Jervis Tetch is a psychopathic hypnotist who arrives in Gotham City in search of his sister Alice. He becomes an enemy to detective James Gordon and plots to plunge the city into madness.
Contents
Biography
Early life
Following the death of his parents, Jervis began to take "care" of his younger sister Alice, however he would torment her and try to use his hypnotism to put thoughts into her head (it is strongly implied he has incestuous feelings for her). Alice managed to escape Jervis' clutches and escaped to Gotham City, and he began to develop an obsession in finding her as he loved her deeply in his own sick twisted way. After finding out that monsters had escaped from the Indian Hill facility in Gotham, he believed that Alice was among one of them as she was infected with tainted blood that could bring out a person's deepest darkest desires.
Search for Alice
Jervis arrived in Gotham in which he hosted a hypnotism show at The Sirens nightclub, run by Barbara Kean and Tabitha Galavan. Later in the night he breaks into the home of a couple who attended the show at night and hyponotises the husband to murder his wife, bury her in the garden and then kill himself.
Jervis contacted bounty hunter (and former Gotham City Police Department detective) James Gordon and hired him to track down Alice, leaving out his sinister motivations for wanting her back. After Gordon found out Jervis' true nature, he confronted him at the roof of the Sirens nightclub, in which Jervis put Gordon under hypnosis and planned to have him jump to his death. Alice arrived, armed with a gun, and threatened to shoot her brother dead. Jervis attempted to talk Alice round, which resulted in her firing the gun and narrowly hitting him, forcing him to flee the scene. Alice then saved Gordon from jumping to his death, however he arrested her and brought her into police custody.
Despite Alice being in police custody, Jervis was still determined to get her back, and hypnotised a group of Luchadores known as the The Terrible Tweeds to become his henchman. Jervis led an assault on the precinct, in which he successfully kidnapped Alice from police custody and escaped with two of his henchmen, Dumfree and Deever Tweed. He brought Alice to an abandoned warehouse filled with fairground rides, and began extracting her poisoned blood from her body, and made a threat that if she tried to escape him once again he would poison the water supply in Gotham, which would lead to a mass breakout and driving the population insane.
Gordon and Harvey Bullock arrived to save Alice and got into a shootout with the two Tweeds. Alice attempted to escape Jervis, which resulted in her accidentally falling from a ledge and being impaled to death. A distraught Jervis fled the scene with his henchmen, but not before blaming Gordon that he was responsible for killing her.
Crusade against Gordon and Gotham City
Alice's death removed any little sanity that Jervis had left. He attempted to replace her with another young woman, but in the end slit her throat and killed her, and then planned to make James Gordon and the rest of Gotham City pay for Alice's death.
Jervis kidnapped a newly wedding couple as well as a young boy, and forced Gordon to make a decision as to whether or not to prevent the couple (under hypnosis) from jumping from a ledge to their deaths, or save the boy from being run over by a truck. Gordon saved the boy from being ran over, but the couple jumped to their deaths.
Jervis and the Tweeds kidnapped Gordon's girlfriend Valerie Vale and lured him to the home of his former partner Leslie Thompkins where he held a tea party and continued to blame Gordon for Alice's death. He gave Gordon the decision to choose which one of them Jervis should kill. When Gordon picked Leslie, Jervis believed this meant that he loved Valerie more, and shot her instead, fatally wounding her. Jervis and the Tweeds escaped custody once again, although Valerie managed to recover in hospital, but the incident led to the end of her and Gordon's relationship.
Appearances
Trivia
- Despite the Alice in Wonderland motifs and allusions, there is no actual mention that this incarnation of Jervis Tetch has an obsession with the story.
- Rather than using mind control technology to brainwash his victims like in the comics, Jervis is instead a skilled hypnotist.
