One of The Suicide Squad’s members is still terrorizing Gotham City in the pages of Future State.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Next Batman: Second Son #5 by John Ridly, Travel Foreman, Rex Lokus and Deron Bennett, on sale now.
James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad is just around the corner, and it’s bringing a slew of underappreciated DC villains to life. There are plenty of characters from the DC Universe who have found homes for themselves in movies and television, but for many of the upcoming film’s leading villains, it will be their very first appearance outside of comics. Among these is the second incarnation of Ratcatcher played by Daniela Melchior.
The new Ratcatcher might be getting ready to light up the small screen, but her nameskae is still terrorizing Gotham City in The Next Batman: Second Son #5.
Otis Flannegan, the first Ratcatcher, was introduced to readers in 1988’s Detective Comics #585 by Alan Grant, John Wagner and Norm Breyfogle. Formerly a literal rat catcher working for Gotham City, Flannegan claimed for years that he could train the rats to do his bidding. Eventually, Flannegan found himself sentenced to a decade in prison after stabbing a man to death during a street fight. After being released, Flannegan took to the sewers where he kept the city officials responsible for his sentence as prisoners. Flannegan employed the use of homemade chemical weapons and an army of trained rats to torture and torment his captive for years until one of them escaped, drawing the attention of Batman. Over the years, Ratcatcher has largely remained the same, and even now he toils away, bringing harm to those he deems worthy of it.
Luke Fox’s sister, Tam, has recently fallen into remission from the toxin left in her system by Ratcatcher. When she was initially poisoned, the attack left her on the brink of death, and now that she is in recovery, the only thing Luke can do is hunt down the person responsible. Beating answers out of Ratcatcher’s former cronies doesn’t go as well as Luke may have hoped, but it still gives him enough of a lead that he is able to track the villain down. Ratcatcher doesn’t seem interested in helping, going so far as to taunt the hero’s request for a cure as him simply coddling his financiers. Batwing ratchets up the pressure, but he is surprised when Ratcatcher reveals his newest army.
It seems that Ratcatcher has forgone his passion for vermin in exchange for another group of neglected underlings by recruiting the city’s orphaned and homeless youth to his cause. Batwing soon finds himself surrounded by an intimidating army of small children, armed and ready to take him on. Ratcatcher has never been a particularly threatening foe of the Bat-Family on his own, but that has all changed with his latest generation of underlings.
Whatever comes next is sure to be bad, especially with the limited options Luke has on hand to deal with his current problems. Ratcatcher will presumably be dealt with before long, but if nothing else, at least The Suicide Squad‘s version of the character has a dark legacy of death and destruction to live up to.
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