{"id":2985,"date":"2022-07-31T16:07:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-31T19:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=2985"},"modified":"2026-09-27T17:32:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T20:32:17","slug":"minor-super-villain-092-the-painter-of-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=2985","title":{"rendered":"MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 092: THE PAINTER OF DEATH"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(Detective Comics 042, 1940)<\/p>\n<div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both;text-align: center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEiwSHQ7XA08H4ewH1vfigpqR8HW6wZOi3CYHyauNOpJFjFEeRktihoC_kacAOKpbgavndVgbGUvyMp2EHZMjKeS9E-kmeuYLG6DNRV-rFIbyxSeTBWfW2kP-i4zxrieU8y5OugRTTd2FVeIoqxIodfNG6NPSCKG0ZPtyLmjhuZZCx9KtGg6g_pDWCuzYA\/w640-h374\/80.%20The%20Painter%20of%20Death%20-%20plus%20trophy%20room.JPG\" style=\"margin-left: 1em;margin-right: 1em\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"420\" data-original-width=\"718\" height=\"374\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEiwSHQ7XA08H4ewH1vfigpqR8HW6wZOi3CYHyauNOpJFjFEeRktihoC_kacAOKpbgavndVgbGUvyMp2EHZMjKeS9E-kmeuYLG6DNRV-rFIbyxSeTBWfW2kP-i4zxrieU8y5OugRTTd2FVeIoqxIodfNG6NPSCKG0ZPtyLmjhuZZCx9KtGg6g_pDWCuzYA\/w640-h374\/80.%20The%20Painter%20of%20Death%20-%20plus%20trophy%20room.JPG\" title=\"the Painter of Death\" width=\"640\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0f1419;white-space: pre-wrap\">The Painter of Death (never actually called that in-comic, sadly) engaged in a campaign against the subjects of paintings by up-and-coming portraitist Antal. He first attacked the painting of the person and then killed them in the same manner: via dart, arrow, gunshot etc. Eventually, Bruce &#8220;Batman&#8221; Wayne commissioned a painting from Antal and used it to set a trap which netted Wylie, an art collector who had invested heavily in Antal&#8217;s work and saw the murders as a way to raise the value of his investment via morbid publicity.<br \/><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both;text-align: center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEjd5yPMBteSySfaS4muz4ibrnXWWRRRT87ZOW4jcpu4JIm9906BKcV-kfITbZIqtHzV2_thriaZVt7ov2IkckO7vK_HFOCyfQZBVCBiDPITKO9jx_lCMJzcuqvJqkUPhuv6uDiq9lg4kfNuK7EPVJImQMokJF9C2Hwih3a0tO0lXj6F_HH2vrNsVpSCOA\/w640-h574\/painter%20of%20death.JPG\" style=\"margin-left: 1em;margin-right: 1em\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"421\" data-original-width=\"469\" height=\"574\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEjd5yPMBteSySfaS4muz4ibrnXWWRRRT87ZOW4jcpu4JIm9906BKcV-kfITbZIqtHzV2_thriaZVt7ov2IkckO7vK_HFOCyfQZBVCBiDPITKO9jx_lCMJzcuqvJqkUPhuv6uDiq9lg4kfNuK7EPVJImQMokJF9C2Hwih3a0tO0lXj6F_HH2vrNsVpSCOA\/w640-h574\/painter%20of%20death.JPG\" title=\"painter of death\" width=\"640\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>Though Wylie bumped himself off at the end of the adventure, the bullet-riddled Antal portrait of Bruce Wayne sticks around to become one of the minor stock trophies in the Batcave. The Painter of Death or Prophetic Portraits Case is also mentioned a couple of times as Batman and Robin&#8217;s &#8220;first big case&#8221; and the reason for their fame. Does this reflect some attitude of the creators about the story itself or is it just a plot contrivance? I have no idea!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(Detective Comics 042, 1940) The Painter of Death (never actually called that in-comic, sadly) engaged in a campaign against the subjects of paintings by up-and-coming portraitist Antal. He first attacked the painting of the person and then killed them in the same manner: via dart, arrow, gunshot etc. Eventually, Bruce &#8220;Batman&#8221; Wayne commissioned a painting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,60,61,17,44,80,23,20,1834,64,7,1833],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-5","category-batman","category-capitalism","category-dc-comics","category-dead","category-detective-comics","category-minor-super-villain","category-murderer","category-painter-of-death","category-robin","category-the","category-trophy-room-batman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2985"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2986,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2985\/revisions\/2986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}