctor Death? Comment below!