Batman: Gotham Nights #14 sees a major Batman villain getting called out for his monstrous ways, and he deserves every word of criticism.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for “Monster,” a story in Batman: Gotham Nights #14, by Frank Tieri, Tyler Kirkham, Arif Prianto and Tom Napolitano, on sale now.
Batman: Gotham Nights isn’t just about the Dark Knight flying high on the city’s rooftops with his sidekicks fighting crime. The digital-first series has featured some unique stories with the Joker, as well as insight into Two-Face’s past that add depth to the rogues the Caped Crusader often fights.
In Issue #15, though, it gets a bit more personal as Killer Croc gets called out for his sins. While you can feel sympathy for how he’s been treated, you can’t help but agree with the person who scolds him for who he’s become.
Killer Croc, or Waylon Jones. debuted in the ’80s in Detective Comics and has become a key member of the Batman universe, especially in cartoons and was featured in the Suicide Squad movie. Created by Gerry Conway, Don Newton and Gene Colan, he’s been fashioned as a metahuman with a reptilian skin disorder that gives him super-strength and rigid exterior, which makes him a straight-up crocodile on the outside. This issue addresses his past in a sideshow years ago where he was one of the main attractions who suffered abuse for his looks.
When we see Croc in the present, he is attempting to hold up a Gotham bank. As he orders the guards to fetch the money, he accosts the manager, Julie. When she calls him by name, his memory’s jogged to when he was in the cage and her dad was actually the show’s promoter. “Gator Boy” was his nickname, and everyone bullied him except for Julie who fends one of them off. She didn’t hold her dad’s views and felt sorry for Waylon, treating him like a person, not a creature. She always inquired how he was doing on the inside and helped him feel more human.
But when they parted ways — he escaped after she and her dad left the circus — Croc never got back in contact with her. He tried to find Julie, but she knew he was lost when she saw the news about him being a criminal. It’s why she pierces his skin with some shots of the truth when he tries to emotionally connect with her after finding her during a robbery. While she admits that she did care for him, he ultimately proved her wrong and everyone else right. He had the opportunity time after time to walk away from this life of crime but he chose to remain in it, hunting score after score.
Now presented with the monster before her, Julie doesn’t hold the same compassion she had for the person Croc was. To her, the boy she knew is dead, and it’s why she tells him he really has become the monster everyone said he would be. Croc’s heartbroken as he realizes that what she said is true. Although she’ll never understand what he went through before and after meeting, her but Croc really had ample chances to turn a new leaf, instead opting to remain a criminal.
