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General Information


"Bask in fear of a nonathletic bookish man wearing raggedy clothing. Bask! For I am the Scarecrow!"
―Scarecrow

The Scarecrow, Jonathan Crane is obsessed with fear, phobias, nightmares and the heebie jeebies. To symbolize his power as a supervillain, he wears the tattery clothing of a useless mannequin that only scares stupid idiot birds, while remaining largely worthless otherwise. Terrifying. When Batman isn't kicking him across Gotham City, he chills with his homeboys in Arkham Asylum.

History[]

Early life[]

Jonathan Crane is quite well read, and he even went to college. Of course, as any future villain who was even remotely intelligent, he got the shit kicked out of him in high school. And bullying automatically turns people into costumed maniacs. His fear of birds came up disturbingly frequently for someone in an urban high school environment.

Going insane[]

Scarecrow 02

Curing Batman's hiccups

After becoming a successful professor, Jonathan Crane was well respected in his field, until he was fired. This outraged him. How could they release somebody as brilliant as him for something as simple as brutally torturing his students with nearly poisonous untested toxic fear gases.

For a while, Crane worked at Arkham Asylum, but after a while of turning the mentally ill into raging beasts, he became a little too unethical, even for Arkham's standards.

He was thus fired from his job at Arkham, for the simple and understandable mistake of performing those same brutally cruel experiments he did on his students on the inmates.

And that was the last straw. Only one solution. Costume. Robbing banks. The whole schpiel. It's just the way the world works. No, I wouldn't expect you to understand. You've never understood.

A villain am I[]

Scarecrow was a simple man. He wanted simple things. Just to murder everybody who reminded him of people that made fun of him in high school, rob banks, and maybe take a boy wonder or too hostage. Granted, not as creepy as the Mad Hatter.

He rarely leaves Gotham, because that's where all of his friends are. He hangs out with the Legion of Doom sometimes, because they're pretty accepting people. Generally though, he's not the best team player out there. He could use some teamwork skills.

Ra's al Ghul[]

The Scarecrow was eventually offered a position in Ra's al Ghul's organization, which was being destroyed partially through the bumbling efforts of the urban terrorist Baleman to dismantle it, but mainly through the fact al Ghul could never do anything right.

After Ra's was knocked into a trash compactor while fighting Batman atop Arkham Asylum, the Scarecrow took full control of the organization. He rooted out losers like Maxwell Lord to ensure better quality, but drove the rackets into the ground. While everything crumbled all around him, the Scarecrow tried to buy the MothCave from Killer Moth's old estate, but was evicted in a foreclosure by the First Gotham Bank.

Furious, the Scarecrow went to the bank to complain, but he was laughed out due to his ridiculous costume. When Crane tried to take the bank by storm, a security team had him dragged out and beaten senseless with their nightsticks. Enraged, he tried for the nineteenth time to reenter the bank, but was foiled when the guards used pepper spray on him, blinding him. The remainder of Ra's al Ghul's gang finally left after such a terrible failure. Crane tried to scare them back into joining with one of his menacing glares, but only managed a blank stare. The gang members punched him in the face and still walked out.

For a few months, Scarecrow lived in Ra's al Ghul's old hideout, but left hastily after an encounter with Abraham Lincoln there.

Death[]

Scarecrow finally decided to exact his revenge on one of his old bullies, Killer Croc, who had stuffed him into a garbage can two years earlier when he was still a professor at the Gotham University. Crane tracked him to a nearby swamp, and brought a garbage can along for Croc to get a taste of his own medicine. Attacking Croc with his patented fear gas, Scarecrow was shocked when Croc remained unimpressed. Apparently, fear gas does not have an effect in making a bookish professor in tattered rags look fearful at all. Instead, the Scarecrow himself was thrown into his own garbage can.

Vowing revenge, Scarecrow returned with a larger garbage can and attacked Croc while the other man was off guard. In the end, The Scarecrow finally stuffed Killer Croc in the trash can, but he broke out of it and slammed it down over Scarecrow's head.

Crane was then thrown to the crocodiles in the swamp and torn to pieces.

External Links[]


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