Batman has never been one to back down from a fight. He's withstood jokesters, puzzlers, and Austrian bodybuilders who have a psychotic obsession with somehow mentioning ice in every sentence. However, Gotham's stability hangs in the balance as The Batman continues to remain absent in the face of an even greater threat. Citizens are blindly attacking one another in the streets like bulls in a red rainscape, screaming about the undeniable power of "truth" and "reasoning". Just who is behind this latest wave of disorder? He goes by many names. These names are mostly defamatory remarks that have a thinly veiled slur slapped on as a suffix. On the nameless anonymous image board known as 4chan (and not 4channel because that’s dedicated to porn/gore,) however, he uses the tripcode “Master Baiter.”
Forget Edward Nashton’s 500 followers, this new threat is so bold that he utilizes a platform that lacks any form of updoots whatsoever, thriving off angry replies alone. His dastardly deeds often involve making statements and performing acts that, in his opinion, “own the libs(?)” Those intrigued by the dark allure of his home base of guys saying the most horrendous shit to one-another with pictures of anime girls follow the alt-right pipeline and end up so lost that they refute the linguistic concept of pronouns. Beware. Be on the lookout for a man sporting a gray morphsuit with a flat, stitched on mouth and punched out eye holes under a pale blue suit beneath fishing gear lest you fall into this trap. Those that understand whatever a gray character with a blank expression means, usually those within or adjacent to his sphere, tend to get pissed off whenever they see him, which is exactly what he’s going for. The Baiter tends to shift his spelling of grey based on whatever bothers people the most too, which falls in line with the sort of logic he employs to justify his villainous attire. “Please, everyone,” Mr. Baiter publicly announced after a riot broke out over his thoughts on the political notions of the sky being blue, “It’s just a costume and they’re just letters. You really need to chill out.” This non sequitur only fueled the fire. He made no such comments when The Batman punctured his chest with his gauntlet’s spikes and The Robin referred to him as “The Masturbator,” however.
Beyond beating him to a pulp, the Dark Knight is seemingly at a loss when it comes to dealing with The Baiter. He started small: leaving dollar bills attached to strings to the wayside, sending letters to former child soldiers questioning if they enjoyed the bloodshed, the usual. When he started leaving callous, inflammatory posters around Gotham smearing the highest grossing film of all time, Morbius, before it even released, that’s when he officially went too far and got the attention of vengeance incarnate. There were no traceable fingerprints due to his morph suit and even once unmasked, he was far too bludgeoned to be recognizable. He kept popping up even after hospitalization, leading many to think that there are multiple Master Baiters who take up the mantle. The greatest detective believes this is an outrageous idea, asking “What’s next, three Jokers?” We’ll have to wait for the dozens of potential explanations portrayed on the big screen to get a clue of just who he is under the mask.
Master Baiter’s supporters, self proclaimed “Baiterbros,” consider his actions justified. “Sure, people will say we live in a society,” Anonymous told Anonymous on a board about The Baiter, “but they’ll still participate in it all the same. He really gets to the heart of the issue.” Many chastised him for parroting a popular political comic. His texting tone would radically alter shortly after and when people started asking questions, there was only one reply: “The line between hero and villain will be broken.” We have ample reason to believe the Living Vampire may be taking care of the situation definitively, something The Batman is too afraid to do.
Depicted above is the last known image of Master Baiter before he got Morb’d.