10 Batman Villains That Have Only Appeared Once (So Far)

By Chris Quicksilver /

4. Bedbug

Paul Dini has created a ton of great Batman villains, too many to list here, but some of his lesser-known Bat-tagonists have been unfairly forgotten about. Bedbug is such a character. Bedbug first appeared in the story House of Hush, written by Dini and drawn by the awesome Dustin Nguyen. The character is depicted as a gaunt, emaciated and thoroughly disgusting person covered in bedsores and crawling with insects. He wears a bedsheet and little else besides a bizarre, bug-like helmet (a helmet that is filled with bugs, by the way. Yeah, I know, that€™s exactly what I thought...). Bedbug has the ability to control anyone bitten by his bugs, but only when they lose consciousness or go to sleep. He then dictates that his €˜sleepers€™ commit crimes of his choosing. Once bitten, a potential 'sleeper' can become active at literally any time after a long day and a warm cup of Horlicks, but it could take years for Bedbug to activate them. Thus, his agents are sleepers both literally and figuratively. Because of this, Bedbug€™s power level is potentially catastrophic and, unlike Clayface (a character so mind-numbingly stupid that he has yet to realize that he could, at any time, absorb himself into the earth, discover the Batcave, and them embark on killing and replacing Batman€™s allies one-by-one), he seems to be acutely aware of the magnitude of his power. In his debut appearance, Bedbug manipulated both a sleeping Harley Quinn and The Penguin, as well as almost killing Batman and Catwoman. After that, he decided to lay low for a while and quietly build up his sleeping army. A thoroughly creepy (not to mention abjectly nauseating) character, Bedbug is just crying out for further development and a major-league showdown with The Dark Knight. His only other appearance was in the Arkham City video game tie-in comics, so he has technically appeared twice, but since that series isn€™t related to the regular comics (and I really wanted to write about Bedbug), I€™ll let it go.