One of the best aspects of Gotham City from the start has been Batman’s collection of outlaws. DC still appears to go above and above when it comes to creating fresher foes for the Caped Crusader nowadays.
One of their more recent and successful acquisitions is The Designer. He debuted in the continuing Batman comic book series’ eighty-ninth issue in 2020, having been developed by James Tynior IV and Jorge Jimenez. He was introduced as a mysterious character in the Dark Designs arc. But as soon as we understood him and gained some clarity, the plot changed and made him even more enigmatic than before.
Considering that this may not make much sense at the moment, we will go into more detail about the Designer in this video.
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Origin Of The Designer
The world had previously witnessed a magnificent but awful criminal in the Designer before Batman became Gotham’s defender. The man performed some of the biggest and most elaborate heists ever known to mankind while wearing a mask to hide his identity. He had previously done any kind of crime that sprang to mind. And he carefully considered every aspect of everything he did, planning it out in great detail. He later ended up in Gotham City when his reputation caused him to become a legend in the criminal underworld. And what occurs if you commit a crime in Gotham City? Batman is standing in opposition to you.
But the Designer was no stranger to going against genius detectives. During his prime, he had found a rival in Cassander Wycliffe Baker. Initially, the Designer assumed that this was just another small obstacle that stood in his way, between him and his tangible assets. So, the Designer took a simple approach to defeating this adversary.
He would design a crime, come up with a counter with Cassander’s deductions in mind, and then come up with a plan to thwart what the detective had deduced. However, he kept failing and failing as the detective rained over his designs every single time. Their rivalry escalated and the Designer reached a point in his life where he designed his crimes not for his personal, material success but to defeat the detective. And yet, no matter how much he grew his finances and manpower, he could not win.
Not until he realized that he had been playing into the detective’s hands all along. In the 90th Issue of the 2016 Batman comics, he said, “I had been playing the game on the detective‘s terms. Taking one step forward past each step he had taken to beat me. If I designed a crime with one degree of complexity, he would come back with two degrees of complexity in his means of defeating me. Beating him would require an exponential leap forward.”
The Designer isolated himself in a room for a year to become the man he should be in twenty years, while the detective retained his present form. And it all worked out.
Cassander faced great humiliation as he finally fell to the Designer in the worst way possible and retired as a result of his loss. The Designer earned his legendary status with his ability to design any crime of any magnitude which would be executed successfully. He had no one standing in his way anymore. To add to that, he had also come up with a chemical that could make corpses act like voodoo zombies under his command. These zombies became his henchmen.
Time goes by and newer villains enter the criminal world in Gotham City. Batman also begins his reign and thwarts these criminals over and over again. The Designer observes these events and relates them to his days with Cassander. And so, he wants to help these super criminals out, not because he cares about Gotham’s bad guys, but because he wants to cement his legacy with a legendary plan.
He contacts the Joker, Catwoman, the Riddler, and the Penguin – Batman’s greatest enemies, by sending them a letter. He invites them over to his place, the Tartarus House. The criminals are escorted to the hideout outside Gotham City by a voodoo zombie.
At Tartarus House, their weapons are seized and soon, the Designer meets with them to offer them his help. He wants Batman to be taken down the same way he had defeated Cassander once and for all. He advises them to rule over Gotham City after defeating Batman and share half of their profits with the Designer, who would then disappear.
Finally, he resorts to a one on one private session with each of the criminals, motivating them to think bigger than they could previously imagine. Catwoman begins talking about robbing jewelries and banks but soon ends up designing plans to rob billion dollar companies to nothing. Penguin crafts a plan to become Gotham City’s criminal Mayor via the help of assassins and the Riddler discards his riddles to create a labyrinth so complex that the city’s law and order would never be able to crack and recover from it. However, the final man to have the chat is the Joker, which is where things get tricky.
The Joker does not hold back when he speaks about the grandest thing that he wants, to be the devil himself, just like the Designer. The masked criminal is smart enough to know that the Joker is total chaos, a chaos that has no end. The Designer understands that he would have no future with the Joker around.
So, he orders his henchmen to kill the criminals. However, the clown prince of crime had hidden a small gun on him, which he uses to blow the Designer’s brain off from behind while the others fight off the zombies. In the end, the Designer’s body is buried in a graveyard and the criminals decide to keep the entire affair a secret. Tartarus House is burnt down to remove any trace of the masked man.
Amazing Story About The Designer From Batman Volume 3
Batman finds himself in a position where he has to deal with five assassins who are after him. Deathstroke, who is one of the five, tries to get in touch with them but he is oblivious to the fact that they have all been taken out by Batman and his allies. And Batman surely has the most unorthodox allies here, especially with Harley Quinn by his side. He also has a conversation with Selina Kyle, who tells him everything about that night at Tartarus House since the Designer is now back, even though he is supposed to be dead.
However, Batman still feels like Selina is deliberately leaving some information out. But she finally confesses how the Designer (who is miraculously alive) is now using their grand designs and executing them. The Catwoman’s plan was to rob the Waynes dry, which meant that Batman was soon about to go bankrupt.
In the 91st issue, the Joker narrates his encounter with the Designer to a bartender. He says, “Once upon a time, four crooks walked into a haunted house to have dinner with the Devil. The Devil was pleased with each of them for the mighty sins they had committed and he wanted to give them each a boon.”
He speaks about the Penguin, calling him a fat old bird who wanted to be the Mayor. The Riddler was the crooked man who wanted to be the wisest in the kingdom, and Catwoman was the thieving cat who wanted to be the richest. And then, he says, “The fourth crook was a Joker.
And see, he’d been laughing all this time, because he and he alone understood the Devil’s game. With no wise, powerful, or wealthy man left to stop him, the city wouldn’t belong to the three crooks at all. It would belong to the Devil himself. In time it was the Joker’s turn, and the devil asked what he wanted more than anything in the world. And the Joker said to him… I want to be the Devil. And then he killed him”.
And the Joker was right. The Designer had tricked the other three into doing his bidding. Penguin’s plan would get rid of all the powerful men, the Riddler’s plan would eradicate the wise, and Catwoman would wipe out the rich. So when the Joker wiped out the Designer, he did it because he wanted to take the Designer’s place and went on to design his own plan to bring the house down on Batman’s head.
Meanwhile, Batman gets into a fight with Deathstroke, who has been hired by the Designer as one of the five assassins to take Batman out. At the same time, Catwoman regroups with Harley to help the Bat out but they soon learn that the killers they had captured have escaped. Suddenly, the screens around them are illuminated and the Designer appears, stating how everything is going according to his plan, which meant that all of Catwoman and Harley’s actions were like those of the pawns on a chessboard.
Catwoman soon blows up the lair, which also housed several of the Designer’s zombies and she escapes with Harley. On the other end, Batman tries to get Deathstroke on his side and wants to learn who the Designer truly is. But Slade Wilson himself is unaware of the credentials when the Designer presents himself on Batman’s screen, talking about Deathstroke having played his part. And how it was now time for the Riddler to take the reigns.
The next issue opens with the Penguin being questioned by Commissioner Bullock and the Gotham City Police Department. He is hospitalized after Deathstroke had almost killed him and argues with the commissioner when everyone notices how the city turns green from the screens all over Gotham as they project the image of a man in a green suit. This man is Edward Nygma, also known as, the Riddler.
The Riddler has created the labyrinth he had spoken about during his one-on-one session with the Designer…. and to unlock the labyrinth and free the people, he has appointed Gotham’s greatest detective to play his game of riddles without cheating. Batman’s communication with his right-hand man Lucius (who replaced Alfred following his death) are soon cut off.
But as Batman answers the Riddler’s questions, he takes a Bat-train with Deathstroke to bypass the blocks laid out by the Riddler’s labyrinth. And his constant victory and answer to every riddle begins to frustrate the Riddler. Meanwhile, Selina and Harley cross the Gotham City sewers as Selina tries to steal Bruce Wayne’s fortunes before the Designer can. They fight off more zombies and reach the office of the Underbroker, a criminal who helps thieves with their heists.
Inside the Underbroker’s exclusive club, Joker’s henchmen and his new sidekick slash girlfriend Punchline appears. Harley and Punchline fight one another as Harley tries to explain to Punchline how terrible of a boyfriend the Joker truly is. Meanwhile, Catwoman slips away to make the Underbroker do her bidding.
Batman finds out where the Riddler is. Since he was able to broadcast himself all across Gotham City, Bruce Wayne recognized the broadcasting room which happened to be his own office. But of course, the Riddler did not know of this. Batman takes the Riddler out and subdues Deathstroke with a narcotic shot when the Designer presents himself to the Caped Crusader. He addresses him as Bruce, proving that he knows the man behind the mask. And the Designer’s plan is simple. He wants to have a chat with Batman and then, he wants to kill him.
The next or the ninety third issue opens with Batman and the Designer finally fighting one another. The Designer explains his master plan to Bruce as he describes how it will work out. They soon break out into a swordfight when Batman retaliates and breaks the Designer’s plan with his own wits. He talks about how the design would work out with Catwoman, the Penguin, and the Riddler following through. But the Joker would not do so. However, Batman knew the truth behind this design all along.
The Designer was dead. The one in front of him was nothing but a zombie and the man directing the show was the Joker. He had taken the Designer’s place when he killed him and was now the Devil himself.
Bruce takes off the Designer’s mask to reveal the corpse underneath. Attached inside his mouth is a speaker through which the Joker is communicating. He had dug up the Designer’s body from the graveyard and used his chemical to turn him into a zombie. However, his target is not Batman. It is Catwoman. And Bruce knows exactly why it is her – she was the one who wanted to rob Wayne Enterprises dry.
Deathstroke reappears and stabs Batman’s femoral artery in his leg with a sword, removing which would kill him. Meanwhile, Punchline slices Harley’s throat and makes her goons throw her into the sewers while Selina tries to get the fortune of the Waynes to its safety. However, she notices how the money is hidden in false accounts and in shell companies. This way, her stealing the money will also lead to Bruce Wayne never reclaiming it as he will then have to explain why his fortune is hidden in such a suspicious manner, which will once again result in him legally losing the money.
Soon, Punchline arrives and shoots Selina. She does not kill the cat but makes her unconscious. She then calls the Joker and brags about how she tricked Catwoman. Bruce Wayne’s fortune now belongs to the Joker and the clown prince of crime is now worth over a hundred billion dollars.
Other Interesting Facts About The Designer
The Designer is a fairly newer villain to figure on Batman’s notorious gallery of rogues. However, according to the story, he is a lot older than you may assume. When he spoke about his past with the detective named Cassander, he was shown fighting the detective on a very old locomotive which according to its design, was the model that was launched in 1852. And he was probably in his 20s while he fought Cassander, which meant that he is easily around one-fifty years old in the Dark Designs arc, since the current Batman series is set in the present day.
But his creator, James Tynion IV wanted to introduce his character a lot earlier. The Designer had been conceived as a character in the creator’s mind a long time ago but he could not find the right spot to use as his introduction.
He then took inspiration from video game characters who have appeared in Silent Hill, Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, and Metal Gear Solid to realise the Designer.
The character also wears a mask which is actually Tynion paying homage to a manga villain named Tomodachi from 20th Century Boys.
The Designer’s house has a deeper meaning as well. Tartarus is like the hell in Greek Mythology. Tartarus is also a primordial God. When the four crooks were escorted by a zombie to Tartarus, it was mentioned how they were about to cross the river Styx. However, in original Greek mythology, one crosses River Styx to get to the land of the dead ruled by Hades which is known as the Underworld. Underworld is the place of the afterlife and Tartarus was the Hell where the enemies of the Gods were banished to.
The Designer is also a legendary swordsman who is as skilled as Katana, Deathstroke, and Ra’s Al Ghul.
What Makes Him So Powerful?
The Designer does not have any superpowers or anything of the sort. This is quite common in Batman’s side of DC’s storyline as Batman and his Gotham City adversaries tend to rely on their wits and weapons instead of super strength and flying abilities.
Naturally, the Designer excelled when it came to his intellect. His tactical analysis was allegedly off the charts which led to his legendary status as a designer of crime.
He was also a great swordsman and had come up with the chemical that turned corpses into zombies who did his bidding. Too bad he became a victim to his own formula when he met the new Devil.
The thing is, we do not know if the Designer truly ever existed in the DC Universe. Everything we know about him, we know from a flashback story narrated by Catwoman. He could very well be a man fabricated by the Joker.
We know that there are three Jokers, so one of them could have created the persona known as the Designer. Nothing is truly impossible with the Joker. The Designer could be a design himself.
And with that, today’s video comes to an end. What did you think of The Designer? Did you enjoy this video? If yes, then don’t forget to like and comment on this video. Till then, goodbye. And have a nice one!