Hush's Charitable Villainy Continues

Remember Thomas Elliot's (Hush) diabolical scheme to donate money to charity? When last we left him, we didn't really have a firm idea of where the Wayne funds would be going, specifically. All we knew was that he had planned to gradually bankrupt Wayne Industries by spending $1 billion a month to repair the Gotham City infrastructure.

Well now we have a bit of a clearer idea of what he's spending the money on. In a particularly cunning move, he seems to be exclusively donating towards the start-up costs of private businesses doomed to fail...

Streets of Gotham #3 by Paul Dini and Dustin Nguyen (2009)

Ah, of course, the good old Monarch Card and Novelty Company will soon be re-opened for business. Hush's plan becomes a bit more devious now, doesn't it? Not only is he planning on exhausting all of the Wayne family resources, thereby significantly diminishing the ease and effectiveness through which Batman is able to fight crime, but he is also planning on tarnishing his reputation by investing in luxury businesses.

I see some problems with Hush's plan:

1) I know that Hush would be reducing unemployment (however only in the short-term) by investing the money to keep this factory open and that the public is sympathetic to anything that would employ the people of Gotham who have lost their jobs. Yet, it's not as if they're fooled to believing they'll be able to sustain the company. Hush seems only to be offering up the initial start-up money to keep the company open for, say, three months. After that, I can't imagine that the Monarch Card company would expect Elliot to pay for all its continued operation expenses. The media itself even admitted that the business is likely to fail and that there might not be a viable market for novelties and card games in these harsh economic times.

And it doesn't "remain to be seen." The random reporter is right. A recent TIME magazine article reports the results of a Nielson Co. study about businesses in the recession. Sports and novelty cards were down 26.5% demonstrating that people are cutting down on discretionary items.

If Hush were offering up free money for a longer period of time, sure it would be a fine idea. But so long as the company is going to have to continue devoting its resources towards a business that is extremely unlikely to succeed, why not just request that Wayne invest in a more viable company and employ the same people in those factories? Since individuals are going out less, they are buying more frozen foods and supplies to store at home. I bet Gotham could sure use some more canned food manufacturing.

I think Elliot's intent here is to have the company crash and burn, which would demoralize Gotham City even more. There would be an added bonus on having the public blame the Wayne family for investing resources poorly.

Besides, who would buy anything from a company called "Monarch" anyway? Oh wait, looks like lots of people from Maine already do.

2) I still don't understand how Hush has access to Wayne's money. It can't just be that looking like someone allows you to spend their billions of dollars. In fact, another panel in this issue (unpictured) actually shows Hush handing out a check that has no account number on it! Huh?

We'll have to wait for future issues to see the effects of Hush's plan on the Monarch Company as well as the Gotham City economy. Let's hope Dick and Damien can keep his charitable reign in check until then.

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Why is Fraud so Easily Committed in Comics?

Spoilers Ahead

Batman R.I.P. by Grant Morrison and Tony Daniel (2008)

Comic books are known for the often convoluted and extreme nature of their villainous machinations. Since the early days when Batman would primarily bring ordinary street thugs to justice, criminals have become increasingly more imaginative in their schemes to either steal money or foil their respective superheroes. Often times, these plots involve years of careful scheming, a collusion with like-minded villains, and a significant amount of expenditures in terms of time, money and physical effort.

The Black Glove recently attempted a psychological attack on Batman which involved luring Bruce Wayne into a nefarious sensory deprivation experiment years in advance, introducing a covert love interest into his life, and fabricating the return of Thomas Wayne. Norman Osborn, through years of work, is now a prominent political figure in the United States. The Red Skull recently attempted infiltrating Captain America's mind through a combination of fake assassination attempts and time travel (which Mark discusses here).

Despite all this meticulous planning and ingenuity, what continually surprises me in comic books is the ease with which villains seem to commit fraud. In fact, I don't know whether the banking system or personal identification infrastructure is just regulated much less than on real-Earth, but villains always seem to get away with crimes such as identity theft and insurance fraud.

Consider the following examples from recent literature.

Exhibit A: The Hunter

Richard Stark's Parker: The Hunter by Darwyn Cooke (2009)

In Darwyn Cooke's latest adaptation of Richard Stark's novel, the protagonist, Parker, secures a fake driver's license and uses it to score a checkbook associated with a real bank account. He does this by going to the Department of Motor Vehicles and filling out a State of New York driver's license form with the arbitrary name, "Edward Johnson." He then steals a ballpoint pen, coincidentally being of the same color as the DMV's in-house approval stamps, and literally sketches the words "Paid, Nov. 6, 1962" in the space reserved for the state stamp. Finally, he treads from bank to bank, claiming to the teller that he had misplaced his checkbook and forgot his account number, displaying his fake driver's license as certification of his identity.

Granted I'm not an expert in the 1960s regulatory structure, but this seems entirely too easy. He did not actually steal a legitimate personal identification document from someone else, but rather created a false one on his own. This means that he also fabricated a driver's license number. Shouldn't the bank have had this information and have crossed-checked it with the account before handing out a checkbook?

Furthermore, I never knew that in the 1960s, the form that one fills out in the DMV actually also served as the license. Though, again, I am not an expert in the history of personal identification.

Parker's plan seems to have required a bit too much luck. He had to have used a pen, the color of which had to be nearly identical with the state stamp. He had to have been such a meticulous artist that his quick sketch of the stamp had to fool a bank teller, who likely sees driver's licenses many times a day. He had to find a bank that had an existing account for the name "Edward Johnson" and hope that the teller did not recognize the individual. And finally, he had to rely on the gross negligence of the bank to merely accept a name, overlook the stamp and phony driver's license number, and quickly dispense a new checkbook and disseminate the account number.

Exhibit B: Streets of Gotham

Streets of Gotham #2 by Paul Dini and Dustin Nguyen (2009)

We've detailed Hush's latest plans of attacking the Wayne family here and here. To reiterate, his nefarious plan is to be charitable: he intends to invest $1 billion of Wayne funds a month towards rebuilding the Gotham City infrastructure and to shocking a lethargic economy brought down by the recession. Although devious enough, his plan suffers from a critical flaw: how, exactly, does he have access to Bruce's money?

Thomas Elliot (Hush) presupposes that just by holding a press conference under the guise of Bruce Wayne and announcing his intentions that he would be able to commit these funds. Yet, don't regulations exist against these very abuses? There are conspicuously no documents that Hush needs to sign in order to secure this transfer. There are no PIN numbers, credit card numbers or bank account numbers he needs to divulge in order to gain access to these accounts. There is no proof of identity involved. No nothing! Just by being a skilled plastic surgeon, Hush is able to skirt all individual protection laws and commit identity theft on a massive scale.

Does this imply that anybody could gain access to another individual's life savings just by looking like them? Could identical twins steal each other's money? Could Superboy Prime access Superboy's bank account? Could Zooey Deschanel book a trip to Paris on Katy Perry's tab?

Exhibit C: Incognito
See our post on Zack Overkill's attempt to commit credit card fraud here.

It seems as though the individual protections that exist on real-Earth to guard against the aforementioned infractions are negligible or absent in comic books. Perhaps it would save cities some money, individuals some lives, and superheroes some work if the United States government were to consider implementing such regulations. This is particularly true in a world where shapeshifting supervillainy is rampant. It is irresponsible for the government not to have done so already.

On the other hand, I don't recall Clayface or Mystique committing identity theft before.

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Charitable Villainy

In Batman: Streets of Gotham #2, released this month, the villainous Hush escapes from his confinement in Wayne Tower and puts into effect a very unique plan.

Warning: SPOILERS Below


In the aftermath of the "Heart of Hush" story in Detective Comics, Hush has altered his physical appearance to resemble Bruce Wayne. This puts the new Batman, Dick Grayson, in an awkward position because the real Bruce is gone. This allows Hush to pretend to be Bruce Wayne and the only way to prove that he is an impostor is to reveal Bruce's secret identity as Batman and his apparent death in the battle against Darkseid.

That simply can't be done. So Hush has free reign over Bruce's assets and wealth. And what devious plan does he enact with all those resources? Does he build a cannon to shatter the Earth's crust? Does he disrupt the Earth's orbit around the sun? Does he consolidate Gotham's drug trade under his control?

No, he donates 1 billion dollars to the city. That's right, Hush diabolically gives the money to charity. And he promises to donate 1 billion more dollars each month until Gotham's criminal activities are under control. This causes Dick, Damian (the new Robin), and Alfred to react like this is the worst possible outcome.

Now let's stop and think about this for a second. This is, no doubt, one of the more unique supervillain plans. By giving away Bruce Wayne's money, Hush is damaging the foundations of his greatest enemy's wealth, thereby blunting his ability to fight crime. If Bruce Wayne (and now Dick Grayson) didn't have an unlimited well of money to draw from there would be no batarangs, no grappling hooks and no Batmobile for Batman to use.

Removing money from Wayne Industries also will likely create unemployment. If $1 billion is removed from the company every month, the infrastructure of Wayne Industries will be irreperrably damaged immediately. Employees will need to be laid off, benefits and wages will be reduced, and valuable public and private services provided by Wayne and its subsidiaries will drop in quality. There are few better ways to cause economic crisis than by throwing Gotham's biggest corporation into chaos.

The sudden influx of money into Gotham City will also breed corruption and squandering of funds. The infrastructure of Gotham City is not set up to deal with an addition billion dollars each month. The money could be used to hire more police officers, improve public services, and at least put up more lights in the historically dark city. But in all likelihood, the additional money flowing into the city will be abused by corrupt political officials and wasted by the politicians who have the best intentions. That much money requires massive restructuring of a city's economic plan. And during the time of that restructuring, Gotham City will not get as much benefit from the money they are receiving.

The problem is (as my colleague ShadowBanker and even Hush himself will admit) this plan is very hard to execute. Bruce Wayne, though majority shareholder in his company, likely does not have access to the amount of liquid capital to continue his plan beyond a few months. The easy way in which Hush donates his first billion to Gotham is rather strange. Though Bruce Wayne does burn through money at a rapid pace, he likely does not have a balance of $6 billion in his bank account that he can easily access without filling out hundreds of forms and getting approval from others in his company.

So, assuming Hush's plan is foiled (these are superhero comics we're talking about, it will be foiled), does Hush's plan do more harm than good? Or is it the other way around? If Hush only donates the first billion dollars to the city, will this help Gotham? I've listed some of reasons Hush's plan is damaging, but if his evil charity is controlled and regulated could Hush be helping the city he holds in such contempt?

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