[Music] hey there everybody welcome to another episode of the arkham sessions hello i'm brian ward and as always i'm joined by dr andrea ludamendi right let's get into the episode this week we're talking about vendetta the first appearance of killer croc drea this character's always been a personal fave of yours that's correct why i tend to have a soft spot for the beasts the monsters um you know the the big kind of um more innocent not as intelligent uh villains right of gotham and um usually the lenny's usually it's because they have a past they have uh some kind of history of experiences a lot of trauma a lot of bullying and social interactions that it doesn't necessarily excuse uh all of their misbehavior but it provides an interesting lesson to us and so i i do enjoy talking about these more beast-like and fantastical types of villains because of the stories that they bring about so we're talking killer croc we're talking in uh the penguin uh clayface gotcha yeah so let's talk a little bit about a killer croc his first appearance was in 1983 created by jerry conway and gene colen most people would say that his first appearance was in batman number 358 but i am one of those sort of purists who credit detective comics number 524 which was actually a month earlier because while you didn't really see him it is him i mean he was sort of a shadowy figure but we didn't get a full glimpse of him we didn't get a full look of him uh we didn't get a full issue of him that actually came in batman 358 and and this was a character that was born with a form of atavism which is sort of a reverse evolution uh and in the case of waylon jones he took on the physical traits of a reptile so let's talk about vendetta a little bit we open up and it's raining and we're on a boat transporting a man by the name of spider conway named after jerry conway spider is a criminal informant ready to tell all about his work with rupert thorne all he's got to do is make like a canary at the crime commission hearings and he gets 10 years off his time that is until a mysterious figure comes up from the water and attaches a bomb to the side of the boat blowing it to smithereens now two things i noticed right off the bat during this scene first and you know i have to say it spider's a ginger and second the cop has a handlebar mustache now i'm having a really hard time believing that this facial hair passes gcpd's personal appearance policy drea i personally did not notice this detail and i have no problem with it and what about the ginger part uh that's totally expected okay all right so uh when the smoke clears we learned that spider's missing and batman goes off to find him meanwhile because of his close involvement with his case harvey bullock is removed from it much to his dismay of course but if i let you go after the thorn a lot of ugly ancient history is bound to come up and batman actually begins investigating bullock as a possible suspect in the bombing and honestly bullock's sort of playing everything rather suspiciously uh going in to find his own file to presumably hide information that may be in it etc and in that file which batman actually has by the way we learned that bullock was suspected of taking graft from thorn and batman thinks that you know bullock stands to lose a lot should spider conway actually testify that and finding a toothpick bullock's signature at the site leads batman to think that he's found his man batman wants to be sure though so we cut to thorn being visited by batman did you order spider conway blown up that that loser i wouldn't wipe my shoes on him thorne had nothing to do with the bombing of spiders transport and so batman also investigates the wreckage and finds something we're we're not entirely sure what it is uh at the time but elsewhere a second snitch joey is being visited by someone who looks an awful lot like bullock rise and shine joey who who's there your worst nightmare and he's kidnapped and bullock's then arrested batman investigates the thing he found on the wreckage and learns that it's a scale the cellular structure is human but the texture is reptilian so it's kind of odd bruce then does his research crocodiles make their layers in underwater caves of course yeah so batman of course goes looking and um honestly finds it pretty quickly well he i think he knows where all the underwater layers are uh you know surrounding gotham city quite possibly killer crocs lair uh is of course where he ends up and he also finds spider and joey within moments croc attacks and nearly drowns batman and here we learn they used to call killer truck the meanest dude in the wrestling federation but batman does manage to escape with both of crocs prisoners we then learn more about killer croc he started out a carnival sideshow attraction then became a pro wrestler two years later croc had moved to gotham city and turned to crime bullock arrested him and now he appears to be framing bullock as revenge hence the title of the episode bullock is released from jail on bond and croc carjacks him of course batman ends up carjacking both of them by appearing in the back seat and still krog manages to escape into the sewer this is when a crucial piece of information about croc comes across but hey i'm adaptable when you grow up looking like i do you gotta learn to go with the flow now draya let's talk about this because this is probably the key line in the entire episode as it relates to killer crocs psyche absolutely well it's such a meaningful statement because he's referring to the fact that he basically was born with this defect or this deformity right that he has or had no control of how he looked and he was treated a certain way because of his physical appearance and naturally what i'm hearing him say there is i had to work with what i had and for me that meant going into a life of criminality you know starting off with being exploited but still getting some attention some social value as as a circus performer than finding some kind of value as a as a pro wrestler um again using his strengths his his strengths being his his strange appearance his his size his his physical strength his physical strength for sure um and then turning to crime turning to um you know unlawful acts taking advantage of others and that being something that he had to do to get by so i think in that single statement he's basically saying because i'm different i go by a different set of rules and i did what i had to to survive so in your experience while you've not necessarily dealt with anyone uh with atavism um or anything such like such as this you certainly have dealt with people both uh children and adults who might have this sort of personality um what do you look for and how do you go about treating this sort of thing before it gets to a point that now this alienated person has gone down a bad path and is suddenly you know criminal yeah well i think the main theme of this episode for me is that physical and medical conditions are very much linked to psychological conditions right and um i'm gonna say what i say often which is it's very complicated so we have talked before about changes in psychological adjustment following disfigurement remember two-face he was harvey dent he was um can i say normal looking right he was he was even he was even very attractive he was on the reverse side right where he ended up then he experienced this this incredible trauma and was thereafter disfigured and was never the same psychologically and one can argue that simply being born with some kind of deformity or physical abnormality isn't much different than that right but um i would actually argue that while there isn't necessarily a discrete or identifiable trauma like with harvey dent um there is that long-standing experience of physically living um in that body that people socially respond to in a certain way right so i i find that almost in a way there's very similar um reactions like we talked about with two-face but also we have this this physical trauma if you will occurring at a very young age of course because killer croc was born with with this particular we can call it a medical it is it's a medical condition right so that's an interesting point i mean up to this point we've always seen uh the rogues gallery as they have become who they were we've seen jonathan crane become scarecrow we have heard the story of of clay face we have seen poison ivy we have seen these characters the only other character i can think of that might have uh applied in this way would be maybe uh oswald cobblepot you know the power absolutely but he didn't really seem to be affected by this this is the first time that we're seeing a character who was born this way and has been living this way his entire life right so uh and still seems to be affected by it uh psychologically talk about the difference between growing up this way and it's suddenly happening to you in the case of harvey dent well one huge body of study actually comes from this saying beautiful is good have you ever heard that before yeah why can't you be like the beautiful kid over there oh i see what you mean yeah well then you might relate to this idea that saying beautiful is good comes from this as i said this huge body of research that looked into level of attractiveness and expectations or perceptions of people and many many studies have actually shown that people tend to link physical attractiveness with all of these positive attributes and characteristics regardless of any connection so for instance people who are seen as very handsome or beautiful are considered to be more socially adept are considered to be more intelligent are considered to have um good behavior so to speak aren't likely to engage in criminal activity or misbehave or anything and a lot of studies actually looked at school-age children and those studies showed that teachers rated more attractive students as higher on certain abilities and rated unattractive students as being poorer academically and also having higher rates of misbehavior and let me clarify that those students didn't actually have higher rates of misbehavior or were um you know failing or getting bad grades the expectation from the teachers right was the more attractive students would be successful and the unattractive students would be misbehaving wouldn't be doing well in school wouldn't be popular so in the same way i mean i can get i can get the expectation for a beautiful kid to be popular obviously those are the kids that are going to attract other people not just physically but i mean you know the captain of the football team is always the most popular of the jocks and he's always the you know the good-looking all-american uh kid uh you know the the prom king and the prom queen are probably going to be the more beautiful couple in your in your school um and uh so that i certainly get the other things i find interesting is that it's just assumed that the good-looking kids will do better in school or or whatever and i i don't know not because i know the truth but because i would think the stereotype would go the other way that the nerdier kids would be the academics would be the you know the ones who have nothing to do but go home and study are going to be the ones that excel in school right well and i think when you say the nerd to your kids i mean are you really just saying the the kids who were i'm saying the stereotypes who were not as attractive yeah kids didn't have as many friends you're actually talking about a lot of different variables the sherwoods sure right from i've got batman in my basement um and you're you're getting at something that's really important which is the complexity of interactions between um physical attractiveness social interaction mood and affect someone's reaction to their social interactions and then the adjustment or the response to that specific studies also found that in contrast individuals with a visible physical deformity are often met with social uncertainty and sometimes hostility and that makes sense you know kids don't know how to respond and and process um someone that looks quite different from them right and someone who has you know if you will a deformity and in fact in social situations a physical difference is met with curiosity staring some interactions bullying things that can lead to very uncomfortable interactions um between you know a a person with normal physical development and a person with abnormal physical development so that is to say that you know going back to what i said before about this being very complicated and i think my message probably for this podcast is not unlike what i've said before but this is particularly complex when you really look at all the factors involved kids that grow up with medical illnesses and in particular physical visible deformities or conditions often have a co-occurring psychiatric disorder that is to say oftentimes there's anxiety there's depression there's some kind of effective or anxious response and unfortunately this this disorder could have been sort of put upon them by society around them the expectations what people saw the staring the the uh expecting that person to fail or to be weird could have given them this anxiety or this disorder absolutely and you're totally on point that's what i really want to emphasize is that you know as a reminder there are biological behavioral cognitive and social pathways that contribute to the co-occurrence of medical and psychiatric problems that's what i meant like it's very complicated so let me give you an example that was jargon for for most people i think so let me give you an example disfigurement let's say what what killer croc was was suffering from this this very visible physical abnormality on his skin that could lead to some cognitive distortions or what we would consider some you know irrational and negative thinking about himself i'm not good enough i'm very different so so that means i'm less than um i'm not valued i'm being punished by god i'm being punished by some some other you know higher power um i don't deserve what everyone else deserves so so those are clearly unfair but um could be some of his natural cognitive distortions and that could lead to a lot of distress also something we call perceived stress that if he's thinking all those things now we know not all those things are true but if he's thinking all of those things he can perceive a large amount of stress which which may not necessarily be founded and a loss of control so these are all things that he may feel like he can't control and and finally those thoughts about the self threaten his own self-esteem his own self-value right um and then those plus he's he's grown up his entire life as a spectacle not just to kids around him or to people around him on the street but i mean he was actually gr he grew up in a carnival as a sideshow spectacle then he went from that into professional wrestling he's always been entertainment he's always been something uh intended for people to look at right and gawk at and so his value then what what society values in him at least the lessons he's learning is that my entire worth is in my physical appearance right but not that it's beautiful it's odd bizarre but has this sort of like monetary you know it has this um value economical value that people might want it makes you wonder then why croc has spent now i realize that in the real world it's because of the reveal in the third act but it makes you wonder why he has spent this much time throughout this episode in the shadows of course he's setting up harvey bullock he is dressing as harvey he is putting himself in a position where he is unable to be seen throughout the majority of the episode right but you would think that someone who has a uh this superhuman toughness and and strength and really everything he knows about himself is that is that that level of spectacle about his appearance you would think that this guy would come right out and be brushed and be criminal he probably is at times but that brings me to that other pathway i mentioned that emotional um and behavioral pathway so i said it's very complicated we talked about some of those negative thoughts you could have those negative thoughts about the self and learning about what society thinks of him can actually lead to effective disturbances mainly i mean things like anxiety and depression you know that that sounds that should make sense right if i feel bad about myself i don't have self value i feel like i'm not worthy you know people care about my exterior but but inside nobody cares about my what's what you know who i am who i really am and when someone feels so invisible and unseen they then develop feelings of depression feelings of suicidality feelings of social anxiety and self-hatred and those are problematic and those can lead to behavioral responses like isolation um being withdrawn and and and you know some of this this criminal activity we see you know when i do interact with people i'm going to take advantage of them or when i do interact with people i'm going to be aggressive and use my physical strength and my you know fear inspiring persona to get what i want because they're not going to see me for me anyway so it it makes it makes sense it's it's actually called maladaptive coping responses to um you know to engage in misbehavior to engage in um addictive um dangerous things things that that we do impulsive things that we do that don't do us any good but we found that they they get to they get us to what we want immediately so it's actually the antithesis of what he said about his entire life being able to adapt he's actually pretty maladaptive he's actually right i'm glad you brought that back when he says i'm being adaptive he is totally spot on he is adapting this is what the world thinks of me this is what society this is the way society wants to treat me i'm gonna go along with it i'm going to use it to my advantage so that i don't completely you know become nothing and so yes on the one hand he's probably depressed he's probably isolated he probably is very lonely but on the other hand he's taking some control and he's doing exactly what society tells him he should be doing it you're spot on those are the expectations society has on him he's going to go ahead and do it so that he can have some benefit from it um and again it really you know this is why i like this kind of character there's just so much interesting stuff there he's not just a a what people call a psychopath who is who is running amok around the streets he is someone with a story and unfortunately part of that story is what we have done to him yeah it's sort of like it's kind of our fault that he's the way he is we we all have some responsibility uh and he's not just some mindless unintelligent thug he's he's particularly emotional he's um somewhat intelligent you know he's not super smart but he there's there's stuff happening there and i think that that makes him very interesting as a character so all of this that we've been talking about is actually best illustrated by these couple of case studies that the psychologist this british magazine published a couple years ago and it's actually written by these two guys james partridge who was very severely burned in an accident and basically his life changed as an adult and then this other man adam pearson who from birth had suffered from this condition called neurofibromatosis which basically means he had all of these sort of this extra tissue and essentially tumors growing from his body it was a very visible disfigurement and wasn't this wasn't this elephant man's disease yes it is and what's interesting is that they both talk about how society reacts to them when they see them and i just want to read their accounts because it's it's a better explanation of what i just gave it's it's basically a realistic description of that very complicated um social interaction expectation perception self-esteem threat you know all those things that i talked about so this issue of adjustment is addressed and james talks about the twin processes involved in adjusting to a disfigurement the twin processes are the self-confidence and self-esteem the difference between that is self-confidence is one's ability to project oneself in social situations and self-esteem is that inner sense of self-worth and james said i experimented with different levels of eye contact handshake verbal energy and body language and found out and eventually mastered the skills to deal with the scaredness i met scared being an acronym for staring curiosity anguish recoil embarrassment and dread these skills mediated the effect of my outside and boosted my inside too so he's essentially dealing with these reactions from people and then adam who who i believe based on the pictures i've seen who has a much a much more well he has a more long-standing physical disfigurement because he was born with this disease um he's never known what it was like exactly to not have it exactly he said i discovered how to control a social situation just going up to someone who is staring or acting funny and saying hi is a really good way of breaking the ice and showing your human side having just been through the university system i also meet hundreds of new people um so unless i've been able to introduce myself in a confident way i doubt i would have found the experience anywhere near as fulfilling as i did what adam is essentially saying is rather than react you know he's had a lifetime to learn this right rather than react with you know just withdrawing and feeling ashamed and not correcting their beliefs a frankenstein's monster approach i have to just face it um and in fact um this article which can be found online says um they live in a society that prizes good looks of course this is the society we live in um and the society makes people with disfigurements vulnerable to feelings of inferiority and inadequacy from which low self-esteem stems so if the equation between looks and success is not effectively debunked a person's morale can plummet anxiety depression and of course suicide can follow so it really stresses the importance of interacting with others and really trying to correct those misconceptions about who that person is you know under under that exterior um and so it's it's like i said their real accounts better describe and exemplify in their words that very complicated interaction between uh the self and society and those expectations gotcha so we take it back to the episode uh the battle of course at the end of every episode this one ends uh in the sewer and uh the sewer crashing in batman hauls out killer croc uh bullock is of course there waiting now uh this is an interesting point because uh up to this point bullock has looked at batman the same way that we are all looking at killer croc as this abnormality as this thing that needs to be brought in he must be bad because he's a vigilante uh he's got to let the cops do their jobs you know whatever meanwhile this entire episode partially because of the way bullock has treated batman i think batman has been looking at bullock as the villain as the potential suspect as the man who uh clearly with a hard shell and is a bit too gruff to be a good cop must be corrupt you know he's looking at him a completely different way the two of them are sort of turned on their ears in this moment bullock acknowledges batman by letting him go uh by letting him leave the scene uh batman acknowledges bullock why why'd you stick your neck out like that to help me because i thought you were guilty too and i was wrong yeah and uh all of this while croc is unconscious on the ground waiting to be arrested and and taken in for his crimes so threefold this story is all about uh perceptions what those perceptions do to those characters and you know etcetera i i think it was wow really nice bro it was a very good ending to this episode yeah well you know no one's a monster everybody has these notions about each other everyone's everyone's feeling threatened by each other everyone's suspicious and you're absolutely right i think you have a really um you know a great kind of perspective about how everyone everyone was knocked on their ass at the end like i was completely wrong but at the same time um we we the audience from from episode one from from on leather wings we have not liked bullock oh i hate him because bullock is out for batman our hero we we have never liked him however at the very end of this episode bullock exclaims bullock's back and ready to kick butt and we feel for him we're ready for him to go kick butt like we we are also elated by this so this episode has turned us around on bullock yeah even if it's just for the amount of time between this episode and the next because who knows how we're going to feel about harvey bullock going forward but but at least now we understand a couple of things and and this is very important for the fact that this particular show deals with one episode at a time uh but also deals with the past episodes as history right we now have a little bit of history on bullock we also know that bullock is a good cop that gordon who defended him earlier on was right gordon has been able to see into harvey bullock he is gruff he is tough he is not someone with whom you want to trifle however he's not on the take he has not made money off of rupert thorne he wants crime to go down in gotham city and so while he's not necessarily on the batman's side he's a good guy right and in a weird way they can relate to each other they have very different methods oh yeah they don't get along um you know they'll both beat you up though right well yeah necessarily but i think at the end of the day they realize that ultimately they have the same mission which is to keep people safe and to put criminals away and i think they they related they were able to see eye to eye they related to that and yeah that was really interesting to see so yeah i i really liked uh the end of that episode and and the episode itself was pretty good um you know of course the fact that uh the the snitch was a ginger you know i'm gonna i'm gonna ignore that part because i like the end of the episode so much you can ignore that um so let's talk a little bit as we like to do about real life situations now you you just brought up a couple of real-life uh situations of of people who have dealt with uh abnormalities or deformities someone who was burned and then also someone who was born with elephant man's disease and both both who i should have mentioned have really overcome their adversity and who have been very successful so it it shows that i think you don't have to become killer croc right you know in that you know or you don't have to turn to that criminal side or in the real life case that i'm about to to talk about you don't have to become killer croc or you don't have to become grady styles aka the lobster boy granny styles junior son of grady styles senior obviously who also had this defect known as ectradactyly um basically it gives you uh claw-like hands so you've got these uh for lack of a better word two fingers that sort of come together like pinchers like claws this is a guy who was born into the carnival sideshow lifestyle his father was and then he was at a very early age uh well before his his teens in fact i believe he was only uh like i think if i remember correctly he was only like six or seven when he got into being billed as lobster boy um he was doing the circuit as this carnival sideshow freak as they called them back then and uh he actually sort of grew up and and uh married another uh carnival performer um and really throughout his life uh whether it was the way he was raised or gawked at or whatever was just a a hateful man um nobody liked lobster boy he he was not a pleasant person to be around he was a heavy drinker um and his his bottom his bottom half was equally deformed he basically had um i guess what would be considered flippers for legs so he couldn't walk therefore his upper body gained this almost superhuman strength uh so much so that the pinchers that you would think would would be uh sort of problematic for him to do any danger with were actually quite dangerous he was quite powerful with his hands and would he snap he he would in fact no you know what we in the industry don't like to say snap oh um no no no i don't mean psychologically i understand yes i snap at people like when you say he was i was trying to make a joke too because he would pinch he would pinch he he would actually um he had what people said were vicious pinches and uh and of course um hitting he would hit people punch people he was also known for head butting people wow um he was not a nice guy um really by any account so a how he managed to uh woo a wife um but he had four children two of the children also ended up coming up with the uh that same congenital defect uh so he had two lobster children and then two normal quote-unquote normal children um but eventually his wife decided she had had enough she left him they they divorced and she remarried and at some point in time decided that that relationship wasn't good enough for her uh or she got bored or something she divorced that husband got back together with grady what remarried grady what uh there was something about there was something about it pinchers well and he was famous for in interviews and with people to whom he talked and he didn't talk to very many people but when he did uh he would often brag about lobster sex what oh yes he would brag about lobster sex so uh so the thing about grady though what does that mean i have no i didn't have it with him i don't know what it means i only know that he was quite proud of it all right uh and he did have four children so um but here's the thing is he was apparently overheard on several drunken occasions um threatening to kill his wife oh and uh you know as a result of this she and her son from another marriage um ended up paying a 17 year old neighbor and some say carnival worker as well though i i don't know that i've ever been able to find out what exactly he did but he was a 17 year old neighbor to go and kill her husband okay and he did he he walked into uh their home the door was open he walked into their home shot grady in the back of the head now grady was so unliked when he died they couldn't find anyone willing to be a pallbearer so he was a very horrible person but one oh and by the way i left out the most interesting and and and potentially most um validating reason for killing grady beside the fact that that he had threatened to kill his wife he had killed before what his daughter was uh engaged to be married he didn't like the guy and the night before their wedding shot him to death with a shot gosh this is the kicker though and the it's stories like this which is why i'm so fascinated with this lifestyle which luckily has been banned um the carnival science right but um he was let off he openly admitted to the crime you know everyone knew he did it and he had no problem saying that he did it to the police to the judge to the jury he was let off with 15 years probation why this is a very gotham city-esque story there were no prisons equipped to handle his defect so no one could take care of him therefore we're going to let you go wow so i mean what do they really need he make he can't hold a fork so well you know proper utensils i guess it's it's very much like uh it it's very much like you know mr freeze if you don't have a cell that's equipped yeah to handle uh ectodactyly you you really can't have him in prison maybe i have no idea all i know is it is a bizarre case um and yet similar to uh and by the way may i just say as you have said on several occasions of all the research that i have done uh over the years and and certainly in preparation for this particular show grady styles is the only carnival sideshow performer that i have been able to find who has a legitimate criminal record so it's not to say that if you grew up a sideshow freak you became a killer or you became a bank robber or you became killer croc uh but he did and that's why i illustrate the killer croc persona with grady styles junior in this particular episode yeah so that's that really good point to make too that he's probably an exception to the degree that he's uh he's engaged in such serious violent crimes so we just want to make it clear that these people with these abnormalities are not bad people right right and and um but he did grow up in this lifestyle so similar to killer croc yeah he grew up with these problems right um but so did two of his kids who didn't have this this issue they they have not in fact one of them has gone on to be uh sort of an actress you you can actually see her in the movie big fish which is a movie about sort of sideshow uh you know several of the cast members are sideshow freaks yeah uh she is in big fish uh and uh she's been in a number of other of other uh you know productions that require people like that but right and and just like the the two guys that i mentioned one who was um seriously injured and deformed from uh from a an accident that involved um you know third-degree burns all over his body he went on to become ceo of an incredibly successful company rather than becoming someone like harvey dent who engages in this you know a very violent criminal activity right so so i i completely agree and again emphasize the complexity of all of these different variables and factors interacting with each other and that some pathways lead to destruction and pathology by the way just as a side note grady was killed in 1992 guess how much it cost to kill him this this is how badly the man was hated i don't know 1500 what for 1500 a man would go and shoot your husband just because nobody liked it so anywho pathways and other pathways can lead to overcoming negativity and adversity and i i just think can we just end on on killer croc's statement about adapting because that that sentence you know that that announcement couldn't be more true right that he is adapting and just like you know the person who adapts toward the direction of learning lessons and being brave and facing um you know that that social interaction and and helping people to understand their situation and maybe having a successful life versus adapting in a much different direction i you know that that announcement that killer croc makes couldn't be more true that it really captures the complexity of everything going on right so let's end on that we will join us next week when we take a look at fear of victory another fantastic episode drea as always it's been an absolute pleasure where can people find you on twitter my twitter name is at arkham asylum doc you can find me at beward028 or you can find the show at arkham sessions on twitter you can also find us on facebook so come and like us there and as always i highly recommend that you reach out to us via email through arkham sessions at gmail.com or go to andrea's website under the mask online.com and email her there plus there's a lot to look at there jab it's time for lobster sex all right so just kidding it was a great pleasure excited for next week yep so uh until then i'm brian ward i'm dr andrea latimendi and we are the arkham sessions [Music] [Applause] [Music] you