This was in fact intended as a ruse on the part of writer Alan Grant to disguise the character's true identity, and to confuse the reader into believing Anarky to be an adult.

[29] Lonnie Machin made his debut as "Anarky" by responding to complaints in the newspaper by attacking the offending sources, such as the owner of a factory whose byproduct waste is polluting local river water.

[8] With the publication of Robin #181, "Search For a Hero, Part 5: Pushing Buttons, Pulling Strings", on December 17, 2008, it was revealed that Lonnie Machin's role as Anarky had been supplanted by another Batman villain, Ulysses Armstrong.

The series was concluded as a result of The New 52, a revamp and relaunch by DC Comics of its entire line of ongoing monthly superhero books, in which all of its existing titles were cancelled.

The way that James [Tynion] played Anarky in Detective Comics is he shared a lot of the same goals and motivations with the [Gotham Knights] team, but he's also a guy who has a tendency to run afoul of Batman's beliefs".

An only child, he shares his physical traits of light skin and red hair with both of his parents, Mike and Roxanne Machin, a middle-class family living in Gotham City.

Referring to the tradition established by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby of saddling teenagers with personal problems, Grant purposely gave Anarky none, nor did he develop a girlfriend or social life for the character.

[59] A "social activist" who wishes to "liberate and free people", Anarky views himself as a hero akin to Batman and offers an alliance with him, but his approach is rebuked on the basis that their methods are nothing alike.

[41] This "special relationship" between the homeless who look up to a villain, who in turn acts as their protector against police who prey upon them, was intended to present an area of grey morality for the player to consider.

He charges these men with such crimes as the creation of land mines that kill or cripple thousands, funding Third World dictators, polluting the air with toxic chemicals, and profiting from wage slavery, and threatens each man with a bomb if the public should find them guilty.

In fact, Anarky exists primarily to challenge the status quo of hierarchical power, and he may be the first mainstream comics hero of his type to do it consistently and with such rational intelligence".

In Batman: Shadow of the Bat Annual #2, an Elseworlds story entitled "The Tyrant", Grant made dictatorship and the corrupting influence of power the primary theme.

[77] Grant also expressed a desire to use the comic as a vehicle for his thoughts concerning the mind and consciousness,[5] and made bicameral mentality a major theme of both series.

[30] By 1991 a profile of the character, following the introduction of Anarky's skills as a hacker in the "Rite of Passage" storyline of Detective Comics #620, described that "Lonnie's inventive genius is equaled only by his computer wizardry".

In his introduction of Batman: Anarky: "The kid's whole life is dedicated to self-improvement, with the sole aim of destroying the parasitic elites who he considers feast off ordinary folks".

[89] With this enhanced intelligence and financial assets, the 1999 ongoing series narrates that Anarky went on to create an on-board AI computer, MAX (Multi-Augmented X-Program);[52] a crude but fully functioning teleportation device capable of summoning a boom tube,[90] and secretly excavated an underground base below the Washington Monument.

[28] In Fabian Niciza's stories for Red Robin, Lonnie Machin's abilities as Moneyspider were revamped, with the character taking on the persona of an "electronic ghost".

[102][103][104] The costume redesign for Anarky in Batman: Arkham Origins, while stylized, attempted to thematically highlight the character's anarchist sentiments by updating his appearance utilizing black bloc iconography.

[21] Donning a red puffer flight jacket, hoodie and cargo pants, the character sported gold accents decorating his black belt, backpack and combat boots, and completed this with an orange bandana wrapped below his neck.

[6] While acknowledging that he lacked evidence, he held a "nagging feeling" that he and Grant had each been "blacklisted" from DC Comics as a result of the controversial views expressed in the Anarky series' second volume.

Reflecting on his early secret plan to transform Lonnie Machin into a new Robin, Grant has stated that though he came to appreciate the character of Tim Drake, he occasionally experiences "twinges of regret that Anarky wasn't chosen as the new sidekick for comics' greatest hero".

One critic for Fanzing, an online newsletter produced by comic book fans and professisonals, wrote: "I liked the original concept behind Anarky: a teenage geek who reads The Will to Power one too many times and decides to go out and fix the world.

The authors commented that Anarky "potentially redefines crime" and invites the reader to identify with a new political position in favor of the disenfranchised, which Batman "can not utterly condemn".

The player is given the opportunity to observe Anarky after he has been defeated, and watch as the teenager enters a monologue in which he laments the downfall of society, tries to reconcile his admiration for Batman, and ultimately denounces the Caped Crusader as a false hero.

[119] Dialogue from Detective Comics is employed, in which Batman compares himself to Anarky and denies the latter legitimacy: "The fact is, no man can be allowed to set himself up as judge, jury and executioner".

Deriding the character as a "living embodiment of an Avril Lavigne t-shirt", he pointed out the pointlessness of being inspired to super heroics by radical philosophy, and the contradictory nature of fighting crime as an anarchist.

Several global events of the early 2010s included the rise of hacktivist groups such as Anonymous and LulzSec; large scale protest movements, including the Arab Spring, Occupy movement, and Quebec student protests; the crypto-anarchist activity on the part of Defense Distributed and Cody Wilson; and the various information leaks to WikiLeaks by Chelsea Manning, the Stratfor email leak by Anonymous and Jeremy Hammond, and the global surveillance disclosures by Edward Snowden.

[126] Following the cancellation of the ongoing series, Roderick T. Long, an anarchist/libertarian political commentator and Senior Scholar at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, praised Anarky as "an impressive voice for liberty in today's comics".

Lamenting the obscurity of the character, Burgas wished Anarky and anarchism would be presented more often: "... anarchy as a concept is often dismissed, but it's worth looking at simply because it is so radical and untenable yet noble".

The unknown hacker, operating under the alias "Moneyspider", has stolen millions of dollars from Western corporations, including Wayne Enterprises, outmaneuvering Batman's own data security in the process.