Anarky

19 years ago - Lonnie Machin is born.

16 years ago - 3-year-old Lonnie begins reading at an advanced level.

7 years ago - 12-year-old Lonnie first develops the ideological belief that will lead to the Anarky identity & starts developing the tools he will use.

4 years ago - 15-year-old Lonnie first begins campaigning as Anarky, bringing him into conflict with Tim Drake.

2 years ago - 17-year-old Lonnie works alongside Tim Drake for the first time, despite being ideologically opposed.

1 year ago - 18-year-old Lonnie goes to college but is far too smart to be challenged there. He begins refining the Anarky identity from entirely socialist & populist to incorporate neo-tech, rationalist, atheist & free-market based thought.

now - 19-year-old Lonnie comes into conflict with Tim Drake while he is tracking Bruce Wayne. Neither are victorious, but they part ways acknowledging that they are both evolving.

The character of Anarky was exceptionally popular in the early 90's. He was the creation of writer Alan Grant, who was deliberately injecting the character with his own anarchist philosophy. There's already been a lot said about the political, philosophical, and sociological themes at play in the character. He's been presented both as a villain and an anti-hero, and by pitting that character against Batman you could continuously test the his ideological underpinnings, which is exactly what you need for the best Batman stories.

The innovation in the creation of Anarky as a basic storyelling concept is pretty hard to match, but he was also a unique idea simply as a character; There's absolutely a legacy of characters that are self-taught geniuses in comics, and of teenage heroes. But to have a character that is based so heavily in his own genius develop completely on his own with no mentor character is actually pretty groundbreaking concept. Grant has confirmed that at the time he was concieving the character of Lonnie Machin he had it in his head that the teenage anarchist might actually be a potential replacement for the deceased Jason Todd. It was never actually part of his character concept that he was a potential Robin, but you certainly have to admire the audacity of the concepts at play with Anarky. He had the potential to be so many things, and actually managed to deliver on them.

Anarky was so popular he actually had his own ongoing series briefly, but over time the concept was picked up by other writers, and while there is an immediate rush of possibility to the character's concept, it also gets diluted if you try to expand on it too much. Other characters took over the role of Anarky from Lonnie, while he went on to fulfill other parts of the story as the various narratives dictated. Anarky is one of the few characters with no real MISTAKES in his history, just a slow disassembling of the core concept.

Anarky was used several times as foil for Tim Drake, and we immediately latched on to that idea as the perfect outlet for the character to really shine. Tim functions as a very intellectual take on the Batman mythos, and the two characters operate as excellent opposed counterpoints to each other. Alan Grant actually expanded on some of the ideological concepts of the character over the years, and we've incorporated that growth into the character, allowing that Lonnie would also expand his beliefs over time, and continue to evolve. To that end, we actually imagine that his appearance would shift as well. The original V for Vendetta inspired costume was re-imagined in the Batman Arkham series with a more anarchist/protester visual, and it seems like that might actually fit an older, evolving version of the character.