Scarecrow (DC Comics)

• 1. Introduction

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  The DC Comics supervillain known as the Scarecrow has given himself a title: the Master of Fear. Behind the stitched burlap mask is Dr. Jonathan Crane, and he is not chasing money or power. His crimes are experiments. He releases a hallucinogenic drug he calls fear toxin on the people of Gotham City, then watches what terror does to them. Batman, the city's protector, is his most prized test subject. Crane's pleasure is sadistic, and it is sincere. This documentary asks how a lanky figure in a straw-stuffed costume became one of Batman's most enduring enemies. It asks how a man's childhood could be rewritten three different ways and still produce the same villain. It asks what the toxin actually does inside a victim's mind. And it asks the strangest question of all. What happens to a collector of fear when he can no longer feel it himself?

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• 2. Sleepy Hollow Roots

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  World's Finest Comics #3, dated September 1941, introduced a new enemy for Batman, created by writer Bill Finger and artist Sheldon Moldoff. The creators looked to American literature. Ichabod Crane, the hero of Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, inspired both the villain's lanky frame and his alter ego's name, Jonathan Crane.

  The first run was brief. In the 1940s the Scarecrow made only two appearances, and then he faded from the page.

  Gardner Fox brought him back in Batman #189, from February 1967. That issue debuted the signature weapon, the fear toxin, which the comic depicted as a bag of dust. After that revival, the character stayed relatively unchanged through the Bronze Age of Comic Books.

  The next change came with the multi-title event Crisis on Infinite Earths, which rebooted the DC universe in 1986. Batman Annual #19 and the miniseries Batman/Scarecrow: Year One expanded his origin. Those stories also revealed that Crane himself is afraid of bats.

  In 2011 the New 52 reboot altered his origin again, and that new version kept only some of the old elements. Each reboot handed Crane a different childhood, and the differences are striking.

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• 3. Three Childhoods

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  In one telling, Jonathan Crane is born in Georgia and raised under the cruelty of his great-grandmother. At school, classmates torment him because he resembles the schoolmaster from Sleepy Hollow. He decides to turn fear into a weapon, to be used on others before they can use it to defeat him.

  His senior year brings the breaking point. School bully Bo Griggs humiliates him, and cheerleader Sherry Squires rejects him. At the senior prom he puts on a scarecrow costume and carries a water pistol that looks like a real gun. He appears in the school parking lot, and chaos follows. Griggs crashes his car, paralyzing himself and killing Squires.

  Crane's fixation on fear leads him to a career in psychology. He takes a position at Arkham Asylum and runs fear-inducing experiments on his patients. He also teaches psychology at Gotham University, specializing in phobias, and he mentors a young Thomas Elliot there. He loses his job after firing a gun inside a packed classroom and accidentally wounding a student. He answers by killing the professors responsible and becomes a career criminal. In Sandman (vol. 2) #5, he makes a cameo.

  Stories by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale revise this history. In their version Crane is raised by an abusive, fanatically religious great-grandfather, whom he murders as a teenager. Their Scarecrow speaks in nursery rhymes, and he is one of the more deranged members of Batman's rogues gallery.

  The New 52 version, first seen in Batman: The Dark Knight #4 from February 2012 and written by David Finch and Paul Jenkins, is darker still. His father, Gerald Crane, uses the boy as a subject in fear experiments. One day Gerald locks Jonathan in a small dark room, then dies of a heart attack before he can open it. The boy is trapped for days until university employees find him.

  This Crane becomes a psychologist who specializes in phobias, and he begins testing his toxin on patients. The university fires him after he covers an arachnophobic student with spiders. He crosses into crime after stabbing a patient to death.

  Whatever the childhood, the adult goal is the same. He wants to make fear something he can carry.

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• 4. Tools of Fear

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  A hand-held sprayer shaped like a human skull is one of the Scarecrow's favorite delivery tools. He also hands out special straws that snap in half to release the toxin.

  The chemistry behind it draws on his skill in biochemistry and toxicology. He atomizes a mix of chemicals, including powerful synthetic adrenocortical secretions and other hallucinogens. The mixture can be inhaled or injected into the bloodstream. It amplifies the victim's darkest fear into a terrifying hallucination.

  Over the years its potency has climbed. In some stories it can trigger an almost instant heart attack from pure terror. In others it leaves the victim in a permanent psychosis of chronic fear. Some versions are strong enough to affect Superman. In one story Crane mixes the toxin with kryptonite to weaken and terrify the Man of Steel at once. In another he concocts a chemical with wildfowl pheromones from his childhood, which makes nearby birds attack his opponents.

  Chemistry is only half of his craft. Crane is a walking textbook on anxiety disorders and psychoactive drugs, and he can recite the name and description of nearly every known phobia. He can pick apart a person's mind with words alone, and he once drove two men to suicide that way.

  That insight has even been useful to heroes. Aquaman needs help understanding a serial killer in Sub Diego, which is San Diego after a secret organization sank it and turned its residents into water-breathers. He consults Scarecrow. Scarecrow sees the killer is choosing victims by their initials, which spell out the message "I can't take it any more". That lets Aquaman identify the killer and the final target.

  It can also be turned against the vulnerable. A story involving Alberto, the son of Carmine Falcone, shows how. Scarecrow decides that Alberto fears his father. He poisons Alberto's cigarettes with the toxin to bring that fear out. Calendar Man talks to Alberto while the drug makes him hear his father's voice. Together they push Alberto toward an unsuccessful assassination attempt on his sister, Sofia Gigante.

  Despite a scrawny build, Crane is also a skilled martial artist. His long limbs power a personal style he calls violent dancing, which grew from his training in the White Crane style of Kung Fu. For that fighting he sometimes carries a sickle or a scythe.

  The toxin can reach Superman, yet it has stopped working on the man who invented it.

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• 5. Hunger for Fear

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  Years of breathing his own creation have left Crane with brain damage, and it has nearly erased his ability to feel afraid. Batman is the one exception. Crane is addicted to fear, so he compulsively hunts for confrontations with the Dark Knight to get his fix.

  Otherwise he is cruel, sadistic, deranged and manipulative. He takes pleasure in frightening victims, sometimes literally to death. His humor is warped, though not to the degree of Black Mask or the Joker. He taunts and quips about his toxin and his love of terrifying others.

  The Blackest Night storyline puts his condition in the harshest light. In its fourth issue, his immunity to fear makes him practically invisible to the invading Black Lanterns. Batman's disappearance in the Batman R.I.P. storyline has pushed his sanity even further. He now exposes himself to the revenant army on purpose, knowing that only Batman could scare him again.

  Then a duplicate of Sinestro's power ring deputizes him into the Sinestro Corps. For the first time in years he feels fear, and he follows Sinestro's orders gleefully and without question. He proves capable at shaping constructs from the light of fear. His joy ends when Lex Luthor, overwhelmed by the orange light of Avarice, steals the ring.

  In Brightest Day, Scarecrow takes revenge by kidnapping and murdering college interns who work for LexCorp. Robin and Supergirl try to stop him, and he unleashes a new toxin strong enough to affect a Kryptonian. Supergirl sees visions of a Black Lantern Reactron, but she snaps out of it and helps Robin defeat him. Later, Deathstroke and the Titans break into Arkham to capture another inmate, and that raid frees Scarecrow.

  In Alan Grant's story The God of Fear, his hunger turns into a god complex. He projects an enormous hologram of himself across the sky so Gotham will worship him as a literal god of fear.

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• 6. Bad Company

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  Professor Hugo Strange breaks Scarecrow out of Arkham in Doug Moench's story Terror, set in Batman's early years. He gives Crane "therapy" meant to train him to defeat Batman. The therapy works, and Scarecrow turns on his benefactor. He impales Strange on a weather vane and throws him into the cellar of his own mansion. Then he lures Batman to Crime Alley and decapitates a former classmate in front of him. Batman and Catwoman catch him. She had been captured and photographed unmasked when Scarecrow tried to blackmail her into helping him. Strange's fate stays unclear, because Batman and Scarecrow may both have been hallucinating from the toxin.

  In Batman: The Long Halloween, Scarecrow escapes Arkham on Mother's Day with help from Carmine Falcone. He gases Batman during the escape, and Batman retreats to his parents' grave. There Commissioner Jim Gordon arrests Bruce Wayne over suspected ties to Falcone. On Independence Day, Scarecrow robs a bank with the Mad Hatter for Falcone, and Batman and Catwoman stop them. In Batman: Dark Victory he joins Two-Face's gang and puts fear gas into children's dolls on Christmas Eve.

  His partnerships rarely last. In Knightfall and Shadow of the Bat, he teams with the Joker to ransom Gotham's mayor, and Batman foils them. Scarecrow sprays the Joker with fear gas, but it has no effect. The Joker beats him senseless with a chair. Later Scarecrow commands an army of hypnotized college students to spread his toxin, with a lieutenant who is the son of the first man he killed. Batman-Azrael and Anarky confront him. Anarky saves the boy after Scarecrow tries to escape by forcing him off a building.

  In the 2004 story As the Crow Flies, the Penguin hires him under false pretenses. Dr. Linda Friitawa secretly mutates him into the Scarebeast, a monstrous creature with great strength and endurance that emits fear toxin from its body. The change only happens when he is under physical strain. During War Games, Black Mask literally throws him at a security measure in the Clock Tower, and the shock transforms him. The Scarebeast rampages outside, hunting Black Mask, and appears defeated only after the Clock Tower explodes.

  In Gotham Underground, Tobias Whale betrays Scarecrow simply for touching his shoulder. Whale hates masked people because his grandfather was among the first citizens of Gotham killed by a masked criminal. In Batman: Hush, Scarecrow writes profiles of Gotham's villains so the Riddler and Hush can manipulate them. In Batman: Heart of Hush, he kidnaps a child and activates a Venom implant, but Batman defeats him by tying the boy's teddy bear to him.

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• 7. Gotham's War

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  In Batman: The Dark Knight, Scarecrow kidnaps Poison Ivy and works with Bane to make a new form of Venom infused with fear toxin. Superman and the Flash help Batman defeat them. In a six-issue arc by Gregg Hurwitz, starting with issue #10, he abducts Commissioner James Gordon and several children and releases his toxin into the atmosphere. During the Death of the Family arc, the Joker uses him as a pawn and calls him Batman's physician.

  Swamp Thing (vol. 5) #19, from June 2013, finds him clipping flowers for his toxins at the Metropolis Botanical Garden. Swamp Thing tries to save him from a poisonous flower, not knowing who he is. Scarecrow answers by dosing Swamp Thing, who loses control of his powers until Superman steps in. Afterward, the Outsider of the Secret Society of Super Villains invites him to join, and he accepts.

  Villains Month in September 2013 gave him his own issue, Detective Comics (vol. 2) #23.3, titled The Scarecrow #1. A war is coming at Blackgate Penitentiary, and Scarecrow visits Killer Croc, Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy and the Riddler to learn their alliances. The Penguin has already blown up the bridges into Gotham. Scarecrow tries to steal frozen Talons from the Court of Owls with Man-Bat, and Killer Croc rescues them. He gives Croc control of Wayne Tower, then douses the Talons in fear gas and controls them with the Mad Hatter's mind-control technology. Bane breaks that control, and when he declares Gotham his, he has Scarecrow hanged between two buildings.

  In Batman and Robin Eternal, flashbacks make Scarecrow the first villain faced by Dick Grayson as Robin in the New 52 universe. Their investigation leads to Mother, a woman who thinks trauma makes people stronger. She has Scarecrow develop a toxin that makes the brain suffer a massive trauma. He turns on her because victims would lose the ability to feel anything. Batman has him give her a fake profile claiming Batman is a scarred child terrified of losing those he cares for. Later the Bat-Family abducts him to brew a new batch, since it cancels the effect of Mother's hypnotic signal.

  In DC Rebirth, Scarecrow and the Haunter release a low dose of toxin on Christmas, and both are paralyzed by it. Later he uses a Sinestro Corps ring to stir up fear and rage in Gotham's citizens, provoking Alfred Pennyworth into threatening to shoot Simon Baz. In Doomsday Clock he meets with the Riddler about the Superman Theory. Shazam, flying to Gotham to take on villains outside his usual rogues gallery, falls to Scarecrow's gas during a hostage situation until Batman administers an antidote.

  During Infinite Frontier, a re-designed Crane is the main foe of the crossover Fear State.

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• 8. Echoes and Doubles

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  Abigail O'Shay is a Gotham University student whose doctoral thesis covers vigilantes like the Bat-Family, whom she calls the "cape and cowl crowd". She wants to know what trauma drives a person to fight crime in costume. Then she learns it first hand. Jonathan Crane makes her a test subject, intending to see whether his toxin is ready for use on Batman. She spends more than a year in Arkham Asylum recovering.

  Blaming Batman for her ordeal, she becomes Madame Crow and joins the Victim Syndicate. Her gauntlets fire needles filled with an anti-fear toxin, a reversal of Scarecrow's weapon. Her goal is to stop anyone from feeling the fear she felt.

  Other universes offer further doubles. In Batman: Dark Knight Dynasty, Jenna Clarke is a metahuman with dissociative identity disorder, based on both Jonathan Crane and Two-Face. Her alternate personality, Scarecrone, can invade a person's psyche and manifest illusions from their fears by touching them. When Scarecrone emerges, it scars the right side of Clarke's face. Vandal Savage has developed a formula that forces Scarecrone out whenever he needs her.

  In Batman Beyond (vol. 5), a future incarnation named Adalyn Stern is traumatized as a child when she sees Batman beat her gang leader. Institutional care places her with one of Crane's disciples, who deepens her fear of Batman. Later she is Jack Ryder's co-anchor at the New 52 news station until she is uncovered and sent to Arkham. In Absolute Batman, Scarecrow is a scientist at Ark M, followed by a flock of crows.

  On screen, Cillian Murphy plays him in The Dark Knight Trilogy. Charlie Tahan and David W. Thompson portray him in Gotham, and Vincent Kartheiser in Titans. His voice has come from Henry Polic II, Jeffrey Combs, Dino Andrade, John Noble and Robert Englund, among others, in animation and video games.

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