Despite striking similarities to Marvel’s Punisher, it’s unfair to dismiss Mad Stan’s persona as a rip-off of the Punisher. Mad Stan, also known as Stanley Labowski, was first presented as a villain in the 1999 episode Batman Beyond. He isn’t a classic villain in the traditional sense; rather, his approach to repairing the system is flawed and explosive.
Mad Stan is sick up with the futuristic Gotham’s bureaucratic machinery, and his solution to all of the problems is to blow stuff up. Mad Stan, like the Punisher, is a mercenary who operates alone and compensates for his lack of explosives with massive explosives and ammo.
He’s a good martial artist as well. Unlike the Punisher, though, Mad Stan was overlooked in the Batman Beyond animated series since he is far from a one-dimensional character. The fact that Mad Stan was a character from the DC universe, rather than the classic DC Universe, was a major contributing element.
Having said that, even after the show finished, Mas Stan continued to investigate the world of comics. For instance, DC Universe’s 2012 Batman Beyond Unlimited Issue #3-6, by Adam Beechen and Norm Breyfogle, explore Mad Stan to great lengths and give him the luxury of compelling and gripping stories.
As the character was introduced in the show, his back story remains untold mainly. However, it is evident that Stanley Labowski was not always as demented as he later became. He was a regular Gotham citizen who probably saw a lot more red tape than the rest of the folks.
He had the weirdest of notions, like the over-abundance of knowledge was making exasperating the people as they failed to absorb all the information. By extension, it was exacerbating Gotham’s society.
So in order to get rid of this mess, he resorted to his typical solution of blowing up the public library with explosives. After a stressful struggle with Mad Stan, Terry’s Batman saved the day.
Even Bruce Wayne believed that once Mad Stan made the decision to blow something up, he couldn’t be stopped. Stan’s operations were usually planned after he saw something on television, and his haphazard pick of targets irritated him greatly.
Batman: Too many overdue books?
Mad Stan: Information overload, man. As a society, we’re drowning in a quagmire of vid-clips, e-mail, and sound bites. We can’t absorb it all. There’s only one sane solution: blow it up!
Eyewitness, the thirteenth episode of Season 2, sheds additional information on Stan’s character and personality. During District Attorney Sam Young’s election campaign, his wife, Police Commissioner Barbara Gordon, hosts a Gala.
Stan storms inside the building, but Batman knocks him out. Interestingly, Spellbinder was nearby, and he used his abilities to convince Barbara that Batman killed Mad Stan by suffocating him with a steel barrel. Barbara is outraged and turns on Batman and Bruce Wayne.
Later, Spellbinder brings Mad Stan to one of his virtual reality chambers, where Stan is forced to watch his lifetime aspirations realised. He successfully destroys the Gotham City Hall and bathes in glory.
It was virtual, but Stan loved it, and who are we to judge! Meanwhile, when Gotham Police Department learns of the truth and barges into Spellbinder’s facility, they rescue Stan, only to probably put him under their arrest!
In Season 3’s twelfth episode, Stan gets further crazy. Stan thought it was a good idea to blow up the Department of Health because there was an upcoming raise in the taxes for pet licenses. No wonder Stan is addressed as Mad. Stan comes across a robot named Zeta and plants a bomb on it.
But he was confident that Batman would ultimately track him down and question him. As a result, he drugged himself and recorded a message in which he mocked Batman and boasted about himself. Batman had until midnight to find the bomb, or else another building would be destroyed, potentially resulting in the loss of lives.
Stan was a man of firm resolve, but his short and ill-tempered nature always got the better of him. Naturally, his ultimate purpose wouldn’t be furthered because of his flawed execution. Stan would ultimately end up blowing something up but it would be practically useless.
All he would ultimately achieve was inflicting havoc and putting in danger the very lives of the Gothamites that he intended to save or uplift. Despite his violent nature and hot temperament, Stan had a soft, loving, and caring side.
He adopted a Chihuahua and named her Boom Boom, no surprises there! The little dog served as served an early warning system for Stan. We witness how attached Stan was to his dog in Batman Beyond Unlimited Issues #3 and 4. As a result, a crew of Russian arms traffickers snatches Stan’s small Boom Boom in exchange for the explosives he possesses.
They didn’t anticipate, though, that Stan would go to any length to reconnect with his one buddy. Stan threatens to detonate a nuclear device that will destroy all of Gotham and then all of Russia. You might think he’s exaggerating, but trust us when we say he isn’t. Batman steps in and proposes that the two of them find the puppy together.
Stan, on the other hand, is enraged by his dog’s kidnapping and sets out on his own to find the Russians. Finally, Stan is reunited with the dog in Issue #4, but only after he’s done some explosive damage. As Stan expected, Batman has the revenge-crazed mad bomber and saves Gotham from further rampage, for now, at least.
As many of you must be thinking, Mad Stan is a fine amalgamation of John Wick and the Punisher from Marvel. Interestingly, the story about Mad Stan’s dog getting abducted came out in the 2012 comics and Chad Stahelski directed the first John Wick film in 2014.
We aren’t saying anything, but we implore you to draw your own conclusions. We really hope that we get to see this great non-conformist crazy bomber in more comics and possibly animations and live-action films.
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