The Monstrefact: DC Comics' Killer Croc

of course the Man Bat hybrid man Bat. But I thought we might discuss another famous foe of the caped crusader, Waylon Jones aka Killer Croc. Now, if you grew up on the nineties bat Man animated series like I did, you'll probably remember this guy as a pale, gray, scaly humanoid with big shoulders, sharp teeth, and a skeletal face. He's at home in the waters, especially river and sewer waters,

and he possesses great strength for grappling Batman. This character was created back in nineteen eighty three for the Batman comic by Jerry Conway, Don Newton and gene colan. His original appearance was greener and scalier, and over the years, designs for Killer Crock have only grown more monstrous. In the nineteen eighty three comic debut, he's roughly the size of a large man, but in the two thousand and nine video game Arkham Asylum, he's an absolute ogre that

basically fills an entire prison cell by himself. The original explanation given for Killer Croc's appearance is a skin condition, probably meant to be something from the ichthiosis family of genetic skin conditions that can produce a scale like quality of the skin. Now, I'm not sure how tasteful this ultimately is, and besides, it's hardly an excuse for other aspects of Killer Croc's appearance and character. Plus, to be clear, killer Croc has dinosaur feet and other dinosaur like qualities

in his later appearances. As such, these later incarnations of Killer Croc are often explained as a severe form of atavism, a real life recurrence of a genetic trait typical of an ancestral form. The topic is explored in the excellent book DC Anatomy of a Metahuman by SD Perry and Matthew K. Manning with illustrations by Mean Dole. As the authors point out, a vestigial tail or an extra nipple in human beings is not too uncommon an example of this, but if the affected gene is old enough, a pre

mammalian trait may be expressed in a human being. Some of our genetic pre mammalian traits can be seen in our embryotic development. We see temporary examples of this in the dental playcodes of developing human fetuses, which, according to Petrokova at All in the two thousand and six paper for the Journal of Experimental Zoology, resemble early tooth primordia in reptiles. The human fetus also temporarily develops a tail.

In a twenty nineteen Howard University study identified ancient reptilian limb muscles in human embryos during the early weeks of gestation. More startling, however, is a case reported by Walia at All in a twenty ten edition of the Texas Hart Institute Journal. When a fifty nine year old man sought medical attention concerning chest pains, doctors discovered some surprising myocardial architecture.

Quote Remarkably, the morphology resembled that of the reptilian heart, that is, it featured direct communications to the ventricle cavity and had the sinusodal characteristics of non compacted myocardium. The authors note that this was the second known case of

such a heart in human beings. While the medical curiosity certainly there was certainly nothing monstrous about this, the fictional case of Killer Croc would seem to involve a fantastic exaggeration of reptilian ativism in a human being, and multiple cases of it at bat, impacting various bodily systems and

features a kind of ridiculous atavism jackpot if you will now. Obviously, crocodilian morphology factors into various mythological creatures for various cultures and time periods around the world where crocodiles live or where stories of crocodiles would drift to. Traditions in Egypt, Zambia, and Indonesia involve humans that transform into crocodiles to harm others,

akin to the werewolfs of western lore. So it's likely here that we find the closest thing to Killer Croc outside of comic books, rather than in our own human medical History. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster Fact each week. As always, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.