Owlman: Thomas Wayne Jr., the Batman of Earth-3 in the Crime Syndicate

Who Owlman is, the reflection of Batman in the Crime Syndicate

Owlman is the counter-Batman of the Crime Syndicate, the team of criminals that occupies, in a parallel universe, the place of the Justice League. He acts in the Gotham of his world, with no superpower at all. His city is Batman's, not Superman's, and the two cities are built as opposites.

His real name, Thomas Wayne Jr., has not always been his: the 1964 version has none, and the name of a brother of Bruce Wayne is attached to him only in 2000. He also always belongs to the same team, of which he is never the leader in the comics. Superman's post is held by an evil double come from Earth-3, who commands; Owlman is the brain. That is what places a Batman adversary in the gallery of the Man of Steel's enemies.

The Owlman of 1964: a counter-Batman with no name and no past

Owlman is born in Justice League of America #29, dated August 1964, in a story kept in English, « Crisis on Earth-Three! » signed by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky. The Syndicate rules its world with no opposition, grows bored, and crosses into the League's universe to find resistance. The adventure ends with the team locked between the two Earths.

This first Owlman has no name, no family and no past: he is a counter-Batman by function, designed to complete a team of five. His career fits in a handful of issues across twenty years, up to Crisis on Infinite Earths #1, cover dated April 1985, where Earth-3 is swept by the Anti-Monitor's antimatter wave. The later versions are therefore not continuations: that event erased the original multiverse.

JLA: Earth 2 (2000): the version that gives Owlman a man

Before he was Owlman, Thomas Wayne Jr. was another character: in World's Finest Comics #223, dated May-June 1974, Bruce's older brother on Earth-1, brain-damaged and institutionalized, become the host body of Deadman. Nothing linked him to Owlman. It is that forgotten character that Grant Morrison recovers in JLA: Earth 2, a graphic novel drawn by Frank Quitely and published in 2000 — the sources do not agree on the month.

The book takes place in an antimatter universe, not on Earth-3, erased in 1985. The origin is an exact mirror of Batman's: the founding assault kills Bruce and his mother Martha, and leaves Thomas Jr. and his father alive, the father having become chief of police. The son holds him responsible and wants to punish him. Before the graves of the Waynes of the positive universe, he discovers that his father died there: no one left to make suffer, and he falls to his knees. DC explored elsewhere a world where everything is inverted, and other stories outside continuity do the same; here, the inversion is moral.

Forever Evil (2013): the Owlman his butler built

The New 52 version arrives in Justice League vol. 2 #23, cover dated October 2013, by Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis. It is the one summaries mix up with the previous: it comes from Earth 3 of the New 52, not from the antimatter universe. Its origin is told in #25, a story kept in English, « Forever Lost », cover dated January 2014, and the point the accounts share is brutal: Alfred Pennyworth is the one who killed the family, Bruce included.

During Forever Evil, seven issues by Johns and David Finch (2013-2014), he claims all of Gotham's crime. The Syndicate empties Arkham and Blackgate; he captures Nightwing with Superwoman and asks that he be kept alive, which Ultraman refuses. Several members of the team die there — Sea King, Deathstorm, Power Ring, Atomica, Johnny Quick — and Ultraman and Superwoman end up captured; Owlman, for his part, stays free. He is found later in Lex Luthor's company, before he dies in July 2016, disintegrated in Mobius's chair, on the margin of the war against Darkseid.

Crime Syndicate (2021): the Owlman who first had a code

The fourth version appears in Crime Syndicate #1-6, by Andy Schmidt and Kieran McKeown, from May to October 2021. His world is called New Earth 3: it is not Earth 3 of the New 52, but a rebuilt Earth. The origin fits in a companion story published with #2, kept in English, « An Owl in the Light ».

This time, Owlman starts on the good side. As a child, he sees his parents and his brother Bruce killed by Harvey Bullock; he trains for years to have them convicted, swearing not to kill. When he finally captures Bullock, the man tells him that the parents he was avenging were criminals themselves. That revelation is what makes him tip: he gives up the rule of not killing, throws Bullock from the top of the Old Wayne Tower, then erases every proof of his existence and takes the lead of a group of murderous vigilantes.

Owlman's powers: none, and that is the whole point

Owlman has no superpower in any version of the comics, and that is the heart of the character: he is the inverse of Batman, therefore a human. The contrast with the list of the Man of Steel's abilities is no accident, since the team copies the League post by post. In their place: a genius, a mastery of the martial arts, gear modelled on Batman's, and a network of crime bosses.

Two reservations are required. JLA: Earth 2 mentions a chemically boosted cerebral cortex, without ever having him show a superhuman ability or explaining the mechanism. And some stories of the sixties lend the pre-Crisis version an ability to scramble minds; the source that reports it states itself that no one knows where he would have got it. As for the exoskeleton of the 2010 animated film, it belongs to the film alone. Same method as Batman, same limits: what the Superman-Batman duo puts in tension, Owlman turns inside out.

Owlman's place in the Crime Syndicate, facing Superman

Owlman has been a member of the Crime Syndicate since 1964 and in each of his incarnations, under team names that barely vary. Superman's post always goes to Ultraman, who leads; Owlman is the intelligence, as the League shares the roles among its members.

It is in that capacity that he reads the phenomenon better than the others: in JLA: Earth 2, Alexander Luthor is the one who puts the two universes in contact, and the dimensional balance then transfers the Syndicate into Superman's universe. The same story sets the rule that explains why a hero come from elsewhere cannot win there: good structurally cannot prevail on that Earth, which touches his place in the multiverse. In Forever Evil, he belongs to the team that takes Superman out, by a fragment of kryptonite planted in his brain by Atomica, under the eclipse Ultraman maintains in order to feed. And in Dark Nights: Death Metal — Multiverse's End #1, cover dated November 2020, he himself kills Ultraman and Superwoman before blowing up his own Earth: the reflection of Batman is the one who brings down the reflection of Superman.

Owlman on screen: 2009, 2010 and 2024

Owlman first comes through television: in Batman: The Brave and the Bold, the episode kept in English, « Deep Cover for Batman! », aired on 27 February 2009, sets him at the head of a team called the Injustice Syndicate — not the Crime Syndicate — and has Batman take his place.

The character's film is Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, released straight to video on 23 February 2010, with James Woods in the role. His plan: use a weapon of his own design, the Quantum Eigenstate Device (Q.E.D.), to destroy the multiverse's Earth of origin. His reasoning is nihilist: if every choice is already taken in reverse on a neighbouring Earth, none of them counts. Teleported with the bomb onto an uninhabited Earth, he has time to press the cancel button and does not. Worth noting: no line in the film calls him Thomas Wayne Jr. He returns in 2024 in Crisis on Infinite Earths, Part One, but no live-action footage has shown him. DC animation, for its part, has often carried reversed heroes to the screen, up to a Superman turned into a dictator.

Owlman: the mix-ups to avoid

The subject is a nest of namesakes. Two distinctions are enough.

• Owlman and Ultraman are two distinct members of the same team: Ultraman is the reflection of Superman and the leader of the Syndicate, Owlman the reflection of Batman and its brain.
• Thomas Wayne Jr. and Lincoln March: March, on the main Earth, claims to be Bruce's brother and is not Owlman. He is a man of the Court of Owls, and Batman vol. 2 #11 (2012) does not settle it: Bruce Wayne rejects his account, without the story giving an answer.

There remains the vocabulary trap: the word « Talon » circulates on both sides, since Owlman gave himself a partner called Talon and the Court of Owls calls its assassins Talons. For a reader who arrived through the clash between Batman and Superman, the reflex is to ask which Earth and which year the summary is talking about.

Conclusion

Owlman is hard to sum up because he was rewritten four times, and each rewrite changes the culprit. In 1964 there is no culprit: there is not even a man, only a function. In 2000, it is a father who survived. In 2013, the butler. In 2021, the parents themselves. Above all, remember to ask which year the summary you are reading is talking about.

What does not change is his place: the member without powers of a team whose leader is Superman's double. DC likes these warped reflections, from Superman turned into an ideological weapon to the false Superman built on a machine; Owlman is the one who aims at Batman and reaches Superman.