Long before becoming a member of Amanda Waller’s Suicide Squad, one Gotham City villain was Batman’s most disgusting adversary.
While the Suicide Squad might be getting their own version of the Ratcatcher in the DCEU, the original version, Otis Flannegan, was a far more depraved criminal, one whose repulsive nature only evolved as time passed. His crimes have plagued Gotham City since the late ’80’s and Otis has crossed paths with both Batman and Batwing. But his damage to the Fox family is more apparent and his goals have become much more horrifying.
First debuting in Detective Comics #585 by Alan Grant, John Wagner, and Norm Breyfogle, Ratcatcher was a disturbed individual right from the start. Born Otis Flannegan, he was a literal rat catcher for the city’s sanitation department, but Otis had a nasty temper even before he took up his new name. When a man insulted him because of his smell, Otis killed him with a knife.
Ratcatcher continued to torment Gotham from beneath its surface, but this time his focus shifted towards Batwing. He teamed up with an enemy of Luke Fox known as Menace, using that alliance to poison Luke’s sister, Tam Fox putting her into a vegetative state before kidnapping Lucius Fox’s youngest child, Tiffany. This prompted Batwing to break into Ratcatcher’s underground lair and rescue his sister before sending Ratcatcher scurrying back into the shadows of his den.
But that was not the end of Ratcatcher’s story. He would once again return to torment the Fox family, but this time in an indirect way. Tam had managed to recover from his poisoning, but years later she relapsed, entering a coma in a paralyzed state. Doctors were unable to figure out how to break her out of it, but Luke remembered who poisoned her in the first place and went after Ratcatcher in the hopes that the villain would have a cure.
Batwing found Ratcatcher in the underground once again, but this time his goals had changed. Otis was no longer using literal rats, but orphaned children that the city had forgotten about as his army. He had provided them food and shelter and had armed them to take their revenge on the city. Before he could act on this twisted endeavor however, the police raided the space, triggering a firefight that ended with Ratcatcher being shot. He survived, but his army of “rats” scattered, free to choose their path going forward.
Ratcatcher is one of the more depraved villains of Gotham. He doesn’t believe in any form of justice save his own and is willing to maintain a grudge for years, torturing men who only did their job of rightfully imprisoning him for murder. But even more depraved is his attempt at brainwashing children to serve as his soldiers in his war on Gotham’s surface. As long as he is alive, there is no telling how much more dangerous and disturbed Ratcatcher will be the next time he surfaces.
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