Scarecrow (DC Comics)

Scarecrow is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Created by writer Bill Finger and artist Sheldon Moldoff, the character first appeared in World's Finest Comics #3 (1941) as an adversary of the superhero Batman. Although Scarecrow only made two appearances in the 1940s, he was revived by writer Gardner Fox in Batman #189 (1967) which debuted his Fear Toxin. The character has since become one of Batman's most enduring enemies, belonging to the collective of adversaries that make up his rogues gallery. In the DC Universe, Scarecrow is the alias of Dr. Jonathan Crane, clinical psychologist and professor of psychology turned criminal mastermind. Abused and bullied in his youth, he becomes obsessed with fear and develops a hallucinogenic drug—dubbed "fear toxin"—to terrorize Gotham City and exploit the phobias of its protector, Batman. As the self-proclaimed "Master of Fear", Scarecrow's crimes do not stem from a common desire for wealth or power, but from a sadistic pleasure in subjecting others to his experiments on the manipulation of fear. An outfit symbolic of his namesake with a stitched burlap mask serves as Scarecrow's visual motif. The character has been adapted in various media incarnations, having been portrayed in film by Cillian Murphy in The Dark Knight Trilogy, and in television by Charlie Tahan and David W. Thompson in Gotham, and Vincent Kartheiser in Titans. Henry Polic II, Jeffrey Combs, Dino Andrade, John Noble, Robert Englund, and others have provided the Scarecrow's voice in animation and video games.