Comics

Real Life Russian Batman Cleaning Up Moscow

About a month ago ¹ , a Russian vigilante wearing a Batman costume declared war on drug dealers doing business in the Khimki area outside Moscow. So far, he claims to have captured around 40 criminals and closed a number of illegal drug labs.

It all started at the beginning of June, when a taxi driver witnessed a man dressed as Batman entering a building that later proved to be a drug den, in the middle of the night. He told police that he soon started hearing people screaming and things being thrown around inside. The mysterious man then walked out, threw some sort of fire bomb at the ground and disappeared into the night. A few minutes later, law enforcement arrived at the scene, entered the building and walked out with two men in handcuffs, purportedly drug dealers. The witness, identified only as Slava, said the men were beat up pretty badly. Slava shot about seven seconds of video of the Moscow Batman emerging from the building and dropping a flare on the ground as he left the scene.

The masked vigilante, who wears a Batman costume, calls himself “Jnec Grim Reaper”. He’s not the first real life superhero (see our coverage of Seattle’s local hero, Phoenix Jones), but he’s been busy. Just like his comic book counterpart, the Russian Batman has been beating up drug dealers at night and leaving them behind for police to collect.

In a letter to a local newspaper, which he also sent to the local police, the man has asked police to help him “root out evil” by sending him tips via Twitter – @JnecReaper. “You don’t know me, and it is unlikely you have heard about me,” Reaper writes in his letter. “I call myself Reaper, and for the past six months I have been struggling with the disease that has long been plaguing our society – crime. I fight drug dealers, rapists, and gangs. I don’t kill or cripple, and I am not against the police or authorities, but I do root out the evil that police and the authorities can’t reach.”

We find it interesting that this local paper saw fit to publish the Twitter account, as well as the letter. Perhaps this is the Batman that Moscow deserves after all.

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¹ This article originally appeared on this site in July of 2016, when we were still called Krypton Radio. – ed.

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