Slightly Misplaced Comic Book Characters Case File #411: The Corrosive Man

In my column from last week, I made mention of how Dr. Phosphorus looks a lot like another superhuman, lesser-known Batman foe the Corrosive Man.

Turned out I was more right than I knew when I looked the Corrosive Man up.

First appearing in Detective Comics #587 in June of 1988, Corrosive Man was originally hitman Derek Mitchell.  Created by writers Alan Grant (not the Jurassic Park guy) and John Wagner with artist Norm Breyfogle, Mitchell was working with another lesser known Batman foe, Mortimer Kadaver, a guy with a thing for death and a mild hypnosis powers who was probably a lot of fun at parties.  However, Kadaver double-crossed Mitchell, and Mitchell was arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison.

If he’d stayed in prison, his life might have been better.  But he didn’t, instead breaking out and heading out to get Kadaver.  During his escape attempt, he decided to hide from the cops in a hazardous waste disposal chamber, and that exploded because of a thunderstorm, showering Mitchell with all kinds of chemicals.  Now, normally, you’d think the guy would have been killed or something, but that would have made for a very uneventful issue of Detective Comics.  Instead, Mitchell was transformed into the Corrosive Man, a fellow whose entire body constantly gives off incredibly lethal chemicals that would eat through pretty much any substance, including of course people.

From there, the Corrosive Man headed off to get Kadaver.  He did leave a permanent hand-shaped scar on Kadaver’s face, but Batman stopped the Corrosive Man before he could do much more than that.

So, let’s see…a guy who associates with criminal types, gets into a weird accident that should kill him, comes out of it with a lethal touch and constantly emitting hazardous waste.  Basically, this guy is a bootleg knock-off of Dr. Phosphorus, only the people he hung out with weren’t wealthy mobsters and smokers but serial killers with a thing for death.  He first appeared in the same title a little over eleven years after Phosphorus, and he took on and lost to Batman.  Honestly, I wasn’t sure when looking at Google Images shots whether or not some of them were Dr. Phosphorus or the Corrosive Man.

Corrosive Man, however, since he secretes acid can be somewhat contained if he’s soaked in alkaline, and that’s usually how he’s held when he’s captured.  In point of fact, the only time I’ve seen him was in a Knightquest issue where the alkaline stopped raining on him, and he broke out and took on Azrael in the Batman suit.  Azrael won, but used the destroyed version of his armored batsuit as an excuse to make an even uglier but still armored version of the batsuit.

Then again, I am pretty sure Azbats was designed to be a character fans were supposed to hate so they’d stop asking DC to make a more violent Batman.  If so, that worked.

Anyhoo, Corrosive Man…somehow the same as Dr. Phosphorus, but not quite as interesting.