Clownhunter is the newest costumed vigilante to hit the streets of Gotham but he’s making mistakes that could cost him some precious jewels.
Warning: The following contains spoilers from Batman #103 by James Tynion IV, Carlo Pagulayan, Danny Miki, and Guillem March, on sale now.
Clownhunter is a relatively new antagonist to arrive in the DC Universe, but he is still managing to make the same mistakes as past villains. He allowed himself to be taken advantage of due to an extremely sensitive vulnerability, and it’s not the first time criminals have fallen victim to it. In fact, popular Justice League nemesis Prometheus did the same thing.
Teenager Bao Pham became Clownhunter during “Joker War”, deciding to take justice into his own hands by killing any Joker henchmen he could find using a baseball bat with a Batarang attached to it (calling it his Bat-Bat). Due to his young age, Batman had let him off with a warning, but he quickly returned to his murderous ways. In Batman #102, he attempts to blow up Harley Quinn in her apartment using a rocket launcher, but is stopped by the mysterious Ghost-Maker. In issue #103, after Batman engages with Ghost-Maker, Bao runs over to Harley Quinn’s apartment to beat her to death.
When he arrives, however, he is completely outmatched. He manages to land an elbow to her face, but she mostly just flips and cartwheels around his attacks. Becoming bored of the fight, she knees him sharply in the groin, forcing him to crumple to the ground. He was wearing some protection, like elbow-pads and a bike helmet with a Mohawk glued to it, but had failed to cover up arguably his most sensitive area. She follows it up with a kick to the face, knocking him out, and then restrains him just in time for Batman to come tumbling through the window.
Surprisingly, this isn’t the first time a murderous criminal has been defeated from a single blow to this particular area. In Grant Morrison, Howard Porter, and Arnie Jorgensen’s JLA #16-17, the super-villain Prometheus was similarly punished for not protecting his vulnerability. When first introduced, Prometheus was established as a viable threat to the entire Justice League. Not only was he extremely intelligent and an incredible strategist, but he also had a helmet that had downloaded the fighting styles of several experts of martial arts, including Batman himself, that fed directly into his central nervous system. In these issues, he had managed to gain access to the Watchtower, disguised as a competition winner, and managed to take down almost the entire Justice League, with only Wonder Woman and Superman standing in his way. He promises to save the people on the Watchtower under the condition that Superman kill himself, and at one point it seems like there is no option but for the Man of Steel to comply.