Gotham is home to a wide assortment of criminals, including some of the strangest, craziest, and most demented criminals known to man. The DC comics have a knack for producing villains who will give you the creeps when you read about all the heinous things they have done. The Dollmaker, one of the most twisted villains, is the subject of this video.
The Dollmaker is a fictional supervillain who appears in American comic books published by DC Comics. Dollmaker was created by Tony Daniel, a writer, and artist for Detective Comics. In September 2011, DC’s continuity was rebooted with the release of The New 52. In this new chronology, Barton Mathis is introduced as a new “Dollmaker”.
Barton Mathis is a psychotic serial killer in Gotham City who leads a “family” He is the third version of the “Dollmaker” criminal identity. Marcel Mannequin, the Plastic Man villain who committed crimes with sentient robot dolls, was the first.
The second Supergirl villain was Anton Schott, the deranged son of Superman’s foe “The Toy Man,” The version of The Dollmaker we will be talking about the most in this video is Barton Mathis, who became a significant foe of Batman and is infamous for his deadly method of killing and disposing of his victims’ remains. Keep watching to learn more about Mathis and his forefathers who also used the moniker ‘Dollmaker.’
Who Is The Dollmaker?
This one is a tough question since the title of ‘The Dollmaker’ is one that has been borne by three individuals with a knack for mutating and killing children. While all of them share similarities in the form of their perverse obsession and lust for killing, they are fairly different and have different ways of carrying out their terrible plans.
Marcel Mannequin was the first character to bear the moniker “the Dollmaker.” Arnold Drake and Jack Sparling designed the Marcel Mannequin version of the Dollmaker, which first appeared in Plastic Man (vol. 2) #10. He was a gifted dollmaker who committed atrocities with his own sentient mechanical dolls.
He would make dolls which he would then be able to control and would use them to carry out his evil plans. He fought Plastic Man at a period when he had already given Gordon K. Trueblood a blood transfusion. At Madame DeLute’s high society ball, Plastic Man defeated the Dollmaker. Thus, it is known that the first dollmaker had the ability to create and control dolls to do his bidding.
The next one to bear the title of the Dollmaker was a man named Anton Schott. Sterling Gates and Jamal Igle designed the Anton Schott version of the Dollmaker, which originally appears in Supergirl (vol. 5) #58. Anton Schott was born on Christmas Day, the son of Winslow Percival Schott, a.k.a. the Toyman. Despite Anton’s enormous promise as a competent toymaker, his father showed little interest in his son, whom he regarded dull and this led to emotional neglect in the case of young Anton.
Other troubles came into his life when Anton’s mother took him away, believing Winslow was a pedophile, another thing that took a toll on him. However, while she took him away from his father, she also did not want to keep him and ditched him in Metropolis, forcing him to fend for himself. Anton was all alone and traumatized by the happenings of his childhood and he quickly discovered his father’s old workshop and decided to become known as the Dollmaker. It was his messed up way of getting back at his father for all those years of neglect.
However, as it is with villain origin stories, nothing good comes from abandonment and thus, Anton began kidnapping other children and transforming them into cybernetic doll-like slaves as a result of his abandonment issues. He used to keep them to work for him and in the end, was taken down by Supergirl who put an end to his string of horrific crimes. The second Dollmaker is also a brilliant inventor with a genius-level brain who can transform dolls into mobile weapons.
A new “Dollmaker,” named Barton Mathis was introduced in 2011. The story of Mathis follows that he went on several “hunting trips” with his father, Wesley, when he was a kid. However, this is not your regular hunting trip where father and son would bond over stalking and shooting big game.
Things were much much more sinister. Turns out, his father was a sociopath and hunted humans for sport. Mathis saw as his father slaughtered and then cannibalized individuals during these hunts, something that was no doubt extremely traumatic for a young boy and this would go on to affect him greatly in the future.
However, he would end up seeing his father shot and killed by a young cop called James Gordon as he was being hunted down by the police for his heinous and deranged crimes. Mathis was sent to foster care but vanished for years after only living for a single year in foster care, before finally resurfacing as none other than the Dollmaker, a serial murderer who builds “dolls” out of the flesh and limbs of his victims, and whose mask is largely composed of his murdered father’s skin.
Despite the obscurity surrounding his whereabouts, Barton Mathis regards the Toyman as a father figure who was a part of the Dollmaker “family,” for some time as revealed later.
The Dollmaker first appeared in the current continuity when he paid a visit to the Joker in Arkham Asylum during the Faces of Death storyline. The Joker had intended to be apprehended and transported to Arkham for the sole purpose of meeting with the Dollmaker. The Dollmaker succeeds in removing the skin from the Joker’s face, leaving the lunatic delighted with pain. They rejoiced that night, believing they had been reborn.
In fact, it is quite scary to think that the Dollmaker would be on the same level of insane and derangement as The Joker, the most iconic DC villain of all time, known for his madness. The third Dollmaker is a skilled surgeon who specializes in constructing human flesh dolls. When he has the correct parts of flesh, he can make the dolls nearly perfectly resemble individual human beings. As he demonstrated when he faced up against Batman, the Dollmaker has some access to Wayne Enterprises’ technology and resources.
What Makes Dollmaker So Evil
The Dollmakers, in all their three avatars, are inherently scary. Why do you ask? The reason behind this is the use of an innocent object- such as a doll which is meant for children to play with, to carry out their evil plans and ambitions. The second thing that makes them evil is the simple fact that they choose to prey on the innocent and make children the target of their heinous crimes and operations, no matter which iteration of the Dollmaker it is that we are referring to.
While it is understood that all versions of the Dollmaker went through some form of hardship and abuse as a child, that does not negate what they transformed into and how they channelized their pain and hurt into becoming deranged psychopaths with a penchant for killing.
The Dollmakers also have their own unique abilities that make them terrifying to face upfront, The first Dollmaker has the ability to create dolls and give them life, then use them to do his evil biddings. This means that he could easily create a doll army that would do everything he says and carry out his evil plans with the help of his minions.
The second Dollmaker’s powers are even scarier as he goes one step beyond simply just making dolls and controlling them – he doesn’t just make them, he mutates them in such a way that they are essentially killing machines as he adds various weaponry to their body parts which make them lethal – think Chuck, well made and much much worse.
And lastly, the Third Dollmaker seems to be the most gruesome and thus also the evilest of all of them, as he makes dolls, by using the flesh of other humans and children. Yes, you heard that right. He would murder people and then use their flesh to sew it all up and make flesh dolls. Did that send a shiver down your spine?
Well, it gets worse. Turns out that if he has the ‘right type’ of flesh, whatever that means, he is able to fully replicate another human and make his doll look like them because of his unfathomable expertise in surgical procedures.
Lastly, what really sets them apart from other DC villains and makes them inherently and truly evil is the fact that they had no space for emotions and cared for absolutely no one to such an extent that they didn’t even bat an eye when they killed and dismembered children. Truly horrifying.
Evil Versions Of Trigon In Various Forms Of Media
The Dollmaker is a twisted villain and various versions of the Dollmaker have been portrayed in pop culture and tv shows. Every portrayal has its own uniquely terrifying traits that make the Dollmaker a character to truly be feared. When it comes to films, the Dollmaker has unfortunately not made it to the movie screens as one of Batman’s foes from his infamous rogue gallery however, he has gotten a mention in animated movies.
The Dollmaker is voiced by “Weird Al” Yankovic in the animated film Batman vs. Robin. By name, this version of the character is Anton Schott, with Barton Mathis aspects integrated into the character.
Schott, a muscular guy who was a near victim of his serial killer father as a youngster, kidnaps children from Gotham City and transforms them into cyborg dolls with modifications such as chainsaws placed on their limbs in an abandoned toy factory. Schott claims that they will never be hurt again this way. He is killed by the Talon of the Court of Owls after fighting Robin.
The Dollmaker has also enjoyed multiple mentions and roles in various DC animated shows and live-action TV series. The Dollmaker is voiced by Frank Welker in the Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show episode “The Case of the Dreadful Dolls.”
This version of the character makes voodoo dolls that allow him to control the individuals he constructs them in the likeness of, in this case, the Super Friends. Schott’s Toy Factory is where he hides. The Dollmaker was invented by the show’s creators to replace the Toyman, who was not available at the time, according to the DVD commentary.
Michael Eklund portrays Barton Mathis in the Arrow episode “Broken Dolls.” Mathis is shown as a serial murderer who kills young girls by injecting “a flexible polymer” into their throats, which hardens and suffocates them. He then dresses and postures the bodies like a bisque doll, earning him the moniker ‘the Dollmaker’ from the police and the media. Scary, right?
Colm Feore portrays Barton Mathis, renamed Dr. Francis Dulmacher, in Gotham. The character is depicted as a “crazy European scientist” in this version. He’s conducted several tests and even discovered ways to bring the dead back to life. The Dollmaker first appeared in the episode “Selina Kyle,” in which he has two of his minions, Patti and Doug, pose as members of the Mayor’s Homeless Outreach Program in order to kidnap street kids as part of a child-trafficking ring, using Trident Intercontinental Shipping as a front for their smuggling.
The Dollmaker’s minions capture the street children and transport them to the Dollmaker’s lair. However, the trafficking network is brought to an end by detectives James Gordon and Harvey Bullock.
The Dollmaker had been kidnapping and imprisoning people for unknown reasons, including Fish Mooney, according to the events of “The Scarecrow,” “The Blind Fortune Teller,” and “Red Hood.” In the episode “Everyone Has a Cobblepot,” Dollmaker makes his first physical appearance, although he is vanquished in the end, and his ambitions are ultimately foiled.
The Dollmaker, throughout all of its iterations, is a formidable and quite frankly, psychopathic villain with a major bloodlust. They derive fun and pleasure from all the murder and chaos and thus, one of the most underrated villains from the DC universe that we believe should get more mainstream, attention because of how unique their killing style is and how gruesome they truly are. With that, we come to the end of this video. Which other underrated yet truly terrifying DC villains should we explore? Tell us in the comments below!