Top 100 Batman VILLAINS

15 - Calculator

#15 - Calculator
First Appearance: Detective Comics #463 (Sep 1976)

"They're only teenagers, after all... and, as such, they need to be taught a lesson." ~Calculator

If Joker is the archnemesis of Batgirl Barbara Gordon, then Calculator is the archnemesis of Oracle Barbara Gordon. And that's an extremely unique role to play; after all, how many tech-savvy information brokers villains are out there? Well, prior to Identity Crisis, that number was fairly small - zero to be more accurate. But, and this is despite what you may think of Identity Crisis, Brad Meltzer had a keen eye for potential and saw in a flagging Z-List throwaway character the chance to resurrect a character and revitalize them in a new era. Enter Noah Kutler, the Calculator.

What I love about Calculator is fairly easy to explain - first and foremost, his tangles with heroes always come from behind a keyboard, so every one of his actions has to be thought out, planned and executed remotely. He's a chess player and a devious tactician; nothing he does is spur of the moment, and that means all the twists and turns he provides are that much more amazing. Joker may be an in the moment villain, which has its place, but GREAT villainy oftentimes requires that cold-blooded calculation, and who better to provide it than a Calculator? His natural adversary is certainly Oracle, as both characters must use agents to affect change on their world-spanning chessboards. And that's a term I really love to use for them (chess), because it truly captures their modus operandi. The Birds of Prey all are in some respects pawns played by Oracle to complete goals, and the Society was the same thing for Calculator.

Let's talk the Society for a second, since it was primarily Calculator's baby and as such contains a heaping helping of his personality. I don't say this lightly; Calculator put together the villains. And that's damn impressive. Noah's relationships with nearly every single villain seem to be personal and longterm - from his clubhouse satellite hideout to his construction of a villain group featuring two hundred plus major players, Calculator proves not only his resourcefulness, but his ability to befriend or ally himself with truly the darkest and worst that the universe has to offer. Who else was equipped to run the Society from a laptop?

Calculator was one of the few villains to score perfectly in both the fundamentals character AND the potential category; I think he's a villain who's demonstrated time and again a limitless potential based in a design that, while simple, proves extremely effective and perfectly suited to be a part of not just Batman's world, but the DCUniverse as a whole.

Greatest Calculator Story Ever Told:Final Crisis - In a minor plotline that I think was extremely brilliant, Calculator stands up to Libra (one of the leaders of Darkseid's empire on Earth) and is punished by being hanged for a month and not being able to die. I LOVED his defiant attitude to Darkseid and his arrogantly huge stones at being able to face down what is an essentially dark god without blinking an eye.