Indeed Professor Hugo Strange was first of the recurring villains who faced the Dark Knight Detectives, on parallel worlds in the golden and silver age. Motivated by sheer greed and pure evil, Strange first employed a lightning generator producing a fog in order to plunge Gotham City into criminal chaos. Later he used mutated giants incorporated into his sinister schemes, though each of the hench-monsters were themselves dispatched of by the Caped Crusaders. Finally, a fear dust nearly spelled victory for Strange, until the Dynamic Duo, with the Robins by the Batmen's side for this final duel with Hugo, seemingly eliminated the threat of the Professor forevermore.
That is, seemingly, when in fact this wasn't the case. Although all three occurrences were precisely the same as to the crimes committed and the individuals involved, what became of the dastardly devious deviants was drastically different! For while one would become a successful crime lord in Europe for the next decade or more, the other would spend decades in a sanitarium recovering from serious injuries due to the fall. Though one became more physically imposing a specimen to match his considerable intellect, the other would have a corrupt surgeon inject some of his pituitary enzyme in his body to revive it. While one could, and did, become a double for Bruce Wayne after much training, the other became a misshapen husk of a man. And so, the one who found success... Earth-One's Strange... sought a rematch of wits with his arch-enemy. And the other who found failure... Earth-Two's Strange... sought something else, something far more subtle.
As we continue our examination of both Hugo's, we see how their twice-told-tales expand to take on new and stunning similar yet divergently different paths during their modern day reappearances.
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