3. Deacon Blackfire (Batman: The Cult)
Background: Deacon Blackfire is definitely one of the more reprehensible characters on our list. He’s a long-living erstwhile shaman, now self-styled messiah to the poor and downtrodden; a man whose charm, intelligence and downright barbarity has given him a head-seat at the table of suggestibility and madness.
Once the shaman to an Indian tribe called The Miagani, Deacon Blackfire was forced into captivity and exile within the walls of a nearby cave after he attacked their chief for asking him to leave due to his apparent tyranny encompassed by the strict rules he imposed under the guise of holy word. He was mistakenly released by Dutch settlers, who he wasted no time in killing for the “emptiness of their souls”. Upon his release he spent the portion of his life leading up to our current tale engaging in a number of different criminal activities. His long life has been attributed to his ritual of bathing in warm human blood once a moon cycle.
Present day: Blackfire has amassed an underground following of Gotham’s homeless and criminals in what he has dubbed Underworlders. He acts as their messiah and convinces them as such through a mixture of drugs, torture and charm. His apparent mission is to clean up the streets of Gotham in the bloodiest way possible, sending packs of his followers to literally rip apart anyone who thinks of committing crime on the streets above him. This is, of course, nothing more than a front for selfish gain and extreme hubris.
Cut to Gotham where Batman has come to the aid of a helpless man as two youths have beaten him for fun. As he quickly takes care of the street scum, he loses concentration on who he was originally following and becoming careless, and gets shot in the side of his stomach/abdomen. His attacker, however, is suddenly stabbed in the back by one of Deacon Blackfire’s men; Batman unaware of the Underworlders tries to get up to thank his rescuer but unfortunately passes out due to blood loss. He is taken underground by the man who saved his life, only to eventually suffer a much worse fate. He is systematically starved, tortured, poisoned, drugged and finally convinced to believe that Blackfire’s word is truth and that he has been “saved”.
Now under the influence of Deacon Blackfire’s words, Batman finds himself hallucinating and killing real people with a machine-gun that he dubs “Bessy”.
Batman at this point is absolutely, irrevocably under the control of Deacon Blackfire’s manipulation and being pointed at his problems like a loaded, bat-shaped gun. Eventually Bats manages to snap out of it and escape. This however, is not the end of our tale, as the GCPD become increasingly worried about the disappearing homeless problem and eventually find out about the Underworlders through a not-so-loyal member known as Ratface. This forces Blackfire’s hand and he mounts an assault on Gotham by assassinating the entire City Council as well as putting a bullet in Jim Gordon for good measure. With a lack of leadership, and Blackfire’s increasingly growing numbers the GCPD quickly fall and are forced to retreat to the city’s borders, effectively leaving the city under the control of Deacon Blackfire and his following of Underworlders.
Just as an example of how broken Batman is by this point:
As I said earlier- eventually Batman does get in the right mindframe and save Gotham, but it doesn’t change the fact that for a moment he was 100% under the will and control of Deacon Blackfire.
