The X-Men’s Weirdest Enemy is Basically a Batman Villain

Though Marvel Comics’ assassin for hire Arcade is a foe most closely linked with the Uncanny X-Men than any other superhero, the psychotic troublemaker may not truly be a threat meant for the team. Devoid of the mutant X-Gene, Arcade makes up for his lack of superpowers in his vivid imagination for inflicting terror and chaos that make him feel much more at home with DC Comics’ famous Caped Crusader, Batman, than the antics of Charles Xavier’s band of world-saving mutants.

Resembling even Batman’s arch-nemesis The Joker in general appearance and style, Marvel antagonist Arcade began his journey as a menace from the start. Murdering his own father in cold blood, Arcade would later make his living from the act, through international Murderworld amusement parks. Indoor computerized amusement parks with a murderous edge, Murderworld were the main source in which Arcade would dispose of his greatest targets, from average civilians to famous superheroes. While operating as a world-class assassin for hire, Arcade has primarily remained a thorn in the side of the X-Men.

Arcade would channel his Gotham City side of villainy more than ever in the recently released anthology comic Wolverine: Black, White, and Blood #2. But it wasn’t The Joker that Arcade was emulating, but another well-known Gotham rogue The Riddler, and his talent for creating elaborate puzzles/traps to torture his victims. In the Arcade centered storyline of the comic, Seeing Red, from writer Saladin Ahmed (Miles Morales: Spider-Man, The Magnificent Ms. Marvel) and artist Kev Walker (Avengers Arena, Thunderbolts), valued X-Men member Wolverine is drugged and forced to become a participant in Arcade’s newest death trap. Arcade has a helpless civilian in his clutches and Wolverine is tasked with completing Arcade’s game before the confined civilian is eliminated with molten lava. After successfully overcoming Arcade’s trap, Wolverine is left with, not the genuine article Arcade himself, but a robotic duplicate of the madman.

Similar to Batman’s villains, namely Two-Face and Mr. Freeze, Arcade does have an integral disclaimer to his schemes, which allow his countless participants the opportunity to escape and live to see another day.

However, it’s Arcade’s same overall schemes that hinder him from being a significant X-Men villain. As a group of mutant outcasts tasked with saving the world, it’s logical that the X-Men’s principal threats have either been rival mutants (Magneto) or mutant response factions assigned with taking down the mutant threat (Sentinels). Arcade is neither of the above; acting as a strange middleman that will occasionally offer an issue or two of nonsensical madness for the X-Men to deal with but nothing more. There’s a reason that Arcade has rarely been adapted to X-Men related media outside of comics, whether it’s film or television. The X-Men and Arcade have been always been an odd fit, but the murderous villain would be a match made in heaven for Batman and his world of relatively heightened crime-fighting.

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