Arnold Wesker (New Earth)



Real Name: Arnold Wesker Nicknames: No known nicknames Former Aliases: Quakemaster Other Current Aliases: No other known current aliases

Status
Occupation: Occupation unknown Legal Status: Arnold Wesker is a citizen of the United States with a criminal record. Identity: Secret Marital Status: Single Group Affiliation: Former member of the Secret Society of Super-Villains; former partner of Scarface Base of Operations: Gotham City

Origin
Origin of character unknown.

Place of Birth: Place of birth unknown Place of Death: Gotham City Known Relatives: No known relatives First Appearance: Detective Comics #583 Final Appearance: Detective Comics #818

History
History of character unknown.

Characteristics
Height: x'xx" Weight: xxx lbs (xxx kg) Eyes: Eye colour unknown Hair: White, though going bald. Unusual Features: The Ventriloquist suffers from Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD).

Powers
Known Powers: No known powers. Known Abilities: As his name implies, the Ventriloquist is a master at the art of ventriloquism and mimicry, although he has difficulty pronouncing the letter "B". Strength Level: The Ventriloquist possesses the strength level of a man his age, size and weight who engages in minimal regular exercise.

Miscellaneous
Equipment: Scarface (a puppet) Transportation: No known transportation. Weapons: Wesker doesn't personally employ any weapons, but through Scarface, he is known to use vintage-era gatling guns and other assorted firearms.

Alternate Media
The Ventriloquist and Scarface appeared in Batman: The Animated Series, where they were voiced by George Dzundza. In this depiction, he is a master ventriloquist and can pronounce every sound perfectly as Scarface.

In his first appearance, "Read My Lips," his activities and persona were unknown to the authorities. When Gotham Police are baffled by a series of crimes executed with clockwork-like precision, Batman investigates the case and discovers that the crimes are planned by a mob boss known as Scarface. He traces Scarface to his lair — a deserted mannequin warehouse — and discovers, to his astonishment, that the crime czar is a wooden dummy, manipulated by a mild-mannered man called the Ventriloquist. Even worse, as he makes further developments, he realizes Arnold Wesker, the ventriloquist, has split personality and it is the dummy who manipulates the Ventriloquist(in this version, Scarface has yellowish, almost Hispanic-looking skin, has a cigarette hanging from his mouth, is dressed in a blue suit, and has a tommy-gun constantly tucked under his arm).

Scarface and his gang prove to be very effective when they managed to capture Batman by developing the spying device he put on the Ventriloquist tie and organize a fake hit to get the vigilante. Probably as a homage to the classic villain plots from the 1960s Batman TV series, Scarface ties and hangs Batman and sets him to fall into a pit full of mannequin hands with sharpened nails pointing up. At this point, by faking and projecting the voice of the Ventriloquist, Batman plays both of Wesker's personalities, setting them to fight against each other. That way, he made enough time to set himself free and defeat the gang. During the fight, Muggsy, one of the main Scarface thugs, accidentally shoots and destroys the dummy, apparently traumatizing Wesker.

At the end of the episode, locked in Arkham Asylum, Wesker is shown in one of the workshops shaping some wood. After a nurse congratulates him, he rolls it over revealing it was a new dummy head. He takes a knife and makes a "scar" across the face, similar to the original Scarface's. However, the scenes when the dummy is destroyed became recurring in his future appearance, leading to Scar-face's temporary "death" until a new dummy is made. In "Trial" he didn't even die after his head was accidentally chopped off by The Scarecrow. One of the dummies, probably the one from "Read My Lips" (because of the several bullet holes), was featured as one of the items of the souvenir gallery of the Bat-cave in Batman Beyond. In the DVD commentary to "Read My Lips," Bruce Timm stated that the recurring destruction of the dummy was because, since he wasn't a "living" character, the Fox Kids censors placed no restrictions on its treatment; as a result, the production staff vented their darker impulses by finding a more gruesome way of destroying the dummy each time, culminating in grinding him to sawdust in a building's ventilation fans in his final major appearance.

After "Read My Lips," one of the last episodes of the first season, the character became so popular that when the series returned for a second season (The Adventures of Batman & Robin), he was cast as a regular among the enemies of Batman, making three more appearances (more than The Penguin). A reference to his sudden popularity was made in Harlequinade, when listing all their friends to the Joker she tries to mention him but she forgets his name.

Later, in The New Batman Adventures episode "Double Talk," Wesker finally stood up to and destroyed Scarface, thus seemingly ridding himself of his alternate personality. However, in the comic books and in his last appearance in "Over The Edge," it is implied that a normal life may be always just out of Wesker's reach (in this version, Scarface is redesigned to wear a lighter colored blue suit than the B:TAS one, and a hat of the same color as well as having caucasian skin and being shorter altogether).

In an episode of Justice League entitled "A Better World," the League visits the alternate dimension populated by their alter egos the Justice Lords. In the alternate reality's Arkham Asylum, several lobotomized patients appear before them, courtesy of the alternate world's more ruthless Superman. Wesker is present in the dayroom, and though his forehead is unmarked, Scarface intriguingly bears the two burn scars indicative of the treatment, which apparently had the same psychological effect on Wesker.

In the DCAU-continuity comic books, Scarface has his speech impediment from the mainstream DC Universe version. This was explained by Scarface claiming that, while he was "in prison" after one of Wesker's arrests, he was involved in a fight where a fellow inmate tore his lips off. The Ventriloquist and Scarface also appear in The Batman, where they are voiced by Dan Castellaneta. In the series, Wesker is a ventriloquist who snapped when he was booed off the stage one night and turned to a life of crime. The Scarface dummy itself is not cast in the mold of a 1920s gangster, but is based upon the character of Tony Montana in the 1983 film Scarface. In his debut episode, "The Big Dummy", Wesker arranges for the theft of various gadgets which are used to construct a giant Scarface robot, which holds Wesker in its hand in a reversal of their roles. In the end, Scarface was "killed" after he was run over by a train. Wesker was then taken to Arkham Asylum.

In the episode "Fistful of Felt", Wesker returns with a new Scarface. It was then revealed that Wesker once had a TV show which was cancelled. After Batman stops them from stealing dollar molds from a treasury, Wesker and Scarface were seen in Arkham during Hugo Strange's therapy group with the Joker and the Penguin. Hugo Strange considered Wesker his main patient and "freed" Wesker from Scarface. Wesker started to do kids' parties with a puppet named Mr. Snoots, until Strange took the next stage into his hands. He placed Scarface in Wesker's apartment where he can see him, perhaps to see if Wesker is completely cured, and able to stand up to Scarface's overbearing demands. In a confrontation with Batman in a newly opened building for children, Scarface and Mr. Snoots were both once again destroyed by a train. Wesker was then returned to Arkham.

In both Batman: The Animated Series and The Batman, the Ventriloquist's henchmen are Rhino and Muggsy (voiced by Earl Boen and Townsend Coleman respectively in B:TAS; both voiced by John DiMaggio in The Batman).

Trivia

 * The Ventriloquist and Scarface appear as a Boss character in the Batman: Dark Tomorrow video game.

Recommended Readings

 * Batman
 * Batman: Shadow of the Bat
 * Detective Comics

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 * Batman
 * Gotham City
 * Scarface
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