Summary
While most fans of Batman would considerJokerhis most despicable enemy, even the Clown Prince of Crime admits he’s only in second place. To Joker, there’s only one Arkham villain who is truly vile, and a worse person than all the freaks and killers who haunt Gotham’s streets. Despite multiple Gotham villains from the A-list to the Z-list considering this person the worst person in Gotham, he’s had precious few appearances, easily qualifying asthe most underrated of Gotham’s many evil-doers.
The villain in question is the Great White Shark, aka Warren White. A corrupt stock trader, White first appeared inArkham Asylum: Living Hellby Dan Slott and Ryan Sook. What makes White unique is that he’s not a supervillain who was sent to Arkham, but rathera normal person whobecamea villain because of his experiences within the twisted psychiatric hospital. Before Arkham, White embezzled millions, wiping out the pensions and investments of thousands of innocent people. Loathed across America, White uses some fancy legal footwork to get himself declared insane rather than going to prison. Unfortunately for Warren, because the case ends up being heard in Gotham,that means he’s sent to Arkham.
At first, Warren White is rightly terrified of the various villains within the Asylum, especially because they uniformly loathe him, with everyone from Joker to Killer Croc to Jane Doe declaring him"the worst person I’ve ever met.“When White protests that Joker has killed countless innocents, the archvillain replies,“Yes. But at least I don’t take their kids' college funds.”
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The villains' attitude to White sends him careening further and further down the ladder, begging Arkham patients like Two-Face to let him join their gangs. Eventually, White is locked in Mr. Freeze’s cell by thelethal identity thief Jane Doe, withthe extreme temperature freezing off his nose, lips and several fingers, giving him a shark-like appearance(complemented when he later sharpens his teeth into points.) While this experience breaks down the last of White’s sense of humanity, it does allow him to rise again, now as the Great White Shark.
Thanks to a demonic deal, the Great White Shark will torture all Gotham’s villains in Hell when they eventually die.
White does have one companion in Arkham - the ‘villain’ Humpty Dumpty, who is obsessed with taking things apart to fix them. While his intentions are innocent, his tampering with objects like Gotham’s trains have claimed many lives, culminating in Batgirl discovering that Humpty began by taking apart his grandmother to see what made her so abusive. Humpty Dumpty also considers Warren White uniquely evil, accepting him not out of friendship, but to study what is ‘wrong’ with him.
White’s Ties to the Supernatural Make Him Terrifying
Great White Shark has appeared sparingly since, becoming the secret boss of Gotham crime in the ‘Face the Face’ arc (from James Robinson and a host of artists), after arranging the murders of various other villains. Sadly, this idea didn’t lead to many follow-up stories, and White has more or less become a background player, with a few choice exceptions.
Dan Slott and Ryan Sook
2003
Batman: Face the Face(Batman #651-654&Detective Comics #817-820)
James Robinson, Michael Bair, Keith Champagne, Andy Clarke, Wayne Faucher, Don Kramer and Leonard Kirk
2006
Royal McGraw and Andy Clarke
2007
Frank Tieri and Jim Calafiore
Indeed, later stories have forgotten the most interesting thing about the Great White Shark - his major ties to the supernatural. As well as showing White’s downfall,Arkham Asylum: Living Hellreveals a group of demons trapped in Arkham Asylum. Having become the Great White Shark, White is able to make a deal with the demons' master - the entity will take back the demons (who it turns out were banished because of their sympathy for the people they were forced to torture), andWhite will be in charge of torturing all Gotham’s villains when they and he finally die.
Due to losing several fingers in Freeze’s cell, part of White’s hand manifests in a ‘ghost’ form when confronting the supernatural. He uses this connection to strike a characteristically cold-hearted deal with the demons' master.
While the Great White Shark remains an obscure villain, he’s also one of Batman’s most fascinating foes- someone whose despicable deeds had nothing to do with madness, but who was nevertheless reshaped into a ‘supervillain’ by Arkham. White is at once one of Gotham’s villains and the opposite - someone who sees Arkham Asylum not as a prison, but a secret fortress from which he can run a criminal empire, and knows he will have the last laugh onJoker, Two-Face and the rest of the A-list. Hopefully, future stories do more with the Great White Shark, because he represents a truly unique presence in Gotham, and a form of evil that Batman actually isn’t used to fighting.
