ITT: Characters with wasted potential Black Mask is a great

>>78127148
Did Stegman draw that?

>>78127148
At the end of the day he's just some mob guy in a mask. Even by SUPERMAN standards that's lame af

Which is why he really omy gets brought out to get shit usually by other villains

>>78127288
> even by SUPERMAN villain standards that's lame af


Oop fixed

He's pretty good in the Under the Red Hood movie.

>>78127288
>At the end of the day he's just some mob guy in a mask
that's why he's a batman villain, not a superman villain

>>78127288
He's a guy who made a mask from his parents' coffins after he murdered them.
Who is obsessed with a romantization of "masks" as a way to become something you're not, while at the same time staying sane enough to be one of the biggest crime bosses in Gotham City.

He uses the mask to hide his precious psyche from the terrible ruthless piece of shit he is.

>>78127288
How is this any lamer than any other Batman villain?
There's guy with monocle, guy with makeup, guy with coin.

>They're much more than that though

Which is why it's dumb to just describe and define villains in few words, like "masked mob guy".

Everything becomes lame that way.

>>78127288
>just some mob guy in a mask
WRONG. Black mask is the missing link between organized crime and the rogues gallery. That makes him THE mob guy in a mask.

The Brain and Monsieur Mallah

global-range threat that's reduced to cannon fodder for Mallah as of late

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I like the capullo redesing

>>78127148
I always thought he was a better foil for Batman than Hush ever was. Hush is just an unoriginal 2edgy4me character.

Black Mask has needs more work, but he's found a nice niche THE mob character. Same as Penguin, who's basically the city's biggest fence. Both of them tend to work really well as supplementary characters the Batman/GCPD/criminals/etc. have to either work with or around rather than as a primary antagonist. Keeps Gotham feeling alive. He just needs the more personal stories and solos that Penguin's gotten the past decade or so to really flesh him out. The (Batman) villains that seem to have stuck in the public consciousness and become potential mainstays from the past thirty years or so and could do with more development are Black Mask (80s), Bane (90s), Hush (00s) and now the Court of Owls (10s).

Angel is obviously being used wrong (not at all). I feel like of all the classic marvel characters, Angel has been the least utalized and had the least development. Outside of Remender, no one has used him well in many years.
Angel should really be playing a role asna mutant ambassador to all other groups. He's the obvious candidate in terms of powerset/appearance. I don't think I've even seen him in more than a year.

Black Mask is literally the worst bat-villain

Snyder/Capullo making him a gimp was a great move up, Capullo really sells it.

>>78127148
He has the unfortunate handicaps of being the "other skull guy", and being just another mob boss in a world filled with mob bosses.
Understandable that he is used the way he is.

>>78128053
the Gimp from Pulp Fiction got a comic?

>>78128143
Heart of Hush is really where you can see Hush's A-list potential. He's the only one of his rogue gallery that's really more of a Bruce Wayne villain than a Batman villain. I don't think he once called him Batman in costume and just always called him Bruce. He's kind of the anti-Joker in that regard, where the Joker doesn't care who he is behind the mask while Hush just sees him as Bruce just playing dress-up.

>>78127148
He's more of a Catwoman villain than Batman villain these days. Has Batman even fought him again after War Games?

>>78128157
>tfw you wrote a story depicting Black Mask as the only really competent member of his criminal empire

It would have been a miniseries. Think Saints Row 2 in terms of the leader having to do everything themselves because their lackeys are incompetent.

Too bad I never found an artist. I was gonna pitch it to DC. At worst, it would have been a fancomic and nothing else.

>>78127708
I agree black mask is perfect to show the transition from organized crime to super crime in Gotham

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Harper Row. I like the code name Bluebird for a bat-affiliate, I like the outfit and I like that she is the "gadget" bat kid. I even like her personality and backstory as a down on her luck kid who just decided to work for batman whether he wanted to or not.

She just hasn't had any memorable storylines or even moments yet really. Maybe she'll have a big payoff in b&r eternal, but she's always just on the sidelines. That or she just shows off by taking down some mooks. She needs a real challenge where she actually proves herself worthy of being in the bat family

>>78128053

Is Mask in N52 Sionis or Arkham? I'm still catching up

>>78128157

I think Bane peaked with Secret Six. They have no idea what to do with him in New 52 I think. Did Knightfall even happen now? He mentions breaking Bruce but the fucking six year timeframe is so bad for fitting in all the events that need happening.

>>78127148
In the cartoon movies, he's pretty competent

>>78128275

Dini Hush was my favorite bit of the RIP era to be honest.

>>78129006

Big problem is that Batman Eternal had a massive supporting cast, so it really was the worst run to have her debut as Bluebird.

They should really try to do a series where she teams up with a slightly bigger name to get her going a bit more. Something like "Red Hood and Bluebird".

I agree, I like the character but so far it seems like they've set her up for a whole lot of nothing.

>>78129006
Change her backstory so it's not just Steph and Jason's backstories mashed together, put more emphasis on her relationship with her brother, and make her personality less annoying or have people call her out at least.
Also Tim and Barbara already kind of fill the whole "electronic" and "gadget" thing, so she'd need something more than just "like them but better".

>>78130789
I think Tim should be the detective guy, Babs should be tech as in hacking computer shit and Harper should be the gadget girl.

>>78130787
I agree with the idea of putting Harper in a team up book. I enjoy her and Tim together and think a book with the two of them could be fun

>>78127148
Batman villains are actually pretty consistently underutilized and this is largely because of the long serialization of the franchise. Joker is easy because you can do anything with him and his character is as complex and deep as the average post on 4chan. A gimmick character like Riddler is easy to bring out whenever you can come up with a reason for him to do something because you can tell a good story without really relying on character work.

But a lot of characters writers just don't know what to do with anymore. One big reason is when the origin kind of encompasses the character. Two-Face and Bane are very notable examples. Bane's character was so tied into knightfall that it's almost impossible to read a story with Bane where he doesn't mention how he "broke the bat". Writers can't usually come up with a good grip on what motivates him or how to make him dangerous again without being able to go to back-breaking levels. So his character lives in the shadow of his first story and his confrontations with Batman since have always been underwhelming.

Two-Face is just not a character that works in the long term. What makes him compelling was how he was a hero of Gotham, friend of Bruce and Gordon and Batman, and how his fall from grace represents how Gotham isn't ready to embrace the light. Two-Face's origin is essentially the only great story you can tell with him, his character has nowhere else to really go after it unless you want to do a reform and relapse but those would just be echoes of his beginning (but let's not forget One-Face!).

Basically all villains tend to get reduced to their most basic elements in order to make it easy for them to come back and fit into a new story, and adding new elements is hard to pull off and make stick. This is why BTAS was able to do so much right with villains the comics still struggle with, because they only had to show up a few times (Mad Hatter, Clayface, and Mr. Freeze are never better than in the cartoon)

>>78128172
Yep. I think he is super underrated. There's so much stuff that you can do about a guy with the wings of an angel.

>>78127148
Why do you make these thread? I don't think you actually raed comics so why talk as if you know your shit
>In recent years he's been relegated to one-note crazy mob guy with a magic mask, though...
He was in Catwoman and he was not portrayed so.

>>78127410
That's still fuckin lame

>>78129006
Maybe if Harper wasn't so shit and blatantly shilled for that people caught on and called Snyder out on it she'd be in a better spot.

>>78127148
>Black Mask is a great multi-faceted character
Stopped reading right there.

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The best and worst thing about Longshot is you can't actually do anything with him. His development ended pretty quickly after his introduction and, seriously, it's for the best. His only possible conflicts are his (possibly) soulless nature and consequences of his supernatural luck but both these subjects were covered a long time ago.
He's just a really nice, quite literally happy-go-lucky guy. In this day and age, it's hard to come by these types of characters.

Am I the only one pissed that he ended up being the Joker in Arkham Origins? He was fucking great up until that point, then boom, fucking Joker.

>>78127190
Looks like Mahnke

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>>78127148
Shocker. I want him to become a semi-serious villain.
There was so much potential after Superior Foes. I would have loved to see him become a competent mob boss and use the funds he got to upgrade his tech.
Plus, I don't get why people call him lame. His costume and powers are cool to me.

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>>78127148

>introduce the first symbiote character since the huge oversaturation they had in the late 80's and through the 90's.
>make him a sympathetic guy who has to leave his family because he's afraid the symbiote will hurt them
>have the character try to teach the infant symbiote to do good like he would be teaching the infant child he had to abandon
>have an awesome miniseries that could have turned into an ongoing
>don't mention him for half a decade until you decide to kill him off panel and give the symbiote to Eddie Brock


Worse misuse of a new character in the history of Marvel, IMHO. He could have been an interesting Spider-Friend but instead, we got Symbiote Eddie 3.0 and Silk.