Mad Hatter (DC Comics): Insanity Defense

[Abishai100]

Criminal insanity is so intriguing, and it serves as the inspiring topic for nearly all Batman (DC Comics) stories, so here's a Mad Hatter fan-fic inspired by the dementia-caricature films Saw, Alice in Wonderland, Primal Fear, and From Hell.


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"You look at me so smug, 'Batman,' because you do not understand my origin-story. Unlike you, I was not driven by an overwhelming sense of retribution created by some daydream-fantasy to avenge the wrongdoings done to those who loved me dearly. No, I watched my alcoholic father beat my mother to death in a fit of rage when I was young, a mother who cared nothing for me and left me to love her when she was only abandoned by God. Your 'crusade' against crime in Gotham City (as a vigilante) is a crusade, whereas my 'mission' is both personal and undeniable to my tragic life." ---Mad Hatter

"Hatter, I'm not arguing with you about the frustrations that lead to criminal motivations. You're incarcerated in Arkham Asylum, because the Gotham D.A. Harvey Dent believed your crimes (albeit purely horrific) warranted mental treatment more than the death-penalty. I'll be working with Dent to assure Arkham's psychologists can learn a great deal about proper approaches to criminal insanity as we learn about how you became the monster you are today." ---Batman

"That sounds like an excellent 'itinerary,' but I doubt the public out there cares as much about 'criminal psychology research' as they do about the media-thrills of televised 'swift justice' and 'pedestrian street-revenge.' Those of us who are criminally insane have the odd blessing to contemplate why our madness makes us 'kings of anarchy,' and we take on the burden of being hated as well as feared. You do realize, Batman that the reason Gothamites are both repulsed and drawn to news-stories about crime is because the modern world you call 'civilization' makes urban congestion a 'firecracker' for the unbearable yearning to defy the police." ---Mad Hatter

"You speak eloquently, and many people who suffer from mental handicaps or general insanity sometimes exhibit great sensitivity to social conditions and human frailty. However, that does not 'exonerate' you from the responsibility of trying to understand the motivations behind your macabre deeds. You say you saw your drunken father beat your unloving mother to death (right in front of you when you were a young boy!), but how does that explain why you organized a crime-gang which kidnapped helpless prostitutes and performed all kinds of ghastly experiments on them? Two prostitutes were raped and drugged to death before their internal organs were removed by surgical devices and delivered to the footsteps of the Gotham police station!" ---Batman

"We did worse than that, Batman. Three prostitutes were split in half by a sabre and then their heads were mailed to the house of the Gotham mayor. You wonder why I do what I do, because you have the luxury of not having to 'dissect' the psychological curiosity about the unlimited anarchy of hell. My mind was darkened, and now I'm stuck being a ''self-destruction' philosopher. Gotham prostitutes make the impressionable young teenage girls of Gotham think that virginity is simply unholy. My mission is one of 'etiquette cleansing' and I do it for my mother! That's why those prostitutes were doomed." ---Mad Hatter

"Hatter, you have to reflect on why your personal anguish drove you to kill women in such bizarre fashion. You say these prostitutes 'blasphemed' the sacred flesh-respect of virginity and drove you to remove their internal organs. A woman is a 'species diplomat' of fertility, yes, but they do not carry the entire blame for the problem of lust and must therefore be treated with the same 'empathy' you seek for yourself. When a woman loses her virginity, her body changes, and if you see the sacredness of that, you won't try to kill random challenged women to 'avenge' the honor of your unloving mother." ---Batman

"So Eve can ruin her body, but Adam has no right to dominate her...in any way! Well, you're an idealist I will never be, but I hope you will consider the full spectrum of criminal insanity when you consider that the gravity of my 'mission' is in the conviction that crime and sin are sometimes 'purged' by hellfire...not baptism! Nevertheless, I await to see the kind of treatment programs Arkham Asylum doctors have in store for me and the other inmates of this 'democratic institution'. By the way, your friend, the D.A. Harvey Dent, is merely two steps away from becoming your dangerous prosecution-methodology rival!" ---Mad Hatter

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[Abishai100]

The Darkness Chronicles


This addendum was inspired by the consciousness-paranoia films Interview with the Vampire and The Frighteners.

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"Excerpts from the speeches of Jervis Tetch (aka, 'Mad Hatter') from Arkham Asylum during his rehabilitation efforts under maximum-security incarceration:

-'It is rather peculiar to me that Batman believes I am insane, not because I am unwilling to listen to the pleas of sanity but rather because I seem very very very curious about the 'reality' of insanity! Batman is a well-meaning do-gooder and crusader for 'humanity' in modern urban cesspools (honestly), but I have to deviate from his 'teachings' so I can relate to you the tale of my 'account' of evil and of insanity...true insanity.

Firstly, some ask me (in Arkham), 'Jervis/Hatter, why are you a 'copycat' of the Lewis Carroll logic-madman character (of the same name)?' and I tell them (honestly), 'Logic is a game, and because our minds can not feel satisfied with the universe's deep enigmas (e.g., Why do we compete with God?), I embrace an 'avatar' (Carroll's the 'Mad Hatter'), since I want to 'pursue' the innocence of the human-woman Eve (or Carroll's 'Alice'!) through the lens (or window!) of pure self-destruction. For how else can we peek into the darkness if we are ourselves not willing to become...dark?'

With that said, my account here is simple. Alice (in the Carroll novels) meets/greets a strange behemoth-creature of enigma found in a parallax-universe (through a mirror!) known as the ominous 'Jabberwocky' (something of a dragon really). Alice's engagement with the Jabberwocky compels me to think that the universe we 'know' is as much colored by perception as it is by illusion. Why are illusions so stimulating when we know they are simply not 'real'? That paradox is fascinating...and frightening.

The Jabberwocky is a dragon requiring 'knights' of all 'kinds' to trail it. As Batman knows, there is a knighted 'twin' in England who, like Batman, prowls around at night like a crusading 'dark knight.' As the 'Mad Hatter,' I feel compelled to be a very different kind of knight, a knight that does not defend virtue but rather 'quests' after the tangibility of evil (and the darkness!).

When I was younger, I read the Anne Rice novels about the eerie spiritual fascination with vampires (humanoids who are pseudo-immortal and gain energy/power by drinking human blood just as cannibals do!). I thought that Rice had touched upon some odd but certain realism --- curiosity about vitality is not separate from our fascination with the darkness. I had a revelation --- just as Christ spilled his blood to lift our spirits to the level of goodness, a vampire drinks/consumes blood to magnify his spirit to the level of a 'darkness messenger.'

After reading the Rice novels, I realized that both Lewis Carroll and Anne Rice were sensitive and perceptive about a fact of life --- the odd mental curiosity about the 'sensibility' of anarchy!

I invented a fictional crusading knight named Arand who quests in a strange Medieval land in Romania to track an evil vampire named Lestat who drinks the human blood of his female victims (some his mistresses) to become an 'agent of darkness.' Arand is soon exposed to be a 'semi-vampire,' a man who once drank a 'symbolic grail of red wine' which Arand then meditated to be the blood of Christ; Arand gagged and realized that the 'sacred blood' he drank sent him on a mission to pursue the dark reality of the vampire consciousness!

Arand confronts Lestat after being guided to him by angels of heaven and finds the cruel and handsome vampire standing by a beautiful tree with his mistress whose gown is touched by the blood of one of Lestat's victims; Lestat's mistress pleads with him to make her an immortal --- an equal lover to him --- but Lestat prepares to pierce her with his lance before drinking her sweet and vitalizing blood!

Arand runs up to Lestat and asks him why his cruelty had led him to this state of 'savage strength.'

ARAND: Lestat, let her go!
LESTAT: I will not, Arand; she is my muse.
ARAND: She is your slave, Lestat. Free her from your burdens.
LESTAT: Why?
ARAND: If you refuse, I will strike you down with my heavenly sword...
LESTAT: You're a rich man, Arand; I am merely a 'messenger.'
ARAND: No, you think you're a prophet. Inflicting pain is not 'valiant.'
LESTAT: Pain is as pleasurable as pleasure itself; pain is an itch, we must sometimes 'scratch.'
ARAND: That is sadism, Lestat; that is insanity; that is darkness. Spare this young woman.
LESTAT: Alright, I will spare her (for you), but you are ignorant of the 'energy' in blood.
ARAND: You're a cannibal, Lestat; if you cared about 'metaphysics,' you would take pain onto yourself!
LESTAT: I'm not the Messiah (I know that); I want to spread the message of power (not peace).
ARAND: Pain and fear are realities, Lestat; we must contend with the darkness with our wits.
LESTAT: There's nothing 'witty' (Arand) about our natural curiosity about death...
ARAND: Do not entreat the mind to cater to its morbid fascination with darkness.
LESTAT: You treat me like a fool, so one day we will have a serious debate.

That concludes my account of insanity and darkness --- for Batman and for Arkham! My assessment is that I need real treatment to 'cure' me of my dangerously incessant curiosity about the 'reality' of evil in our universe. I wish to be 'freed' from the 'curse' of darkness, so my fictional 'knight' Arand can be elevated and I can finally lay to rest the morbid spirit of the eerie vampire Lestat. After all, isn't the consumption of blood not unlike our experience with inhaling the smog of modern congested cities (e.g., Gotham)? With that said, I'd like to add my belief that criminal insanity is simply a 'study,' not an 'ugliness,' so I challenge Batman to be as...'inquisitive' as me'!"

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[Abishai100]

LAKE OF FIRE: COMICS


This snippet was inspired by the psychosis-daydream film The Cell and includes a [mythological] stick-figure doodle (comics-stylized of course) of 'Hera' (a fictional goddess-diplomat of the underworld).

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Hera was a powerful muse and she delivered a strange dream to Batman (Bruce Wayne) who was still pensive about the incarceration of Mad Hatter (Jervis Tetch). You see, Hera was a messenger from the underworld (Hades), and her long tentacle-arms and strange blue hair and red eyes made her an 'avatar' of darkness (and arguably criminal insanity!). Hera wanted Batman to consider just why the Mad Hatter would be construed as insane, even though he was quite diabolical and why Jervis could be a 'diplomat' of the prophetic 'Lake of Fire' (a region of pure agony and hysteria in Hades). Hera was in good form.



In the dream Hera sent to Batman's consciousness, Batman found himself literally 'swimming' in the lake of fire (though he was physically/spiritually protected by a special suit-and-armor Hera made for him!). Batman saw various souls pining to escape from the Lake of Fire and even saw a ghost of his father who was killed in an alley by a goon while Batman/Bruce was a young boy. Batman realized that the Lake of Fire represented the mental and evolutionary 'anguish' the mind occupies while wrestling with ethics, civics, justice, creativity, and even depression.



Batman awoke very motivated if still pensive about Jervis and why Hera sent him the dream about the ominous Lake of Fire. Batman concluded that Hades was a hologram of sorts and a totem of criminal insanity, reminding us of the reality of the anguish felt when ethics and social etiquette were simply unresolved by a society scrambling simply to trade and shop. Batman wrote in his notebook that Jervis Tetch (aka, 'Mad Hatter') was a 'traveller' guided by the forces of Hades and delivering the impressive and unnerving message that criminal insanity was simply a 'philosophical malady.' Batman told Jervis's psychiatrist that the best treatment for his 'brand' of insanity would be --- art!

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[longknife]

Are you watching Gotham?