Batman: Fear State Alpha - When Simon Saint Met the Scarecrow
In the Fear State Alpha special, we got a look at the meeting between techno-fascist CEO Simon Saint and Jonathan Crane, the Scarecrow, as the tech magnate attempts to hire the supervillain to traumatise Gotham into being a better society.
It is notable that considering some of the attitudes and behaviours shown by the Tech Right in the years since the Fear State storyline was published, if anything the writer James Tynion IV was underplaying what those guys are like in reality.
Simon Saint is a fascinating villain, who in all honesty is one that I'm glad hasn't appeared again since Tynion's run, as I think that with overuse his impact would he lessened. He was basically a tech CEO who, like Musk and Steve Jobs before him, believed that he was the super-genius he marketed himself as, even though his behaviour was increasingly destructive to the people he assumed would be grateful for his actions in the long term.
The show Pantheon has a similar character based on the same template, Stephen Holstrom, who unlike Jobs and Musk IS the genius his followers believe him to be... which makes his egocentric acts of malice all the worse.
