Hugo Strange
From Free net encyclopedia
Hugo Strange is a fictional character in DC Comics and a nemesis of Batman.
History
He first appeared in Detective Comics #36 (February, 1940) and is considered one of the first recurring villains Batman ever faced. He preceded The Joker and Catwoman by a couple of months. He appeared once during the Golden Age as a scientist who turned homeless test subjects into hulking zombies. A punch from Batman sent him tumbling off of a cliff, and he was seen falling to his supposed death in Detective Comics #46.
He returned in the 1970s during the "Strange Apparations" arc. Having survived his earlier "death," Strange was running a private hospital for Gotham's wealthy where he held them hostage for ransom. When Bruce Wayne checked into the hospital to recover discreetly from radiation burns he received as Batman, Strange discovered Batman's dual identity and attempted to auction the knowledge off to Gotham's top villains. Mob boss Rupert Thorne tried to torture the information out of him, but apparently ended up killing Strange (who'd actually survived) before he could learn that Wayne was Batman.
Strange's "ghost" haunted Thorne until he turned himself in to authorities.
The Earth-Two version of Strange also survived the fall he himself experienced; however, he was paralyzed until one of his devices enabled him to capture Starman's cosmic rod. During the storm he generated in Gotham to obtain the device, he created a dimensional doorway to Earth-One, which brought that universe's Batman over and allowed he and Robin to join with Batwoman in defeating Strange, overcoming his attempts to defeat them with their own Bat-gadgets.
Post-Crisis, Strange was reintroduced in the "Prey" arc as 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 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. Scarecrow turned on Strange, however, impaling him on a weathervane 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 toxin 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. Strange, who had mysteriously returned to life, stopped him. 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.
Both "Prey" and "Terror" were set during Batman's early years. In the modern timeline he returned in a five part arc that ran through Gotham Knights #8-12. He was posing as a psychiatrist doing standard stress evaluations at Wayne Enterprises. While Bruce Wayne was on his couch, Strange drugged him with a powerful hallucinogen in order to coax Wayne into admitting that he was Batman. Batman escaped and triggered a post-hypnotic suggestion in himself forcing him to completely repress the Batman aspect of his mind until Robin and Nightwing could thwart Strange and take him to Arkham Asylum.
Other media
In Batman: The Animated Series, he ran a rest hospital that he used to blackmail Gotham's elite with secrets he found out with a machine that read minds. Bruce Wayne went to the hospital and went under the "treatment," which allowed Strange to discover his secret identity. He auctioned off this information to several famous villains (including Two-Face, who had personally known Bruce Wayne), who later accused him of fraud when Batman switched the tape with one he had created that portrayed Strange as fabricating the secret identity. They then tried to kill him by throwing him out of an airplane. Batman saved him at the last minute, however, and had Robin show up at the crime scene disguised as Bruce Wayne to discredit Strange's claims of knowing the Dark Knight's secret identity. Strange was voiced by Ray Buktenica.
In Justice League Unlimited, Strange returned as a member of Project Cadmus. His appearance was excessively brief, however: seated at the Cadmus table in "The Doomsday Sanction" with no lines. Producer/writer Dwayne McDuffie confirmed that Strange's appearance was intended to set up a later use of the character, presumably in "Question Authority", where a torture scene serves to have Cadmus need to pull information from the Question's mind (a process that Strange in undoubtedly familiar with). However, due to the Bat-Embargo, Strange became unavailable, and his place in Cadmus was taken by Dr. Moon.
In the new The Batman series Strange appears fat and with hair in the episode Strange Minds with the Joker. He was voiced by the late Frank Gorshin (who played The Riddler in the 1960s Batman TV show.)