10 Crazy Villains The DC Cinematic Universe Will Never Admit Exist
4. The Ratcatcher
What's worse than making a catcher of jungle cats a supervillain? A catcher of rats. Debuting in Detective Comics #585 in 1988, The Ratcatcher was at one time a literal catcher of rats, named Otis Flannegan, since having lowered himself to a life of crime. He's primarily an enemy of Batman, but hasn't the malicious plotting of Joker or the sheer power of Bane, but instead, he catches and trains rats, commanding sewer rodents to help do his bidding in a way reminiscent of The Penguin in Tim Burton's Batman Returns. Believe it or not, it's every bit as terrible. He doesn't just enlist the help of rats, though; he also wields a gas gun, which is why he's often depicted as wearing a gas mask. That's totally terrifying, especially facing Batman, who probably has a gas mask and 15 antidotes on his utility belt. Mercifully, the character was killed, or vaporized, rather, in a 2005 comic after he was found hiding among rats and the homeless. A clear symptom of a bad case of the '80s, Ratcatcher seems like a really bad mix-up of Ghostbusters and the Ninja Turtles' rat sensei Splinter, without great criminal plotting or battles of epic proportion to make it worthwhile.
I'm an entertainment writer, as well as a fantasy, science fiction, and dystopia author. I began writing my first book, a medieval fantasy novel, when I was 12 years old. While I never published that work, it was instrumental in jump-starting my writing career, as I branched out into other stories and worlds, including space opera and dystopia. My first published work, Finding Sage, was completed and released in 2014. While working on Finding Sage, I began to expand my writing skills into other areas, picking up entertainment writing at first as a hobby, and then as a more serious undertaking. I now write for four websites and blogs, and continue working on writing more books.
