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Blackgate Penitentiary

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Construction of the original prison was started in the 1880s, after the Religion of Crime was driven out of Blackgate Isle. In the late 1980s, Blackgate Prison was condemned by Amnesty International and forced to shut down. When it eventually re-opened, it was

Blackgate Penitentiary is located on a small island in Gotham Bay, Gotham City.

History

Construction of the original prison was started in the 1880s, after the Religion of Crime was driven out of Blackgate Isle. In the late 1980s, Blackgate Prison was condemned by Amnesty International and forced to shut down.[1] When it eventually re-opened, it was officially known as "Blackgate Penitentiary".

Unlike Arkham Asylum, Blackgate is where non-insane criminals such as Roxy Rocket, Monsoon II, Echo, Knife, Catwoman, and various henchmen, mobsters, and mafia bosses are incarcerated when captured. There are instances where inmates from Arkham Asylum are temporarily moved to Blackgate, such as when Bane destroyed the original Arkham building.[2] All of the Arkham inmates were incarcerated in Blackgate until the new Arkham structure was built and Arkham re-opened.[3][4][5]

Eventually, a group of notorious prisoners tried to escape from Blackgate. They were Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Magpie, Talia al Ghul, Dollhouse, Fright, Lady Spellbinder, Holiday, and although they were at first unsuccessful, they eventually escaped during the earthquake that razed Gotham. As a result, some of the prison's walls broke down and the tremor opened up a land bridge to Gotham. This allowed the majority of the inmates of Blackgate to escape, although many of them were defeated by the Batman before they could leave. They were all eventually re-incarcerated or put down while violently evading arrest.

Residents

Inmates



Alternate Versions

In Batman: Crimson Mist, the vampire Batman killed the Black Mask gang and left their severed heads impaled on the fence outside Blackgate, the heads looking inwards in a manner interpreted as a warning. Later on, Batman mused that he was running out of "deserving" victims to satisfy his thirst for blood, explicitly musing that most of Blackgate's inmates were only imprisoned for theft or less and didn't deserve the kind of death he could inflict upon them.


Trivia

  • Scarecrow and Nightwing both claim that Blackgate was used as a gun battery during the Civil War and remained in use until WWII. This seemingly contradicts the timeline of the prison's construction.[16]

See Also

  1. ↑ Detective Comics #629
  2. ↑ Batman #491
  3. ↑ Showcase '94 #3
  4. ↑ Batman #521
  5. ↑ Detective Comics #673
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 Flash Forward #1
  7. ↑ Detective Comics (Volume 2) #20
  8. ↑ Batman Eternal #4
  9. ↑ Superman/Batman Annual #3
  10. ↑ Batman: Fear State: Omega #1
  11. ↑ Batman (Volume 2) #23.4: Bane
  12. ↑ Forever Evil: Arkham War #2
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Forever Evil: Arkham War #4
  14. ↑ Forever Evil: Arkham War #5
  15. ↑ Nightwing (Volume 3) #14
  16. ↑ Nightwing (Volume 2) #36
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