WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Batman's Grave, by Warren Ellis, Bryan Hitch, Alex Sinclair, and Richard Starkings, available now.
Thanks to the various reboots and reality-smashing events the DC Universe has endured, the world of Batman has changed quite a bit. While major figures like Batman and Robin have remained relatively unscathed, more minor characters and villains have been subject to some dramatic changes and reinterpretations.
In The Batman's Grave #7, that happens to one of Gotham City's many forgotten villains, Colonel Sulphur, who was just reintroduced as a dramatic new character.
WHO WAS THE PRE-CRISIS COLONEL SULPHUR?
Colonel Sulpher was introduced in Batman #241 by Dennis O'Neil and Irv Novick. Initially seeking to steal government secrets, Sulphur attacked a government worker and kidnapped his wife, promising to kill her if he didn't receive the notes secrets he demanded. Although he's nominally a regular human, Sulphur does have one secret weapon, a blade hidden inside his hand that he can extend in lieu of one of his fingers. Batman defeated him and became a consistent thorn in the villain's side, preventing his further attempts to steal state secrets to be used as blackmail. Sulphur would continue to target government-associated figures, notably including STAR Labs scientist Fred Danvers, which led Batman and Supergirl to team up to bring him to justice.
Sulphur would eventually find himself joining the Army of Crime under the command of General Scarr. alongside other minor military-themed villains such as Major Disaster and Captain Cutlass. With a stolen alien weapon that could briefly trap beings like Superman inside a pocket dimension, the group even briefly contained Superman and Batman to such a plane. However, the heroes eventually escaped and defeated them with relative ease.
WHO IS THE POST-REBIRTH COLONEL SULPHUR?
While investigating a series of police killings in The Batman's Grave #7, Batman finds himself with a surprising assist from one of the killed men: Officer Kaysen had secretly installed a series of hidden cameras around his home, which were able to catch enough snippets of the killer for Batman to identify him. The computer-generated mugshot turns out to be a hit with Colonel Sulphur, who has been reimagined as a former member of the Serbian State Security. However, Sulphur was able to leave the group before it was brought to trial for their actions. He's since become a freelance mercenary, working for various organizations around the world.
Like many Batman villains, Suphur has a pathological mental condition: namely, Sulphur carries out each and every one of his killings at sunrise, leading to a distinct pattern that Batman can predict around. Bruce and Alfred are able to deduce that Colonel Sulphur isn't the mastermind of the plot that Batman's investigating, but rather an expendable contractor in the grand scheme of things. While Alfred spends the evening dispersing the crowds Sulphur has helped unleash on Gotham and Batman gets some much-needed rest, the pair prepare for the sunrise. When Colonel Sulphur sneaks into the home of a GCPD Sergeant and prepares to kill him, Batman arrives and quickly captures the mercenary, bringing him to a mysterious warehouse to interrogate him about the mysterious person who hired him.
While the original Colonel Sulphur was connected to the military in his name, the modern version of the character is a more direct version of that. He's a trained killer and clearly built up as a dangerous (even without the obvious hidden knife hand, although he may yet prove to have such an upgrade.) Batman is forced to approach him from a specific distance and take him by surprise to prevent any kind of actual battle, which hints at his genuine strength. He's shown to be a far more dangerous villain than his Pre-Crisis counterpart - which is likely part of the reason Batman is willing to at least threaten to torture him with a car battery to get what he needs from him.
It's also worth noting that in a way, Colonel Sulphur has even been able to bring a version of the Army of Crime to Gotham by unleashing waves of paid henchmen to storm the streets of Gotham. It's an interesting way to update the concept for the modern era that begs the question of whether or not we'll see other updated Army of Crime members in the future. Regardless of that, Sulphur is a far more dangerous character than he used to be, and Batman's actions here prove that he is far more dangerous too.