Top 100 Batman VILLAINS

61 - King Snake

#61 - King Snake
First Appearance: Robin #1 (Jan 1991)

" The boy wonder. You always find me at a disadvantage. " ~King Snake

If Tim Drake has to have an archnemesis, I'd have to say it would be King Snake, one of the more intelligent and tactical villains in the Batman arsenal. King Snake's ploys are reminiscent of a long con, or a slow-burning chess strategy; at first, they appear weak or innocuous, but in the course of the story, it's always a brilliant turn of events that leads to King Snake nearly pulling off something amazing.

But he doesn't. He SHOULD, because he kicks ass and rocks it in the brains department, but no.

And that's why he rates in the 60s, because despite his best efforts, he always loses to Tim Drake. Of course, it's a privilege to lose to someone as cool as Drake - you could be losing to someone as awful as, say, Spoiler as Robin. That would suck. Girls should never be Robin, unless it's Carrie Kelly in which case it's completely cool because it's an alternate reality and it doesn't count. Because in the real world, Robin has to be a guy because we all know Batman would never accept a woman as his possible successor. Luckily Babs got shot in the spine and he dodged a bullet there, or well, didn't dodge a bullet because she was shot but dodged a more proverbial bullet... I digress.

King Snake is awesome and even though he got his ass handed to him by Lady Shiva, I still think of him as Tim Drake's Ra's al Ghul.

Greatest King Snake Story Ever Told: Robin vs. Shiva vs. King Snake - For a great three-parter prior to No Man's Land, King Snake lured both Shiva and Tim to eastern Europe with a brilliant elaborate plot that involved a lot of backstabbing and deception. Real A+ bad guy stuff. Of course, he screws up and gets killed.