People like to say that Batman’s Rogue‘s Gallery is iconic because they’re all dark reflections of himself. This is bullshit, and I’ll tell ya why–it’s because they’re actually all dark reflections of American culture writ large.

Killer Croc has nothing to say about an old money white boy with parental abandonment and rage issues. He’s got everything to do with America’s fear of backwoods people. Similarly, Poison Ivy is about when militant ecofeminism gets real, Two Face is about the arbitrary and unjust nature of the American justice system, and Clayface is about the hollowness of celebrity culture. Harley Quinn is not the most popular female character in comics because she’s a twisted echo of something inside Batman; she’s popular because lots of women identify with being in an abusive relationship–notice how she’s become steadily more sympathetic as the writers embraced the implications of her backstory. And it keeps going. Scarecrow? Drugs. Mad Hatter? Date rape. The Joker? He’s about the most fundamental American fear of all. The fear of unbridled chaos, a problem that basically never exists, but which all white Americans are taught from birth to fear, and what White America fears sets the national agenda.

Admit it: nobody really gives a shit about Calendar Man. Nobody gives a shit about Man-Bat. Hush got boring fast. Why? Because none of these characters have anything to say about America. This is not to say that the scores and scores of creators who have worked on Batman-related titles over the decades were setting out to do a long-form collaborative deconstruction of the American id, far from it. I’m simply pointing out that the villains who have staying power, who matter at all to people outside the hardcore fans who love trivia? These villains all have something in common: very obvious symbolism about the American condition. Often, characters don’t pick up this extra layer until they’ve made multiple appearances and developed an extended motif, but you’ll notice that the villains who keep coming back decade after decade become less and less like people, and more and more like symbols.

Now if only I could figure out what the hell Mr. Freeze is supposed to be.