[3] A notorious enemy of Batman, the character has appeared in various forms of non-comics media, including animation, video games, and the live-action television series Gotham, where he is portrayed by BD Wong.

Professor Hugo Strange first appears in Detective Comics #36 (February 1940) as a scientist and criminal mastermind who uses a stolen "concentrated lightning" machine to generate a dense fog every night so his gang can rob banks unseen, though he knows that Batman poses a threat to him.

[4] In Batman #1 (spring 1940), Strange carries out his escape plan, recruits a new gang of criminals, then breaks out five patients from Arkham Asylum and uses them as test subjects, turning them into monsters using an artificial growth hormone.

He is then able to kill all the other monsters, and sends Strange to his apparent death in a fall from a cliff, although he suspects that the mad scientist has survived.

[5] In Detective Comics #46 (December 1940), Strange returns and starts spreading a fear-inducing powder around the city until a punch from Batman again sends him falling off a cliff to his apparent death.

Having survived his earlier "death", Strange left Gotham City and went to Europe for several years, where his criminal career prospered with no one to challenge him.

Bored and hoping to pit his wits against Batman again, Strange, now using the alias of Dr. Todhunter, opens a private hospital, Graytowers Clinic, for Gotham's wealthiest citizens, where he holds them for ransom before mutating them into mindless monsters.

As revealed two issues later in Batman #356 (February 1983), Strange had indeed survived the beating from Thorne's men by using yoga techniques to slow his heartbeat to an undetectable level.

It is also revealed that Strange also artificially created the "ghost" of himself that haunted Thorne by using strategically-placed devices that simulated the appearance of a spirit.

[6] In The Brave and the Bold #182 (January 1982), it is revealed that he is left paralyzed by the fall but, after years of physical therapy, he regains enough movement to write out the surgical techniques needed to repair the damage to his body - and bribes a surgeon to perform the operation.

[11] In the post-Crisis continuity, Strange was reintroduced in the "Prey" storyline as an eccentric private psychiatrist enlisted to help a task force assigned to capture Batman by providing them with a psychological profile of the vigilante.

As an adult, he became a professor of psychiatry at Gotham State University, but had his tenure suspended after using his position to promote a series of increasingly bizarre genetic engineering theories.

Borrowing money from Sal Maroni, who is in the employ of Carmine Falcone, Strange sets up a private laboratory to test his theories.

He then bribes a corrupt orderly to supply him with ideal test subjects: inmates from Arkham Asylum who have been institutionalized for so long that they will not be missed.

Strange's experiments have literally monstrous results, with his test subjects turning into gigantic, mindless "Monster Men", possessing superhuman strength and cannibalistic instincts.

When Strange sets his creations free at an illegal poker game, helping himself to the victims' money after the slaughter, the Gotham Mafia begins to grow suspicious.

Soon after, he turns the Monster Men loose, including Sanjay's brother (who had also been mutated as a result of Strange's "treatments"), at Falcone's private estate in a bid to wipe out the Mob's leaders, erasing his debt and covering up their ties to his work.

The following day, he confronts Strange and tricks him into doubting his own hypothesis about Batman's secret identity, claiming that his parents are alive and living in Paraguay.

Catwoman joins Strange's gang, then allows its members to "find out" that she intends to betray them, faking her death when they attempt to eliminate her.

Eli is first seen playing a game of poker with members of the Russian Mob, betting a valuable bracelet, winning big and cleaning house.

[21] In Forever Evil, Hugo Strange is among the supervillains recruited by the Crime Syndicate to join the Secret Society of Super Villains.

Nightwing is able to defeat the final monster - an amalgamation of the previous ones - by literally leaping inside it to inject it with a prepared antidote, while Batman outwits Strange by having his ally Clayface cover the penthouse in an airtight seal prior to the confrontation.

[24] Hugo Strange later appears as a member of the Cabal alongside Doctor Psycho, Per Degaton, Queen Bee, and Amazo.

[26] In pursuit of this goal, he allies with the Penguin and Harvey Dent, using the latter for his access to Gotham City's citizens' genes and control their future generations.