Since Batman’s villains are almost entirely male-focused, Warner Bros. thinks it can add a little variety to Arkham Origins.
When you’re examining the Batman universe or videogaming in general, one interesting fact keeps cropping up: a lot of the villains tend to be dudes. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with a well-written male villain, but when Batman only has four female antagonists to turn to, you may want to throw another in there just for variety’s sake. Thankfully, in our era of reboots and reimaginings, there’s a rather simple and elegant solution: take an obscure character that fans aren’t attached to, swap the gender, and give them a slightly revised origin story. That’s the route Warner Bros. will take for the upcoming Arkham Origins, which sports a female version of the snake-themed villain Copperhead, albeit without the giant snake hoodie.
The new Copperhead received a warm introduction at a recent San Diego Comic-Con panel. After summarizing the basic premise of Origins (Black Mask wants Batman dead, assassins are hired, etc), viewers watch as Copperhead breaks out a prison mid-interrogation and kills a rather surprised police officer. Once free, she immediately goes after the younger Batman, who is caught off-guard by her agility, contortion abilities, and finally, snake venom nails. (Gotta watch out for those, you know.)
In fairness, Copperhead is already female in DC’s New 52 universe, but Origins‘ version is a snake-themed assassin as opposed to a literal snake woman. In fact, DC editor Geoff Johns apparently likes the Origins version so much that he intends to integrate her back into mainstream comic books. As for Origins, we’ll have to wait and see if Copperhead is a decent character in and of herself, or just a female obstacle for Batman to overcome. Still, in terms of adding a little variety to the universe, this doesn’t seem like a bad idea so far.
Source: Newsarama
Published: Jul 18, 2013 10:30 pm