Hugo Strange is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics, commonly as an adversary of the superhero Batman. The character is one of Batman's first recurring villains, and was also one of the first to discover his secret identity. He first appeared in Detective Comics #36 (February 1940).
A notorious enemy of Batman, Hugo Strange has appeared in various forms of non-comics media, including animation, video games, and the live-action television series Gotham, where he is portrayed by BD Wong.
Contents
Fictional character biography
Pre-Crisis
Hugo Strange first appears in Detective Comics #36 (February 1940) as a scientist and criminal mastermind who uses a stolen "concentrated lightning" machine to generate a dense fog every night so his gang can rob banks unseen, though he knows that Batman poses a threat to him. Batman, who already knows of Strange's experiments, begins investigating him after one of Strange's henchmen commits a murder. When the robbers are apprehended, Strange vows to set a trap for Batman and deal with him personally. He has a dozen of his men ambush the vigilante, and one of them manages to knock him out with a blackjack. Batman 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 defeats Strange, who is jailed but quickly begins planning his escape.
In Batman #1 (spring 1940), Strange carries out his escape plan, recruits a new gang of criminals, then breaks out five patients from an insane asylum and uses them as test subjects, turning them into monsters using an artificial growth hormone. He outfits them with bulletproof clothing, and uses them to rampage through Gotham City and distract the police 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 creates a drug that prevents any abnormal secretions from the pituitary gland, preventing the transformation. After dealing with all the remaining monsters, Batman sends Strange to his apparent death in a fall from a cliff, although he suspects that the mad scientist has survived.
In Detective Comics #46 (December 1940), Strange returns and starts spreading a fear-inducing powder around the city until a punch from Batman again sends him falling off a cliff to his apparent death.
Hugo Strange returns in the "Strange Apparitions" story arc in Detective Comics #469-479 (May 1977-September–October 1978). Having survived his earlier "death", Strange left Gotham City and went to Europe for several years, where his criminal career prospered with no one to challenge him. Bored and hoping to pit his wits against Batman again, Strange, now using the alias of Dr. Todhunter, opens a private hospital, Graytowers Clinic, for Gotham's wealthiest citizens, where he holds them for ransom before mutating them into mindless monsters. When Bruce Wayne checks into the hospital to recover discreetly from radiation burns he sustained while fighting Doctor Phosphorus, Strange learns that Wayne is Batman and uses this information to wreak havoc on his personal life. Strange attempts to auction the identity of Batman to Rupert Thorne, Penguin, and Joker. Not wanting to lose, Thorne has Strange abducted and beaten by his men to reveal Batman's identity, but Strange apparently dies without ever telling him. Strange's ghost returns to haunt Thorne, driving him insane. Thorne confesses his corruption and is sent to Arkham Asylum.
Post-Crisis
In the post-Crisis continuity, Strange is reintroduced in the "Prey" storyline as an eccentric private psychiatrist enlisted to help a task force assigned to capture Batman by providing them with a psychological profile of the vigilante. While brilliant at his work, Strange is depicted as being equally unbalanced: he becomes so obsessed with the case, he starts wearing a replica Batman costume in private, convinced that he alone understands the darkness that drives Batman.
Strange was raised in an orphanage on the lower East Side of Gotham City, in a neighborhood known as "Hell's Crucible". As an adult, he became a professor of psychiatry at Gotham State University, but had his tenure suspended after using his position to promote a series of increasingly bizarre genetic engineering theories. 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 Sal Maroni, who is in the employ of Carmine Falcone, Strange sets up a private laboratory to test his theories. He then bribes a corrupt orderly to supply him with ideal test subjects: inmates from Arkham Asylum who have been institutionalized for so long that they will not be missed.
Strange's experiments transform his test subjects into "Monster Men", possessing superhuman strength and cannibalistic instincts. Strange uses the Monster Men to commit crimes so he can put together the money needed 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, the Gotham Mafia begins 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 as 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 creations. Strange is subsequently forced to destroy his lab to evade capture. Soon after, he sends the Monster Men to attack Falcone's private estate, including Sanjay's brother, who had also been mutated as a result of Strange's treatments. Strange intends to wipe out the Mob's leaders, erasing his debt and covering up their ties to his work. In the battle that follows, all of the Monster Men are killed, along with Sanjay, who abandons Strange and dies trying to avenge his brother. Strange escapes amid the chaos, and succeeds in eradicating all links between himself and his experiments. Confident that his criminal past is buried, he begins to appear on TV by reinventing himself as a "psychological expert" on Batman.
The New 52
In the continuity of The New 52, the 2011 reboot of the DC Universe, Detective Comics (vol. 2) introduces Hugo Strange's son, Eli Strange, for the first time. Eli is first seen playing a game of poker with members of the Russian Mob, betting a valuable bracelet, winning big and cleaning house. Before he can walk away with his winnings, one of the mobsters forces him to play another hand, then discovers Eli's sleeve is loaded with cards. Before he can have him killed, the criminals realize that their bracelet (Eli's was a fake replica) had been stolen. Catwoman then pounces from the ceiling and takes out the entire group. 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.
Strange tasks his son with overseeing 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. Later, Batman reveals that "Eli Strange" is actually an alias and that the boy's real name is Elliot Montrose.
In Forever Evil, Hugo Strange is among the supervillains recruited by the Crime Syndicate to join the Secret Society of Super Villains.
DC Rebirth
In the continuity of DC Rebirth, DC Comics' 2016 relaunch of its monthly superhero books, Hugo Strange appears during the "Night of the Monster Men" crossover story line. Although apparently now ignorant of Batman's identity, he is now determined to prove his superiority by attacking Gotham with a group of "Monster Men" created from the corpses of his former patients as representations of what Strange perceives as Batman's greatest flaws - his ego, grief, and fear - which ultimately provokes Batman into a confrontation at Strange's office penthouse headquarters. Strange wears what he terms a "suicide suit" - a near-replica of the Batsuit without the cape and cowl that is rigged to detonate if its wearer is subjected to any physical attack - on the assumption that Batman will have no choice but to surrender the cowl to him as the "true" Batman since he cannot take a life. Nightwing is able to defeat the final monster - an amalgamation of the previous ones - by literally leaping inside it to inject it with a prepared antidote, while Batman outwits Strange by having his ally Clayface cover the penthouse in an airtight seal prior to the confrontation. Strange, delirious and running out of oxygen, loses consciousness while Batman is still standing, Nightwing musing that Strange failed to realize that Batman's flaws were actually his motivation in protecting Gotham.
Hugo Strange later appears as a member of the Cabal alongside Doctor Psycho, Per Degaton, Queen Bee, and Amazo.
Other versions
An alternate universe version of Hugo Strange appears in DC Comics Bombshells. This version is a eugenicist who seeks to improve the gene pool by removing those he considers "unclean". In pursuit of this goal, he allies with the Penguin and Harvey Dent, using the latter for his access to Gotham City's citizens' genes to control their future generations. However, Dent later betrays Strange and the Penguin to help the Batgirls. Strange flees and receives funding from the Soviets to research and create clones of Supergirl. Chief among them are Power Girl, who became the Soviet Union's secret weapon, and Superman, who he considered a failure. A year later, Strange captures Supergirl and Steve Trevor, intending to use her as a guinea pig to create an army to purge the world, only for Supergirl to turn Power Girl against him before the Reaper and Lois Lane find his lab and rescue his captives.
In other media
Television
Hugo Strange appears in series set in the DC Animated Universe (DCAU):
Strange first appears in the Batman: The Animated Series episode "The Strange Secret of Bruce Wayne", voiced by Ray Buktenica. This version is a psychiatrist who runs a rest hospital that he uses to blackmail Gotham's elite via a mind-reading machine.
Hugo Strange makes a non-speaking cameo appearance in the Justice League Unlimited episode "The Doomsday Sanction" as a member of Project Cadmus. Strange was also meant to appear in the episode "Question Authority", but was replaced by Doctor Moon due to the Bat-embargo.
Hugo Strange appears in The Batman, initially voiced by Frank Gorshin and later by Richard Green. This version is initially Arkham Asylum's chief psychologist before he becomes an inmate after unleashing an advanced robot based on Gotham's criminals called D.A.V.E. He later allies with the alien Joining, who give him universal knowledge that leaves him catatonic.
Hugo Strange makes a non-speaking cameo appearance in the Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode "The Knights of Tomorrow!".
Hugo Strange appears in Young Justice, voiced by Adrian Pasdar. This version is the chief psychiatrist, later warden, of Belle Reve Penitentiary and member of the Light.
Hugo Strange appears in Gotham, portrayed by BD Wong. This version is the Chief of Psychiatry at Arkham Asylum and overseer of Indian Hill, a secret division of Wayne Enterprises that experiments on metahumans, who secretly works to revive the dead with assistance from the Court of Owls. Additionally, he is a friend and colleague of Thomas Wayne who hired Patrick Malone to kill Thomas and his wife Martha. Strange briefly works for Oswald Cobblepot before defecting to the League of Assassins.
Hugo Strange appears in Batman: Caped Crusader, voiced by James Urbaniak.
Film
Hugo Strange appears in Batman, portrayed by Michael Balfour.
Hugo Strange appears in Batman: Strange Days, voiced by Brian George.
Hugo Strange appears in The Lego Batman Movie as one of several villains recruited by the Joker.
Hugo Strange appears in Batman vs. Two-Face, voiced by Jim Ward. This version is a Gotham State Penitentiary doctor who created an "Evil Extractor", which he claims will purify villains of corruption.
An alternate universe variant of Hugo Strange appears in Batman: Gotham by Gaslight, voiced by William Salyers. This version is Arkham Asylum's director who is fascinated by the concepts of masks and alternate identities, which draws him to Batman and Jack the Ripper. He is later killed by his patients after Jack throws him into a pit filled with them.
Video games
Hugo Strange appears as a playable character in the Nintendo DS version of Lego Batman: The Videogame.
A character bio for Hugo Strange appears in Batman: Arkham Asylum.
Hugo Strange appears in Batman: Arkham City, voiced by Corey Burton. This version is the warden of the titular super-prison and a secret disciple of Ra's al Ghul, with whom he conspires to purge Arkham City's criminal population. After their plan is thwarted by Batman, Strange is killed by Ra's for his failure.
Hugo Strange makes a cameo appearance in Injustice: Gods Among Us via the Arkham Asylum stage.
Hugo Strange appears as a character summon in Scribblenauts Unmasked: A DC Comics Adventure.
Hugo Strange appears as a playable character in Lego DC Super-Villains, voiced again by Corey Burton.
Miscellaneous
Hugo Strange appears in The Batman Adventures.
Hugo Strange appears in Batman: The Brave and the Bold #10.
Hugo Strange appears in Batman Unburied, voiced by John Rhys-Davies.
Huge Strange appears in Batman '66. This version is a psychiatrist at the Arkham Institute.
Hugo Strange appears in Batman: Resurrection, written by John Jackson Miller.
Hugo Strange appears as part of the LEGO Batman Movie series 2 collection for the Lego Minifigures theme.