fallen member of the Bat family. The way that James [Tynion] played Anarky in Detective Comics is he shared a lot of the same goals and motivations with the [Gotham Knights] team, but he's also a guy who has a tendency to run afoul of Batman's beliefs". Characterization Anarky has undergone several shifts in his characterization over the course of the character's existence. These were largely decided upon by Alan Grant, who between the creation of Anarky to the end of the 1999 Anarky series, was largely the sole author of the character. After the departure of Grant and Breyfogle from DC Comics, Anarky's characterization fell to various authors who utilized him thereafter. Description and motivations Lonnie Machin is introduced as a twelve-year-old school boy. An only child, he shares his physical traits of light skin and red hair with both of his parents, Mike and Roxanne Machin, a middle-class family living in Gotham City. The character's age was continuously adjusted over the course of several years; stated to be fourteen during "The Anarky Ultimatum" in Robin Annual #1, it is reestablished as fifteen during the events of the Anarky limited series, and adjusted as 16 the following year during the ongoing series. Grant laconically described Lonnie Machin as "a serious-beyond-his-years teenager who wants to set the world to rights". As the character was based on a theme of ideas, he had initially been given no personal, tragic past, a common motivator in superhero fiction. This was intended to contrast with Batman, who fought crime due to personal tragedy, while Anarky would do so in the name of ideals and beliefs. As the character was further developed, he was also intended to contrast with common teenage superheroes. Referring to the tradition established by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby of saddling teenagers with personal problems, Grant purposely gave Anarky none, nor did he develop a girlfriend or social life for the character. As Grant wrote for the Batman: Anarky introduction, this was intended to convey the idea that Anarky was single-minded in his goals. In one of the earliest explorations of Lonnie Machin's back story in "The Anarky Ultimatum", Grant described Lonnie as a voracious reader, but also of being isolated from peers his own age during his childhood. This was elaborated upon years later in the "Anarky" storyline, which described Lonnie as having lost a childhood friend living in an