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Batman Character Analogues In Magic: The Gathering – Catwoman & More

It's Batman Week here at Bleeding Cool! As mentioned in earlier articles, the Games department wanted a slice of the pie, so to speak, so today we are continuing this series about Magic: The Gathering analogues to well-known Batman characters and concepts! Yesterday, we went over some of the most devious villains to ever grace Gotham City (as well as Commissioner Gordon), but there are so many villains in Batman's Rogues Gallery that we felt the need to devote more time to these masters of evil and nemeses of the Dark Knight.

We must point out that this hypothetical Batman Series, which takes leaves from the book of Magic: The Gathering's Godzilla Series, does not express the views of Wizards of the Coast, D.C. Comics, or even Bleeding Cool as a whole. This merely reflects opinions posited by the author. If you have better suggestions for cards to go with characters already shown in this series, feel free to comment below on that! If you're still waiting for a villain by the end of the article, stay tuned because there'll be one more article on Batman's enemies – plus an article on his gadgetry.

#9. Catwoman

Selina Kyle, also known as Catwoman, is a character who started out very much a villain in the Batman canon. However, over time we've seen quite a redemption arc from her character. As it stands, she was a petty jewel thief. Now, she's the wife of Bruce Wayne and his partner in justice. Talk about a glow-up. So, what kind of card do we want to compare Catwoman to? For what it's worth, she is just as inclined towards gadgets as Batman is – maybe only marginally less so – and she has an affinity for cats. Thankfully, this makes a few choices very clear for us. One, she has to have some kind of artifact focus, and two, she has to have a focus on Cat creatures. This actually narrows things down a lot, in that while there are a lot of Cats that have an artifact focus, there's one that makes cats based on her equipment: Kemba, Kha Regent.

Kemba is a character who has been pitted in the midst of a terrible, global war against the Phyrexians, an army that is a melding of metal and flesh. She is a Leonin, meaning, for lack of any better way to put it, that she's an anthropomorphic cat; she's a cat-woman, so to speak. She dabbles in Equipment, which is a strictly artifact-based subtype and has an entourage of Cats following her if she is equipped. On a strictly superficial level, this comparison makes sense.

#10. The Penguin

I have to admit, this particular comparison made me scratch my head for a little bit. Oswald Cobblepot, also known as The Penguin, is a character I don't know all that well, given that all I've really been exposed to of him had been snippets of the television show Gotham, the film Batman Returns, and a few other sparse bits of media. I do know, however, that he's got a deformity that makes him look very much like the bird that is his namesake.

For the sake of coming up with an apt analogue to The Penguin, I had a bit of trouble. I knew he had an affinity for penguins, which are birds, so summoning Birds made some degree of sense to me for him. I wanted at first to go with Kangee, Aerie Keeper, but Oswald didn't seem like he was very white-aligned. So, I went with my fallback:

Murmuring Mystic was my best option. The card makes Bird tokens and has a very high toughness, which I feel fits for The Penguin's character pretty well. This was very difficult, so if you have a better fit, let us know!

#11. Two-Face

By contrast, I know more about Two-Face than I'd ever expected to, thanks to Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight as well as Tim Burton's Batman Forever. That is to say, there isn't actually a whole lot to Two-Face, also known as Harvey Dent. He represents the black and white nature of morality within society's expectations, but he heavily subverts all of that in favor of leaving his actions up to chance.

When coming up with a proper comparison for Two-Face, I felt strongly that I needed a card that dealt with random chance. There are enough coin-flip cards in Magic: The Gathering that I could have chosen practically any of them; however, the best fit for this was Rakdos, the Showstopper.

Rakdos, the Showstopper is one of the only Legendary Creatures in Magic that deals with flipping coins. Plus, he coincidentally eschews his minions when he flips those coins to see if things get destroyed. That seems like a bit of a perversion of justice, one way or the other. The coin-flipping mechanic was the main reason why I felt Rakdos was the best analogue for Two-Face.

#12. The Riddler

Riddle me this: What kind of card would work best as a comparison to The Riddler, more publicly known in Gotham as Edward Nygma? The Riddler has always been known to perplex others with his sometimes-over-the-top use of riddles and questions as a calling card. Thank goodness Batman is such a good detective!

Some people might consider a green card to be the best choice for The Riddler, but that's far more superficial than this comparison ought to be. The answer is tricky, but that's just because it's a Sphinx. To be more specific, Enigma Sphinx.

This was a good comparison, especially given the propensity for Sphinges to pose riddles unto those looking to gain information from them, as well as the name. Enigma – E. Nygma? Get it? This particular comparison ended up a bit superficial, but suffice it to say that The Riddler would 100% be a Sphinx creature.

Do you have any better ideas for the characters shown in this series? Let us know in the comments below!

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