Comic artist Ethan Van Sciver reveals new Mad Hatter in ‘The Dark Knight’ inspired by Charles Manson

The classic Batman villain Mad Hatter may look pretty much the same as he always has when he makes his New 52 debut, but the Hatter has undergone a overhaul based on a serial killer.

Discussing “The Dark Knight” issue #16 with Newsrama in an interview released Wednesday, artist Ethan Van Sciver revealed the inspiration for his redesign.

“What is the best Mad Hatter story? What’s the singular Mad Hatter story? And there are one or two — you know, in the animated series and I think there’s been a couple of comic stories. But really, there’s no Killing Joke, you know? There’s no definitive Mad Hatter story. So we felt free to rethink him. Or not even “re”-think him. Just “think” him.”

So the famed Green Lantern turned to serial killers as an inspiration.

“I thought about Timothy Leary, the LSD guru from the 1960s, and Charles Manson, and all these kind of strange ’60s radical cult leaders. And I put a lot of that into the kind of classic Alice in Wonderland Mad Hatter that existed in the old storybook artwork.

So we landed on that classic appearance of Mad Hatter, but with something Charles Manson about him. And we came up with a new take on him, where he’s cute but also bizarre and scary and dangerous. So he’s scary and disturbing, but there’s something likable about him, hopefully. As I draw him, I chuckle. So I hope he’s amusing.”

The perverse nature of the story and the character was a theme throughout the interview which also featured writer Gregg Hurwitz.

“The Hatter arc, I think, is really suited to him because it’s got this real undercurrent off off-kilter violence. And Ethan does a really good job with horror, with the grotesque, but always with a little bit of a wink, or a twinkle in the eye. There’s a theme of humor that runs through it also. And so for this story in particular, I think he was really suited to tackle it.”

Check out the entire interview here

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