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Mr. Zsasz



PAUL DINI'S COMMENTS ON POSSIBLE SHOW APPEARANCE: "NO."

My Comments: While this serial killer is a very interesting character in the comics, and is visually appealing, I think he's probably too violent to be any new Batman cartoon. Quite a few fans have said they'd like to see him in the show though.

POSSIBLE VOICE ACTOR CHOICE: John Malkovich
He probably wouldn't ever do it, but Malkovich would be utterly creepy as the demented serial killer.

COMIC ORIGIN
REAL NAME
: Victor Zsasz
FIRST APPEARANCE: Shadow of the Bat #1
ORIGIN: A serial killer with a difference, Mr. Zsasz has no pattern. He kills anybody. Zsasz had no dysfunctional family background. He suffered neither abuse nor trauma. He kills for one reason only: because he chooses to. Zsasz's parents were very rich and in love. They gave him everything he needed, both emotionally and materially. All life's pleasures were his. He graduated from school with honors, had friends, and foreign trips. Three years after graduating from college, Victor headed up his own international company. He was the toast of the markets, with an 'in' to a string of billion-dollar deals. When he was twenty-five his parents died in a boating accident. Mature enough to accept that death was inevitable, he was still badly affected by their loss. While seeking distraction from from that loss, he discovered gambling - and was immediately swept up in a crazy ride. He neglected his business, winning and losing fortunes all over the world. Then one night in a Gotham casino, he was losing big in a high-rollers' game where the Penguin was playing. He gambled everything he owned on the outcome of that game, and lost everything to the Penguin. This is when Zsasz saw his eyes in the mirror, boring into him, peeling away the surface layers of wealth and love and happiness to reveal--nothing. There was nothing at all at the center of him - no reason for being, no motivation, no purpose. He was just a robot, sleepwalking from one distraction to another. He looked around and it was as if a veil had been lifted. Everybody was the same - running fast, lying, cheating - all to cover up the big nothing at their centers: zombies, driven by the desires of the flesh and fears of the psyche. Jaded, Zsasz attempted to kill himself by hanging himself while jumping from the Gotham Bridge. Just as he was about to leap, an old mugger approached him and, pulling out a knife, attempted to rob Zsasz before he killed himself. Instinctively grabbing the knife, Zsasz turned on the mugger and looked into his eyes. He saw nothing there. Only a subhuman robot, driven by his desires. In an instant Mr. Zsasz knew how to reclaim himself. He thanked the mugger for restoring life to him, and returned the favor by "saving him from his own emptiness", by brutally stabbing and killing the man. Zsasz felt like a god. He knew he would kill again. He had found his calling, to help poor beasts shuffle off this mortal coil. He needed some way to remind himself that he too is only human, and made the first of many self-inflicted cuts to his body. He keeps score of how many he's killed. Every time he takes a life, he scars his own body with the same knife. ((from Batman Chronicles #3))

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