Hugo Strange

Not to be confused with Doctor Strange or Doc Strange.

Hugo Strange
Cover to Batman: Gotham Knights #9. Art by Brian Bolland.
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
First appearance	Detective Comics #36 (February 1940)
Created by	Bill Finger Bob Kane
In-story information
Alter ego	Hugo Strange
Notable aliases	Batman, Dr. Victor Absonus
Abilities	Genius-level intellect Trained in psychology, chemistry, and biology

Hugo Strange is a fictional supervillain appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics, commonly as an adversary of the superhero Batman. He is one of Batman's first recurring villains. Hugo Strange is also the first Batman villain to deduce the hero's secret identity.

Publication history

Hugo Strange first appeared in Detective Comics #36 (February 1940) and was created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane.

Fictional character biography

Pre-Crisis

Hugo Strange first appears as a scientist who uses a stolen "concentrated lightning" machine to generate a dense fog every night, allowing his gang such as the E-sida to rob banks unseen, though he knows Batman poses a threat to him. Batman, who already knows of Strange's experiments, begins investigating him after one of his henchmen kills a man. When his henchmen are apprehended, Strange vows to set a trap for Batman as the next target on the list. When Batman arrives, over a dozen of Strange's men are waiting for him, and one of them knocks him out with a blackjack. He wakes up in Strange's lair, where Strange hangs him from his wrists and lashes him with a whip. Batman breaks the ropes, gasses the room, and tackles Strange, who is jailed but plans to escape. In Hugo's second appearance he escapes from the "city asylum" with a gang of criminals, then breaks out "five insane patients" and uses them as test subjects, turning them into hulking 15 ft zombies by administering a powerful artificial growth hormone that acts on the pituitary gland. They wear bulletproof clothing, and he releases them to wreak havoc in Gotham City while his men commit robberies. Strange administers the serum to Batman after the giants capture him, saying it will work in 18 hours. Batman tricks two of the monsters into killing each other, and then saves himself by creating a drug that prevents any abnormal secretions from the pituitary gland. He is then able to kill all the other monsters, and sends Strange to his apparent demise, although he suspects that the mad scientist has survived. In Detective Comics #46 Strange starts spreading a fear-inducing powder around the city until a punch from Batman sends him falling to his apparent death.

He returned in the 1970s during the "Strange Apparitions" story arc. Having survived his earlier "death", Strange is running a private hospital for Gotham's wealthiest citizens—where he holds them to ransom and changes them into monsters. When Bruce Wayne checks into the hospital to recover discreetly from radiation burns he sustained while fighting Doctor Phosphorus, Strange finds out that Wayne is Batman and proceeds to wreak havoc on his personal life. Strange then attempts to auction the identity of Batman to City Council Boss Rupert Thorne, Penguin, and Joker. Thorne has Strange kidnapped and beaten to reveal Batman's identity, but Strange apparently dies before he can tell them. Strange's ghost comes back to haunt Thorne, driving the council boss insane. Thorne confesses his long career of corruption and is sent to prison.

As revealed in Batman #356 (Feb. 1983) Strange had indeed survived the beating from Thorne's men, by using yoga to slow his heartbeat to an undetectable level. Strange created the 'ghost' that haunted Thorne which drove him to confess to the authorities. Subsequently, Strange attempts to weaken Bruce Wayne through the use of drugs and robots, with the ultimate goal of usurping the mantle of Batman. The plan fails, and Strange apparently dies once more when he blows up a replica of Wayne Manor.

Earth-Two

The Earth-Two version of Strange also survives the fall he experienced. He is left paralyzed but after years of physical therapy, he regains enough movement to write out the surgical techniques needed to repair the damage to his body – and bribes a surgeon to perform the operation. The surgeon lacks Strange's skill, and the operation leaves Strange physically deformed (the surgeon dies for his failure). Strange uses one of his devices to capture Starman's cosmic rod, to use its power to attack everyone and everything Batman holds dear. He generates a storm in Gotham to obtain the device, which creates a dimensional doorway to Earth-One, bringing that universe's Batman over to Earth-Two and allows him and that world's Robin to join with the original Batwoman in defeating Strange. Strange realizes that he is in fact angry at his own wasted life and deformed body. Strange then uses the Cosmic Rod to commit suicide. (The Brave and the Bold #182, January 1982)

Post-Crisis

In the Post-Crisis continuity, Strange was reintroduced in the "Prey" arc as a psychiatrist enlisted to help a police taskforce capture Batman. While brilliant at his work, he was portrayed as being equally atrocious; Strange was so obsessed with Batman that he took to dressing up like him in private. Strange ends up escalating the scales against Batman by brainwashing a police officer to become a violent vigilante, framing Batman for kidnapping the Mayor's daughter, and deducing Batman's true identity as Bruce Wayne. Batman foils Strange's plot and forces him to doubt his own conclusion about his true identity, before he can share it with anyone else.

According to Commissioner James Gordon, Strange was "abandoned as a child, grew up in state homes. A bright kid, but he apparently had a hell of a temper. Nobody knows how he put himself through college and medical school." He was raised in an orphanage on the lower East Side of Gotham, not far from the infamous "Crime Alley", in the heart of a part of Gotham known as "Hell's Crucible". Strange became professor of Psychiatry at Gotham State University, but had his tenure suspended due to his increasingly bizarre genetic engineering theories. At some point, he is approached by an Indian man named Sanjay, who seeks Strange's aid in curing his sick brother. Strange agrees to help, and Sanjay works loyally by his side from that point onward. Borrowing money from gangster Sal Maroni, who is in the employ of Gotham's criminal kingpin Carmine Falcone, Strange sets up a lab. He then bribes a corrupt orderly to give him incurably insane inmates from Arkham Asylum—who have been institutionalized so long that they will not be missed.

Strange's experiments have literally monstrous results, with his test subjects turning into gigantic, mindless "Monster Men", possessing superhuman strength and cannibalistic instincts. Strange uses these Monster Men to raise the money he needs to pay back his Mafia connections. Batman becomes involved after discovering some of the gruesome remains of the Monster's Men's cannibalistic rampages. When Strange sets his creations free at an illegal poker game, helping himself to the victims' money after the slaughter, his Mafia connections begin to grow suspicious. Batman tracks Strange down, but is captured by Sanjay and thrown to the Monster Men as an intended meal. Batman not only holds off the creatures, but uses them in part of an inventive escape. Strange is enthralled by Batman, believing that he has found a genetically perfect man. He creates one final Monster Man using a drop of Batman's blood, and while his creation still has many of the flaws of its "brothers", it lacks most of the grotesque disfigurements that had plagued Strange's earlier work. Strange is forced to destroy his lab in order to evade capture. Soon after, he turns the Monster Men loose, including Sanjay's brother (who had been mutated in a failed attempt to cure him), at Falcone's estate, where Strange's Mafia connections are staying. Strange wants a fresh start, and realizes that the Mafia is still a link to his experiments. In the battle that follows, all of the Monster Men are killed, along with Sanjay (who was attempting to avenge his brother). Strange escapes amid the chaos, and succeeds in eradicating all links between himself and his experiments. Confident that he can not be linked to them, he begins to appear on TV as a psychological expert on the Batman.

It is possible that the events of Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy's "Prey" story arc take place at this point. Partly due to Hugo Strange's appearance on TV as a psychological expert, Captain Gordon is ordered to put together a Task Force to capture Batman, with Strange working as a consultant to try to discover Batman's identity. As the investigation continues, Strange grows increasingly monomaniacal in his obsession with Batman, expressing a desire to become Batman to the point that he dresses up in a duplicate costume. To that end, he attempts to kill the Caped Crusader, and then take his place, but constantly underestimates the physical demands Batman has placed on himself to become what he is now (to the extent that his initial attempts to deduce Batman's identity focuses on a personal tragedy such as a mugging or murder in the last five years rather than the lifetime of training that Gordon already knows would be required), as well as diagnosing Batman with various personality flaws such as split personality to account for his costume when Gordon is able to more accurately define Batman's goals as 'scaring the pants off criminals'. Strange eventually concludes that Bruce Wayne is most likely Batman, brainwashes the head of the police Task Force into becoming a lethal vigilante to turn public sentiment against Batman, and kidnaps the mayor's daughter. Despite his attempt to break Batman by creating recordings and mannequins of Thomas and Martha Wayne blaming Bruce for their deaths, Bruce is able to collect himself and focus in the Batcave, confronting Strange to claim that he knows nothing about Strange's attack, casting doubt on Strange's deduction. Strange is ultimately caught, shot twice by the task force when he attempts to escape dressed in his duplicate Batman costume, and dumped into a river; it was then assumed he had died.

In Doug Moench's "Terror" storyline, Strange mysteriously comes back. He decides to work with another of Batman's enemies, the Scarecrow, and use him as a tool to help him capture Batman, while simultaneously having fallen into a further delusional state as he engages in a 'relationship' with a female mannequin in Batman's cowl, reflecting his warped dual admiration and loathing of Batman. Scarecrow turns on Strange when Strange's therapy proves effective enough to turn Scarecrow against his 'benefactor', impaling him on a weather vane and throwing him in the cellar of his own mansion. The Scarecrow then uses Strange's mansion as a trap for Batman, but his attempt to use Strange's plan fails when he only learns of Strange's plan to use Crime Alley as the scene of a trap while ignorant of the reasons why that alley is so significant to Batman, with his 'trap' merely consisting of luring Batman into the alley and decapitating a former classmate of Crane's. With Catwoman's help, Batman locates Scarecrow's hideout and catches Scarecrow in the cellar with Strange's body before the house is destroyed in a fire, but loses sight of Strange, with it being unclear whether Strange had actually survived the fall onto the weather vane- he claimed that he lured rats to himself by using his sweat so that he could eat them- or if Scarecrow and Batman were hallucinating from exposure to Crane's new fear-gas, although Batman concludes that the subsequent explosion of the house has definitely killed Strange.

Both "Prey" and "Terror" are set during Batman's early years. In the modern timeline, Strange returns in a four-part arc that ran through Gotham Knights #8–11. He is posing as a psychiatrist doing standard stress evaluations at Wayne Enterprises. While Bruce Wayne is on the couch, Strange drugs him with a powerful hallucinogen in order to coax Wayne into admitting that he is Batman. Batman escapes and triggers a post-hypnotic suggestion in himself, forcing him to completely repress the Batman aspect of his mind until Robin and Nightwing can thwart Strange. Believing that his theory that Bruce Wayne is Batman has been disproved, and that he may have actually killed Batman, Strange has a mental breakdown and is taken to Arkham Asylum.

Following that, Strange reappears as the head of a gang of super-criminals attempting to take control of Gotham's East Side, then controlled by Catwoman. Catwoman joins Strange's gang, then allows its members to "find out" that she intends to betray them, faking her death when they attempt to eliminate her. Although she defeats and imprisons most of the gang, and even convinces Strange to leave the East Side alone, Strange still mocks her by pointing out that he had faked his own death far more often than she had.

In Batman #665, Batman tells Tim Drake that a huge man dressed like a combination of Bane and Batman had beaten him up, and he suspects the imposter had used "Hugo Strange's Monster Serum and Daily Venom shots" to gain his size and strength.

In the series Gotham Underground, Strange is associating with other villains such as the Mad Hatter, Doctor Death, and Two-Face. Strange and the others are rounded up by the Suicide Squad.

Strange takes part in the limited series Salvation Run. He is amongst the villains imprisoned on another planet.

Strange appears in The Batman Adventures, which is set in the DC Animated Universe. Issues 35 and 36 of the comic book provide him with a tragic backstory: he witnessed the murder of his son David by mob boss Rupert Thorne, and was so overcome with grief that he sought to literally erase the memory with his mind control technology. The plan backfired, however; following the experiment, he could remember nothing but his son's death. After Batman stops him from killing Thorne, Strange is imprisoned in Arkham Asylum.

The New 52

The New 52 (a reboot of the DC Comics universe) introduces the reader to his son Eli Strange for the first time, playing poker with the Russian Mob. Eli is first seen playing a game of poker with the Russian mob, betting a valuable bracelet, winning big and cleaning house. Before he can walk away with his winnings, the mobster forces him to play another hand, in which he discovers Eli's sleeve loaded with cards. Before he can give the order to have him killed, the mobster's thugs realize their bracelet (Eli's was a fake replica) had been stolen, Catwoman pounces from the ceiling and takes out the entire group of criminals. She thanks Eli for being her distraction (the two having been working together the entire time) and tells him to run home to his father, which he is last seen doing.

Later, Hugo Strange uses Eli to oversee an operation to dose Gotham with Fear Gas. Scarecrow led Batman to believe that a small boy in a picture would be harmed unless he put a stop to it. Arriving at the scene, Batman realizes that the small boy was actually Eli. He manages to avert the disaster and Eli is arrested.

During the Forever Evil storyline, Hugo Strange is among the villains recruited by the Crime Syndicate to join the Secret Society of Super Villains.

DC Rebirth

Hugo Strange appears in the DC Rebirth during the Night of the Monster Men crossover event.

Other versions

Batman '66

Hugo Strange is initially a psychiatrist at the Arkham Institute, until being revealed as a villain in Batman '66 meets the Man from U.N.C.L.E..

In other media

Television

Hugo Strange in Batman: The Animated Series.

Dr. Hugo Strange in Justice League Unlimited.

• Hugo Strange appears in the DC Animated Universe:
  • Hugo Strange is introduced in Batman: The Animated Series, voiced by Ray Buktenica. This version is a psychiatrist that runs a rest hospital that he uses to blackmail Gotham City's elite with secrets via a machine that reads minds. In the episode "The Strange Secret of Bruce Wayne", Bruce Wayne goes to the hospital and undergoes the "treatment" which allows Strange to discover Bruce's double life as Batman. He then auctions off this information to a trio of Gotham's top crime bosses: the Joker, Two-Face and the Penguin. After the villains simply pool their money and pay Strange rather than competing, Batman manages to switch the video with the Dark Knight's identity with a manufactured one which shows Strange boasting about his plan to scam the villains by giving them a fake identity for Batman. In an attempt to save himself, Strange blurts out that Batman is Wayne and the disbelieving trio then tries to kill him by throwing him out of an airplane. However, Batman saves him at the last minute and had Dick Grayson (disguised as Bruce Wayne) show up at the crime scene to discredit Strange's claims of knowing Batman's secret identity as Strange is then taken into police custody.
  • Hugo Strange is seen in a non-voiced cameo appearance in Justice League Unlimited. In the episode "The Doomsday Sanction", he is now a member of Project Cadmus seated at a table within Cadmus' headquarters with no lines. It is possible that Strange is the one who provides Amanda Waller with Batman's real identity. Producer/writer Dwayne McDuffie confirmed that the character's appearance was intended to set up for the episode "Question Authority" during a torture scene to pull information from the Question's mind. But due to the production of The Batman, Warner Brothers withheld most Batman characters and is replaced in Cadmus by Doctor Moon.
• Hugo Strange appears in The Batman voiced by Frank Gorshin and later by Richard Green. In this series, he is the Chief psychologist at Arkham Asylum. Hugo appears briefly in the episode "Meltdown" and as a primary character in the episode "Strange Minds". Strange is portrayed as being far more fascinated with the deranged criminals at Arkham Asylum and how their minds work than actually finding a cure for their madness, on more than one occasion provoking them to cause more mayhem. In this interpretation, he is a master chemist, programmer and skilled at robotics. In the episode "Fistful of Felt", Strange cures the Ventriloquist of his multiple personality disorder only to turn him again into a criminal. Despite his insistence that it was simply a test to see if he is truly cured, Batman warns Strange that he will be watching him. In the episode "Gotham's Ultimate Criminal Mastermind", he does in fact design a robotic villain called D.A.V.E. to hunt down Batman. He pulls a gun out at Batman, thus sealing his reputation as a villain. He is currently incarcerated in Arkham, having been ironically dubbed insane by his former colleagues. In the episode "Strange New World", Strange (from his cell in Arkham) infects Batman and Robin with a toxin claiming it to be an antidote. Under the drug's influence, the Dynamic Duo hallucinate that they are being pursued by zombies. Hugo claims that he has distributed a chemical throughout town, making everyone into zombies that obey his every command. This is later revealed to be a lie, concocted in order to trick Batman into spreading the real chemical. Robin is cured about halfway through the episode. Batman realizes the truth at the last moment and allows Batgirl to cure him. Even later in the same season, Strange appears as one of the many supervillains held hostage by the vigilante Rumor. As Rumor moves to the machine he would use to execute all criminals at once, Strange asks him about his motivation. Rumor replies that he wants to kill them all in retaliation for an attack by the Joker that crippled his boss. Strange laughs and tells him that the scheme is in fact motivated by his guilt over his failure to protect his boss rather than any sense of altruism or desire to protect Gotham from the captured villains. Strange later appears in the series finale "Lost Heroes", working with The Joining, helping them to capture the Justice League and extract their powers in return for ultimate knowledge of the universe. When Strange's work was complete, The Joining kept their promise but the massive amount of information (delivered directly into his brain) overloaded his cerebral cortex, leaving him catatonic.
• Hugo Strange appears in the Young Justice voiced by Adrian Pasdar. Introduced in the episode "Terrors", Hugo is the psychiatrist of Belle Reve working under warden Amanda Waller. During Icicle Sr.'s breakout attempt, Strange and Waller are trapped in a cell by the escaped inmates. After the breakout is thwarted by Superboy and Miss Martian then all of the prisoners (sans Riddler) are rounded up and returned to their cells, Hugo ends up becoming the new warden of the prison. In the episode's closing moments, it is revealed that he had been working with Icicle Sr. the entire time as part of a plot to take control of the prison on behalf of the Light (Project Cadmus' Board of Directors). In the episode "Humanity", Strange was seen viewing a surveillance of the team interrogating Professor Ivo on where T.O. Morrow's hideout is. Hugo even allows Ivo to send a transmission to Morrow (impersonated by Red Volcano at the time) warning him that Young Justice is heading his way. In the episode "Coldhearted", Batman and Flash visit Strange at Belle Reve where they state that they suspected that Captain Cold, Icicle Sr., Icicle Jr., Killer Frost and Mr. Freeze were behind the flying ice fortresses that buried the USA in winter. Hugo shows Batman and Flash some security footage stating that the five ice villains have never left their cells. As of the episode "Usual Suspects", his role in helping prisoners escape is known by the JLA and he is not seen again, meaning he is either on the run or has been captured in the five-year break between seasons one and two.
• Hugo Strange appears in a short animated film created by Bruce Timm in honor of Batman's 75th anniversary titled Batman: Strange Days, voiced by Brian George.

B.D. Wong as Hugo Strange in Gotham

• Professor Hugo Strange makes his live-action debut in season two of Gotham, portrayed by B.D. Wong. He is depicted as the Chief of Psychiatry at Arkham Asylum and overseer of Indian Hill, a secret division of Wayne Enterprises that performs inhumane experiments on superhuman individuals. In this continuity, Strange has a major effect on several villains in the Batman rogues gallery: subjecting Oswald Cobblepot to mind-altering experiments to make him a contributing member of society; and transforms Victor Fries and Bridgit Pike into Mr. Freeze and Firefly, respectively His number one project is resurrecting the dead; starting with Theo Galavan, whom he reinvents as the warrior Azrael. It is also revealed that he was a friend and colleague of Bruce Wayne's father Thomas, playing a role in the Wayne murders, and that his resurrection experiments are funded by a mysterious council. But the actions of a resurrected Fish Mooney lead to Strange's arrest while the various specimens in his care are set loose in Gotham. In Season 3, Fish Mooney breaks him out of his prison cell to find a cure for her condition. Penguin corners them in the woods, but decides to let them escape as Fish and Strange leave Gotham. Before they depart, Penguin tells both of them to never return to Gotham City.

Video games

• Strange is a featured villain and playable character in the minigame "Villain Hunt" on the Nintendo DS version of Lego Batman: The Video Game.
• Strange makes a cameo appearance in Injustice: Gods Among Us. He appears as one of the many villains present at Arkham Asylum.

Arkham series

Hugo Strange in a cinematic trailer for Batman: Arkham City

• Hugo Strange's character bio is unlockable in Batman: Arkham Asylum. He is revealed as having once been a psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum.
• Hugo Strange appears in Batman: Arkham City, voiced by Corey Burton. According to Rocksteady Studios, this is the first time Batman has faced him in this continuity. Dr. Hugo Strange, who has a shady past involving controversial experiments with behavior control, brainwashed Warden Quincy Sharp into becoming his puppet during his time at the Asylum. After the events of Arkham Asylum, Strange has Sharp run for mayor to obtain almost unlimited influence over the city. Soon, Sharp was elected, and Strange ordered him to propose a project called “Arkham City”, a city sized detention facility where criminals were allowed to run rampant. Once the project is authorized, Strange is appointed warden of the facility. It is revealed that he also brainwashed and manipulated ex-military contractors, known as TYGER Guards, into serving him by using technology created by the Mad Hatter. He continues his unethical research, disposing of anybody who attempts to uncover the truth by committing them to Arkham City. The game opens with Strange capturing Bruce Wayne (whom he knows is Batman's alter ego), and throwing him into Arkham City to die. During a conversation between the two, Strange claims that an operation code-named "Protocol 10" will mark Batman's failure and make him famous. Near the end of the game, "Protocol 10" is revealed to be the wholesale extermination of Arkham's criminal populace after their professional interest to Strange has expired. He accomplishes this by letting inmates "steal" Tyger weapons and convincing city hall that the inmates have taken control of Arkham City and that "Protocol 10" was the only way to stop them. When his private security force massacres hundreds of inmates with a barrage of air to surface missile strikes, Batman steals the codes for Strange's security from an attack chopper and breaches Wonder Tower, Strange's headquarters. Breaking through many TYGER Guards, Batman eventually reaches Strange and forcibly deactivates the operation. As Batman confronts him, Strange is stabbed in the back by Ra's al Ghul, who is revealed to be the benefactor and true mastermind of Strange's operation. While Batman argues with Ra's al Ghul over his plan, Strange's last act before succumbing to his wounds is activating Protocol 11, a self-destruct sequence for his command tower. Batman pushes Ra's al Ghul out the window leaving Strange inside as the tower explodes. Inmates can later be heard talking about Strange's sinister plan and how they are glad he's dead; One inmate even noting that Strange is "spread" all over Arkham City.

See also

• List of Batman Family adversaries