| “ | Sept. 5, 1976. Sleeping very little now... hear strange noises at night. I know it's the boy, prowling the mansion... he's grown so. Tall, strong. I've come to fear him. Fear some terrible retribution that cunning mind is conjuring for me. Should have left the baby for dead as his grandmother wanted... should of never have tried to raise Jonathan alone... | „ |
| ~ Mary Keeny described her feelings about her grandson Jonathan Crane in her journal. |
| “ | Filth. Sooo like your mother, aren't you? I believe it may be time we paid the chapel a visit, my literary young friend. Kindly dress for the occasion. You know which suit! | „ |
| ~ Mary abusing Jonathan, indirectly starting his obsession with fear. |
Mary Keeny is a minor posthumous antagonist from DC Comics, debuting and only appearing as the posthumous overarching antagonist of the 2005 two-parter miniseries Year One: Batman/Scarecrow, set in the "Post-Crisis / New Earth" continuity of DC Comics.
She was the great-grandmother of Jonathan Crane, also known as Scarecrow, and, incidentally, the cause of his obsession with fear. Taking Jonathan under her wing to not disgrace her family name and to spite her daughter and granddaughter, Mary horribly abused Jonathan for most of his early life, shaping him into one of Batman's most dangerous foes.
What Makes Her Pure Evil?[]
- She is, for starters, the main reason Jonathan Crane became the Scarecrow in the first place, as Mary's horrible treatment towards him led the young Jonathan to grow obsessed with fear and a desire for retribution. Other comic books indicate that Jonathan was inspired to become the Scarecrow by the bullying he endured at the hands of Bo Griggs, Sherry Squires, and their friends at high school, but Mary made his whole life awful from the moment he was born, so all his crimes can be tracked back to her.
- She doesn't seem to love or care for her family. Though the Wall Street Crash ruined the lives of her grandfather and her mother, there's no mention at all if she felt bad for their deaths or not. As for her daughter Marion and her granddaughter Karen, Mary treated them with little to no respect, all because they irresponsibly squandered the already remaining fortune they had.
- Scolded the teenage Karen for getting impregnated by the Gothamite young man Gerald Crane, punishing her by depriving her of any relationship with her son, whom Mary named Jonathan after the boy she never had and raised him at the abandoned Keeny farm while banning Karen from interacting with her child out of pure spite.
- While Marion suggested burying Jonathan alive to not ruin the already disgraced Keeny name, Mary insisted on spareing the infant, but not out of love but in order to vent off her sadistic tendencies.
- Made Jonathan's childhood miserable by forcing him to work in the whithered cornfield under the sun's heat and mosquitoes every day he wasn't at school, banning him from ever trick-or-treating at Halloween under the pretext that it was a holiday for Satan, and belittling him all the time.
- Harshly punished Jonathan every time he did something she disapproved of, like reading James Joyce's work, by locking him into the old family chapel for hours and letting him be attacked by the crows that lived there while she sang outside.
- Worst of all is that, because the crows always attacked him unprovoked, one night Jonathan decided to investigate and found out that the reason the crows relentlessly attacked him every night he was locked in the chapel was because Mary put chemicals, herbs, and the blood of dead rats she squeezed into the tuxedo she always forced him to wear at the chapel, as that mixture could drive the crows insane.
- Due to how the rat's blood leads a flock of crows to sic on the family's scarecrow after Mary places a dead rat there and how Jonathan would later lead one of his bullies to lose one eye by using the same chemicals on him discreetly, this means that Mary endangered Jonathan with being blinded or worse by siccing flocks of rabid crows on him just to "discipline" him.
- Her actions eventually led Jonathan to grow obsessed with fear and plot his revenge, something that Mary noticed in her journal, but rather than expressing remorse over how she screwed up her great-grandson, Mary feels that she should have killed Jonathan when he was just a baby years ago, staying unremorseful to the end.
- Her death by being locked up in the chapel and being killed by the very same flock of crows that she used to attack Jonathan, as disturbing as it sounds, wasn't played for sympathy but as karmic satisfaction, as she died through the same cruel way she employed to torture her ward.
- Her cruel upbringing on Jonathan led him to continue his studies on fear until he was fired from Gotham College, causing Jonathan to become the Scarecrow and create the Fear Gas, intending to use it on anyone he ever felt to have wronged him, including his colleague Professor Pigeon, his father Gerald, his grandmother Marion and his mother Karen. That Mary was hallucinated by Jonathan while trying to kill Batman for interfering with his plans proves how terrible she was raising him.
- She succeeded at spiting her family even in death, as she apparently had the deed to the Keeny family mansion in her hands the night she died (resulting in the deed ending up buried with her corpse), preventing Karen from getting it for her abusive husband Charlie Jarvis to the point she was nearly killed by him.
Trivia[]
- Mary Keeny is the first Pure Evil relative of a version of the Scarecrow who played a pivotal role in his descent into villainy, the second being Jonathan Crane's father, Dr. Crane, of the "New 52 / Prime Earth" continuity.
External Links[]
- Mary Keeny on the Villains Wiki
[]
 Pure Evils
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