10 Things You Need To Know About Black Mask
3. He Was King Of Crime In Gotham
Black Mask may have seemed like a third rate villain for most of his career, but he proved he has what it takes to enter the big leagues when he took over every criminal organisation in Gotham.
The obscenely long Batman crossover 'War Games' began with teen crimefighter Stephanie Brown a.k.a Spoiler stealing one of Bruce's contingency plans. Stephanie had recently been fired as Robin and wanted to prove herself to the Caped Crusader by implementing one of his most ambitious schemes, to unite all the gangs of Gotham under the rule of Matches Malone.
Unfortunately, Spoiler had no way of knowing that Matches was an alias of Bruce Wayne rather than his employee. This mistake caused the meeting between gang leaders to go horribly wrong and they all turned on each other when Matches didn't show up. The fallout was an all-out war between the various gangs of Gotham, turning the city into a battle zone.
While everything was going to hell (helpfully told to us through numerous issues whose plots can be summed up as "things continues to be terrible"), Black Mask learned of the plan and twisted it to his own means, taking control of every gang in Gotham and becoming the city's one and only crime lord.
Having an irredeemable psychopath as the head of all crime probably wasn't quite the outcome Batman had hoped for but oh well.