Name: Jonathan Crane
Age: 47
Alias: The Scarecrow
Appearance: 6'3", pale, messy brown hair, piercing blue eyes, tall, wiry frame. Out of costume, he wears old, but neat clothes (normally just a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and slacks), square-rimmed glasses. Crane does have numerous circular and long scars on his back, chest, legs, and arms from childhood. While the scars on his forearms and hands have healed enough to hardly be noticed, he is self-conscious about the others and even in the summer has been known to wear pants and long sleeves. Due to a run-in with Killer Croc years ago, he has his left leg in a brace.
Crane’s costume has
changed numerous times over the years, but he will adapt any image that looks fearsome and resembles his moniker, though he often finds himself going to the basics: trench coats, hats that hide his eyes, cloth masks. Things like this:
Minus that fancy yellow accessory. (Damn you, Luthor!)
Or this:
But thanks to his previously mentioned run-in with Croc, the question comes as to whether or not his mask is just that...or what’s left of his face. Either way, he seems to enjoy the look, and isn’t telling anytime soon.
Personality: Jonathan is almost a literal mask personality. While he does
not suffer from Dissociative Identity Disorder, schizophrenia, or any similar disorder, it is notable that out of costume, he is much meeker and seclusive, more willing to submit and even show what’s left of his humanity, while in costume, he all but becomes a monster. Though this was
much more prominent in his early criminal years, and while Jonathan has since given into the Scarecrow persona he built for himself, there are still shades of this, particularly in his rare moments of clarity in his madness.
Without the mask, he is normally very secluded and quiet, and enjoys nothing more than to settle down with a good book. Books are his particular comfort, as they both gave him reprieve from the world’s cruelties in childhood, and empowered him with the knowledge to change his situation. He cherishes them above everything else, to the point where he will wear out his clothes, starve, or let himself get hurt if it means a book will be taken care of. While he feels
very little in terms of other human beings, often considering them hardly more than lab rats for his twisted experiments, Jonathan
does have something resembling a soft spot for those facing horrific abuse or bullying, and at times
has stepped in to protect such souls in his own twisted way (often landing him back in Arkham, but it’s the thought that counts, isn’t it?). Aside from books, fear, and chemistry, Jonathan’s other true love is teaching. While his insanity and obsessions have eaten his mind over the years, he has
always held a desire to teach, and it is one of the increasingly few ways to connect with him on a more human level.
With the mask, the Scarecrow is a cruel, sadistic creature who initially hunted down those who wronged him, but like a virus, the feeling of power he gained from other peoples’ fear lead him to create bigger and greater thrills. The mask started as a way for him to feel more confident in his work, and is almost a Frankenstein's monster in and of itself for what the persona tied to it has done to Jonathan's mind. No longer content with childhood bullies and family who betrayed him, the Scarecrow turned to unleashing his twisted experiments on this city in his twisted games with the Batman, whom he simultaneously fears and respects. He doesn't just seek to control fear. He wants to
become it, and he sees Batman as a hindrance to that goal: take out the Bat, and he will become what Gotham fears the most.
Very,
very rarely does Jonathan find a balance between two extremes, where he functions on an almost normal level and craves a simpler life, often taking a new identity to attempt to go straight build a new life for himself. These rare attempts always inevitably fail, either due to interference with the Batman, his own lust for fear and power, and/or circumstances beyond his control ruin what little peace and happiness he gained.
Skills/Abilities: Able to read and manipulate people, and he is
very in tune with picking it out fear in others; often he can actually smell it. Proficient in chemistry; he uses this knowledge to create his fear serums and toxins. Crane is not much of a fighter, but has his variant of the crane-style kung-fu which he refers to as "violent dancing": a defensive tactic to keep an enemy at bay, though this is often a last-resort. He can also wield and utilize a scythe, and does have decent marksmanship with small handguns---he
did start his criminal career as a hitman, after all, and often uses small tranquilizer guns to hit targets with fear serum darts at longer ranges. At times, he dons a needle glove.
Weaknesses: Crane is physically no threat; most of his fighting moves are for defense purposes that
maybe buy him a few minutes at best to run, and is usually taken down pretty easily with a sock to the jaw. His fear experiments over the years, while granting him immunity to his own fear serum, have ironically left him susceptible to other psychotropic drugs. His criminal years and habit of experimenting on himself have taken their toll on his mind and body; Crane is
very aware that he may not live to see 50 either due to his health choices, or due to the enemies he’s made over the years and simply doesn’t care. One could say he is addicted to fear itself, as his self-experiments often push his own mental limits, and as a result, he is nearly devoid of all other emotion. Crane also suffers from ornithophobia---a fear of birds, and chiroptophobia---a fear of bats. While the latter is obvious, at times, he will have a crow companion at his side, as a ploy to keep his enemies from figuring out the former. Despite this, Crane has embraced and even weaponized his fears to use against his enemies. Some childhood trauma has also never left him: while he is
very good at keeping this particular fear hidden, even into adulthood, he never quite got over his fear of Mary, and some of her “teachings” affect how he sees himself and makes his choices. Crane also has some deadly thrill-seeker vibes: when his fear serum no longer does the trick and Batman isn't around to terrify him, he may actively seek out danger to try to spark even a hint of fear, to the potential detriment of his life.
History: Jonathan Crane was born in Arlen, Georgia. His father, Gerald Crane, abandoned him before he was born, and his mother, Karen Keeny, disappeared shortly after giving birth. Whether she abandoned him of her own volition or was coerced doesn’t matter, only that he was raised by his great-grandmother, Mary Keeny, who in his own words, "maintained him," and raised him in a loveless atmosphere. Mary was a religious sadist, often turning a blind eye to Jonathan’s torment at school, and enjoyed making him work long hours in the cornfield. Whenever she felt he stepped out of line, Mary punished him by locking him in an old church/aviary and allowing the crows to come down and attack him. This particular punishment left scars on Crane’s body as well as his mind. It also lead to Mary’s ironic demise when he learned how she trained them and turned the tables on her---while he was still in high school.
He was never liked at school, and was often the victim of cruel and malicious pranks by his peers. Because of his thin, almost emaciated-looking form, he was often compared to Ichabod Crane from
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. He was also often compared to a scarecrow, a moniker from which he later took his criminal alias. With Mary’s demise under his belt, Crane started utilizing his newfound knowledge to start getting back at his tormentors, often with mixed results. The most notable incident was the night of his senior prom, where his scare tactics lead to one car swerving off the road and paralyzing his longtime enemy, Bo Griggs, for life, and the death of Griggs' girlfriend, Sherry Squires, whom Crane had once adored. (She should have been wearing her seatbelt!)
After graduating from high school, Crane continued both his studies of fear and of chemistry. He started his tenure as a professor of subliminal psychology under his mentor, Professor Pigeon. A promising young teacher and emboldened with an outstanding record, Crane utilized a rather unorthodox lesson to make a point about his theory about the power of fear: he fired a blank during on of his student’s lectures. While his lesson inspired all As that term, it cost him his career.
Unable to teach again, Crane turned to his other loves---fear and chemistry---and set out on a criminal career as the Scarecrow, starting out as a killer-for-hire and leaving pieces of straw as a calling card, an act that caught the attention of the Batman and ignited their rivalry.
During his first year as the Scarecrow, Jonathan lead the Batman along a killing spree, in which he targeted friends and family for their various wrongs: Professor Pigeon, who failed to defend him prior to his dismissal, the grandmother who wanted him dead as a baby, Gerald Crane who abandoned him, Karen Keeny who dared to start a new life with a new child, and his baby half-sister who would have been given the fair chance at life that he never had. All of this built up to the opportunity for him to see Gotham’s savior tremble in terror. Batman and Robin managed to stop him from killing the latter three, though not before Crane had instilled a good bit of terror into both of his parents. In their final showdown, Crane supposedly drowned in a river just off Karen’s property.
When he resurfaced again, the Scarecrow continued his on-going quest to understand the nature and origins of fear, his schemes often involving turning Gotham's citizens into unwilling pawns for his experiments. Most of his later schemes have graduated from personal vendettas to citywide chaos, though whenever an old enemy resurfaces, he makes it a point to hunt them down and make them suffer. Once in a while, however, Crane has utilized his knowledge of fear and phobias to try to help another, such as his best student, Molly Randall, by terrorizing the boy who hurt her, Becky Albright by giving her the chance to turn the tables on her tormentors (she refused), and Lindsey, whom he encouraged to face her fears and take down several classmates who made her life hell.
Putting him in Arkham has arguably made the Scarecrow more dangerous, as he has had access---and at times made himself an ally to---the likes of the Mad Hatter and the Joker. He does also get along with some of the other inmates, such as Harley Quinn.
In later years, however, Crane's experiments have taken a toll on his health. His own fear serum, after numerous uses, has made him unable to feel fear at all, and as it stands, he has yet to find a permanent way to fix this. As mentioned, he has to use a leg brace, but walks just fine with it. His numerous run-ins with the Batfamily, in particular the Batman, have done their work on his mind, often leaving him broken and fragile after an encounter and forcing him to build himself up again and again, with each time sacrificing more of his humanity as he allows his obsession with fear to grow stronger.
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