#44 - Gentleman Ghost
First Appearance: Flash Comics #88 (Oct 1947)
"Many heroes make enemies that last a lifetime." ~Gentleman Ghost
Even though he's primarily a Hawkman villain, Gentleman Ghost has tangled with pretty much the entire DCU. Maybe not Hitman. But everyone else, at least. And of course that means he's had his run-ins with the Dark Knight, and what run-ins they were! Some of my favorite stories from the Silver Age are Gentleman Ghost tales, as Batman must find new ways to defeat a type of foe he doesn't normally encounter.
Gentleman Ghost encounters always took Batman into new surroundings; I think the oldest story I've seen Batman riding a horse in was a Gentleman Ghost story. It's always a very Halloween-themed setting when the Ghost faces Batman, an air of unease and decay is always painting the sky over their battles, creating in my opinion some of the best backdrop and emotional settings for a hero and villain to fight against.
You may not think of him as a Gotham villain, but most of the DCU would beg to differ - even the Joker considers him a Batman villain, and he invites him to help stop Killer Croc from killing Batman (that's a loooong story). GG just happens to get a lot of mileage in the DCU, battling Flashes, Lanterns, the JSA, the JLA, the Hawks, Superman, alongside the Secret Society of Super-Villains and also alongside the Injustice League. His long rap sheet just means that he's got a smorgasbord of heroes to choose from on any given heist, and that's the type of villain I love to see Batman go against. When you get an established DCU villain and drop them into a new franchise, great things can happen.
Greatest Gentleman Ghost Story Ever Told: Despite several great Silver Age tales with Batman, I gotta go with Hawkman #7, where Hawkman and Hawkgirl's Old West incarnations Nighthawk and Cinnamon fight the living Jim Craddock. A great story told by Hawkman-master scribe James Robinson.
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