WARNING: The following contains spoilers for “More Than Maybe,” a story in DC’s Crimes of Passion #1, by Steve Orlando, Greg Smallwood and Clem Robbins, on sale now.
In Birds of Prey (And The Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), two of Batman’s relatively lesser-known villains, Black Mask and Mister Zsasz, make their live-action debuts. In the process, they join a small legion of Batman villains who’ve made an appearance on film, including Harley Quinn, who they fight in the film.
While heroes as iconic as Superman and Wonder Woman are still waiting to meet some of their most famous foes on film, Batman villains like Joker and Harley Quinn can headline their own movies.
Although most of Batman’s cinematic foes are at least partially based on his comic-book rogues gallery, a handful of his villains appeared on the big screen first. Now, in DC’s Crimes of Passion #1, Tito Daka, Batman’s first movie villain, has made his debut in the main comic book DC Universe almost 80 years after his onscreen introduction.
This story presents Daka as a villainous hypnotist, but Daka debuted as a far more troubling character in the 1943 Batman serial, “The Electrical Brain.” In the age before TV, Daka was the main villain across all 15 parts of that theatrical series, where he used his titular Electrical Brain to turn unwitting people into his minions in an effort to build a handheld death ray. Unfortunately, the serial’s Daka was a Japanese spymaster who, like many of that era’s characters of Asian descent, was a typical “yellow peril” villain defined by racist ethnic stereotypes.
In 1985, Roy Thomas and Arvell Jones introduced another version of this character, Prince Daka, in All-Star Squadron, an alternate reality series set during World War II on Earth-2. Although this version kept the serial villain’s ethnic background and role, his full name was never revealed in either of his two appearances.
While Crimes of Passion’s Daka shares a name with his cinematic counterpart, the more problematic aspects of the character have been abandoned and replaced by a zanier villain who would be at home fighting Adam West’s Batman.
The comic presents Daka as a disgraced hypnotherapist who also has an interest in turning Gotham City’s unwitting citizens into his pawns. Using his Enrapturing Eye, Daka hypnotizes the elderly residents of the Crown Elder Home into a trance in an effort to get their children to sign over their wills to him.
After the tuxedo-clad Daka sends the retirees and the home’s staff to take on Batman, he tells Linda Page, one of Bruce Wayne’s first girlfriends, to shoot the Dark Knight. However, Batman jolts Linda out of her trance by subtly revealing his identity to her, and she takes down Daka with a single punch.
Despite Daka’s deeply unfortunate beginnings, the villain still holds a meaningful place in Batman’s history. While he’s not likely to return to the big screen anytime soon, this new version of Tito Daka seems well-positioned to become a recurring character from Batman’s early days going forward.