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Description
General Shreckengost, commander of the Night Terrors.

Gen. Schreckengost is my take on Batman. But I don't like Batman or Superman being out of character or spirit anymore than the next fan, so I prefer to craft up my own versions. That's just as pointless -- those guys do have their own books for a reason -- so I put those archetypes through the Midnight Theatre ringer and really twist 'em up and hopefully find a unique angle perspective on them.

I've always believed Batman is a character that has to be held back in the DCU because if he actually cut loose he'd just be a fascist bastard. Other creative teams have addressed this so I'm not alone. Anyone that tactically brilliant with that ungodly fortune and industrial resources combined with THAT OBSESSIVE CONTROL DRIVE would just recruit a fuckin' army, train 'em, slap bat ears on 'em and do a hostile takeover of Gotham's infrastructure starting with the cops. He'd fire everyone but Gordon ... who would immediately quit. Gotham City would be a WayneTech enterprise in a few weeks.

And then he'd expand to other cities.

So rather than go that route -- Mark Waid hinted at it in Kingdom Come -- I put my guy through the horrors of war, but then ran him into some Allied atrocities that forced him to stare into the abyss ... and he brings the abyss back with him. Instead of giving him an massive army, I have him operating with a small cadre of trusted agents similarly committed to his cause. And instead of scaring people and arresting them he's terrorizing them for weeks, making their lives a living hell, his agents using psychological tactics and guerilla warfare to wear their targets sanity down bit by slightly, slowly slipping bit until the moment he chooses to reveal himself.

-----

Imagine this: You start your day by going out to your car and there's a man leaning against it, casually smoking. You ask if you can help him and he aimlessly says no, sorry about that. Nothing to it. You're in a hurry to get to work: the boss has been eyeballing the time clock and you don't want to be late again. But you get a flat tire. As the day goes on more little things go wrong. Your lunch is missing. How did that happen? A couple of your regular customers call in to cancel their accounts -- they don't feel comfortable using your services anymore, but they call your boss with the decision, not you. You go out to lunch -- since your lunch is missing -- and you'd swear you see that guy from this morning by the door but now he's wearing a completely different suit. You hit the pub for a drink and a sandwich but when the tab comes your wallet is missing. Luckily the pub owner knows you but there are a couple guys -- kinda hard looking types -- that are silently watching it all go down. And when you go back to work they walk follow you ... you think. The boss chews your ass when you get back -- those lost clients can't be replaced -- but the rest of the day is completely uneventful. You're starting to relax a bit when you finally head to your car which is being repo'd -- but that can't be right! Still, the repo man has paperwork with your name on it and a cop giving the thumbs up. Now it's a filthy ride on the subway and you would fucking swear that guy from this morning is sitting a few seats from you wearing mechanics coveralls and SLEEPING. Scared, you jump off a stop early and as you're leaving the station those two hard-looking guys from the pub -- it has to be those same guys! -- shove into you and knock you on your ass in the crowded, filthy subway. Tired, worn, nervous, riddled with self-doubt, brimming with anxieties you can't define, you shuffle home. All you want is to see your wife, have a stiff drink and enjoy dinner. But the house is practically dark, the door locked. And now your keys are missing. Banging on the door hollering for your wife does no good. The back door is unlocked, but you had to slog through a mud run to get to it. Worried sick for her safety you find your wife, sitting alone as the house slips into gloom, sipping whiskey and quietly crying. And she won't tell you why ...

After a sleepless night of worry and anxiety and doubts and fear, you start off on your next day. And it's not bad. Almost normal except for those two hard-looking guys at the pub again. You maybe saw that guy from yesterday morning but he had on an expensive suit this time and he was joking around with a couple others dressed the same. It was a bad day, is all. Bad day combined with coincidence and maybe a little karma. You've got that pep back in your step by the time you get home but as you round the corner to your street ... the house is dark again. As you approach your wife walks out of the neighbor's place, wiping her eyes and saying she'll get dinner ready. And when you ask about her crying at the neighbor's she won't tell you why ...

Every day is a wave of misfortune smashing against the shores of your sanity, each wave different than the one before, knowing that any moment of relief only means the next wave will be larger than any that came before it. Feeling your mental capacities wear down, like growing into adulthood in a room that's only five feet high and two feet wide -- a space too small to stand and too short to sit and as you continue to grow bigger within that space your mind fills it with paranoia, anxiety, doubt, dread ... Finally all you have left is the terror of knowing that soon there will be no more space for you in that room, and that while the room is unbreakable ... you are not.

After a few weeks of that kind of mainpulation at the steely hands of inhumanly calculating, robotically ruthless agents, you awake in your seedy motel room (you lost your job, you're getting sued by a former client, you got mugged at least twice in there, you got tossed in a drunk tank once, your wife kicked you out -- and she still won't tell you why! -- and you can only get a job working at a gas station) and sitting in the sole chair in the room, casually, is a large shadow of a man, polished gold accoutrements glistening in the meager light, his shock of white hair harsh and bitter like touching dry ice with your eyes.

His voice like booms out at first, like a mausoleum cracked open and pouring out ghosts, then settles into a ragged baritone like ink tumbling over broken glass. He tells you your name. He tells you your Army serial number from the war. He tells you your list of sins committed during the war that you and the other Joes agreed would all be left over there. He tells you all of their names and serial numbers as well. But you and the other Joes took care of any witnesses when you torched that building. You made sure of it.

Then he peels back his mask and let's you see who he is, and how he knows your sins, and why he's been tearing you down by such small pieces. Then he makes you understand the importance of his terrorist plot -- that man's law is not to be granted for the inhuman, but that natural justice must still be served. Criminals face law, animals are put down, but evil will punished in kind for its acts before eradication.

The momentary relief of knowing that someone plotted to drive you insane by plotted minutia is crushed when his hollow, sepulchral voice tells you what will happen next.

"I'm going to leave now. You are going to run."

-----

Some confess their crimes to Victory City authorities to escape him, some try to take their own lives rather than face him, some try to run ... None succeed. Soon enough they find themselves in the icy grip of General Schreckengost as he closes his hand around their necks and slowly begins to squeeeeeze ...

-----

So that's how my Batman came out. And that's just his intro. I want to bring him in as background on other stories, let him start as a rumor or urban myth and then escalate him eventually to the forefront. And the story does not have a nice ending, either. Not for anyone. By the standards of our society, Schreckengost is damned for staring into the abyss -- whether he was forced to do so or not -- but he has an ace up his sleeve there. That's not what's so bad. It's that he brought something back from the abyss with him and has now introduced it to Victory City.

I love comics.

Description
General Shreckengost, commander of the Night Terrors.

Gen. Schreckengost is my take on Batman. But I don't like Batman or Superman being out of character or spirit anymore than the next fan, so I prefer to craft up my own versions. That's just as pointless -- those guys do have their own books for a reason -- so I put those archetypes through the Midnight Theatre ringer and really twist 'em up and hopefully find a unique angle perspective on them.

I've always believed Batman is a character that has to be held back in the DCU because if he actually cut loose he'd just be a fascist bastard. Other creative teams have addressed this so I'm not alone. Anyone that tactically brilliant with that ungodly fortune and industrial resources combined with THAT OBSESSIVE CONTROL DRIVE would just recruit a fuckin' army, train 'em, slap bat ears on 'em and do a hostile takeover of Gotham's infrastructure starting with the cops. He'd fire everyone but Gordon ... who would immediately quit. Gotham City would be a WayneTech enterprise in a few weeks.

And then he'd expand to other cities.

So rather than go that route -- Mark Waid hinted at it in Kingdom Come -- I put my guy through the horrors of war, but then ran him into some Allied atrocities that forced him to stare into the abyss ... and he brings the abyss back with him. Instead of giving him an massive army, I have him operating with a small cadre of trusted agents similarly committed to his cause. And instead of scaring people and arresting them he's terrorizing them for weeks, making their lives a living hell, his agents using psychological tactics and guerilla warfare to wear their targets sanity down bit by slightly, slowly slipping bit until the moment he chooses to reveal himself.

-----

Imagine this: You start your day by going out to your car and there's a man leaning against it, casually smoking. You ask if you can help him and he aimlessly says no, sorry about that. Nothing to it. You're in a hurry to get to work: the boss has been eyeballing the time clock and you don't want to be late again. But you get a flat tire. As the day goes on more little things go wrong. Your lunch is missing. How did that happen? A couple of your regular customers call in to cancel their accounts -- they don't feel comfortable using your services anymore, but they call your boss with the decision, not you. You go out to lunch -- since your lunch is missing -- and you'd swear you see that guy from this morning by the door but now he's wearing a completely different suit. You hit the pub for a drink and a sandwich but when the tab comes your wallet is missing. Luckily the pub owner knows you but there are a couple guys -- kinda hard looking types -- that are silently watching it all go down. And when you go back to work they walk follow you ... you think. The boss chews your ass when you get back -- those lost clients can't be replaced -- but the rest of the day is completely uneventful. You're starting to relax a bit when you finally head to your car which is being repo'd -- but that can't be right! Still, the repo man has paperwork with your name on it and a cop giving the thumbs up. Now it's a filthy ride on the subway and you would fucking swear that guy from this morning is sitting a few seats from you wearing mechanics coveralls and SLEEPING. Scared, you jump off a stop early and as you're leaving the station those two hard-looking guys from the pub -- it has to be those same guys! -- shove into you and knock you on your ass in the crowded, filthy subway. Tired, worn, nervous, riddled with self-doubt, brimming with anxieties you can't define, you shuffle home. All you want is to see your wife, have a stiff drink and enjoy dinner. But the house is practically dark, the door locked. And now your keys are missing. Banging on the door hollering for your wife does no good. The back door is unlocked, but you had to slog through a mud run to get to it. Worried sick for her safety you find your wife, sitting alone as the house slips into gloom, sipping whiskey and quietly crying. And she won't tell you why ...

After a sleepless night of worry and anxiety and doubts and fear, you start off on your next day. And it's not bad. Almost normal except for those two hard-looking guys at the pub again. You maybe saw that guy from yesterday morning but he had on an expensive suit this time and he was joking around with a couple others dressed the same. It was a bad day, is all. Bad day combined with coincidence and maybe a little karma. You've got that pep back in your step by the time you get home but as you round the corner to your street ... the house is dark again. As you approach your wife walks out of the neighbor's place, wiping her eyes and saying she'll get dinner ready. And when you ask about her crying at the neighbor's she won't tell you why ...

Every day is a wave of misfortune smashing against the shores of your sanity, each wave different than the one before, knowing that any moment of relief only means the next wave will be larger than any that came before it. Feeling your mental capacities wear down, like growing into adulthood in a room that's only five feet high and two feet wide -- a space too small to stand and too short to sit and as you continue to grow bigger within that space your mind fills it with paranoia, anxiety, doubt, dread ... Finally all you have left is the terror of knowing that soon there will be no more space for you in that room, and that while the room is unbreakable ... you are not.

After a few weeks of that kind of mainpulation at the steely hands of inhumanly calculating, robotically ruthless agents, you awake in your seedy motel room (you lost your job, you're getting sued by a former client, you got mugged at least twice in there, you got tossed in a drunk tank once, your wife kicked you out -- and she still won't tell you why! -- and you can only get a job working at a gas station) and sitting in the sole chair in the room, casually, is a large shadow of a man, polished gold accoutrements glistening in the meager light, his shock of white hair harsh and bitter like touching dry ice with your eyes.

His voice like booms out at first, like a mausoleum cracked open and pouring out ghosts, then settles into a ragged baritone like ink tumbling over broken glass. He tells you your name. He tells you your Army serial number from the war. He tells you your list of sins committed during the war that you and the other Joes agreed would all be left over there. He tells you all of their names and serial numbers as well. But you and the other Joes took care of any witnesses when you torched that building. You made sure of it.

Then he peels back his mask and let's you see who he is, and how he knows your sins, and why he's been tearing you down by such small pieces. Then he makes you understand the importance of his terrorist plot -- that man's law is not to be granted for the inhuman, but that natural justice must still be served. Criminals face law, animals are put down, but evil will punished in kind for its acts before eradication.

The momentary relief of knowing that someone plotted to drive you insane by plotted minutia is crushed when his hollow, sepulchral voice tells you what will happen next.

"I'm going to leave now. You are going to run."

-----

Some confess their crimes to Victory City authorities to escape him, some try to take their own lives rather than face him, some try to run ... None succeed. Soon enough they find themselves in the icy grip of General Schreckengost as he closes his hand around their necks and slowly begins to squeeeeeze ...

-----

So that's how my Batman came out. And that's just his intro. I want to bring him in as background on other stories, let him start as a rumor or urban myth and then escalate him eventually to the forefront. And the story does not have a nice ending, either. Not for anyone. By the standards of our society, Schreckengost is damned for staring into the abyss -- whether he was forced to do so or not -- but he has an ace up his sleeve there. That's not what's so bad. It's that he brought something back from the abyss with him and has now introduced it to Victory City.

I love comics.