Every DC Fan Needs to Know About THE ANSWER - Gotham's Ultimate Forgotten Villain

There are tons of iconic Batman villains, and it's not a stretch to say he likely has the greatest rogues gallery in comics. Part of this is because of the writer's willingness to introduce new characters to his mythos occasionally. While this can sometimes work well, such as with Professor Pyg, other times it completely fails, like with the Answer.

Readers were introduced to the fascinating villain the Answer in Batman Villains Secret Files & Origins #1 section "The Answer" by Alan Grant, Mark Buckingham, and Tom McCraw. This section details the mysterious villain known as the Answer who was driven to insanity by Batman's No Man's Land event.

Despite there being a full page written for the Answer and his backstory, he never appears in a single Batman comic story. In addition, Grant — this villain's original creator — has no memory of ever creating him according to his daughter, as posted in an X post/tweet by writer Alex Weiss on their @_Godotto account.

Related DC Reinvents a Classic Gotham Villain as an "Apocalyptic" New Form Batman's powerful villains often threaten the entire planet, and now it seems it's one underrated rogue's turn to start the apocalypse in Gotham.

The Answer Is Batman's Coolest Villain - Who Was Never Used

The Answer Doesn't Exist Outside This Special

The Answer has a pretty compelling backstory: he started out as an engineer named Mike Patten whose hobby was researching ancient civilizations. Eventually, he came to believe that Earth was once ruled by a super society that spanned the globe but was wiped out in some massive catastrophe. Naturally, this worried Mike, but his worst fears seemed to be confirmed during the iconic No Man's Land Earthquake that destroyed the majority of Gotham City and resulted in the death of his wife and daughter.

This event drove Mike insane, and he believed his fears were justified. Eventually, there would be another catastrophe that would obliterate all of humanity. He then dressed himself up in newspapers reporting on natural disasters around the world and took to committing crimes to gather the data he needed to prove his theory. It was a brilliant motivation for a villain and tied into one of Batman's most important and biggest events, but sadly, it seems DC just wasn't interested in the character, as the Answer never appeared again outside this one page explaining his origin.

Batman: No Man's Land Was the Perfect Time for a New Villain

No Man's Land Is a Major Batman Crossover from 1999, Available Now Digitally and in Collected Editions

Tons of new characters have been introduced to Batman's mythology successfully over the years. No Man's Land even introduced the character of Cassandra Cain, who very quickly became a fan-favorite Bat-Family regular. But there weren't any new villains who came out of No Man's Land. The Answer was the first attempt at this, but for whatever reason, DC wasn't interested in moving forward with the character. So, while plenty of characters have been introduced to Batman's lore over the years, the Answer simply wasn't one of them, making him one of Batman's most mysterious and interesting villains.

Batman Villains Secret Files & Origins #1 is available now from DC Comics!

Source: @_Godotto