Following Suicide Squad, the end of last year saw it announced that Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn would be headlining Gotham City Sirens, to be directed by Squad’s David Ayer. Well know comes a tease on just who may be the true villain of that particular movie…

Clearly it’s nothing definite or official, but Ayer has taken to his Twitter account to post a solitary picture (show below) of none other than Black Mask. With no text or indication of intent from the director, it’s open to interpretation just what, if anything, Ayer meant with this post, although already many a reading into it that this means Black Mask will be involved in Gotham City Sirens, presumably as the film’s ‘big bad’.

The picture itself is taken from the fan favourite Batman: Under the Red Hood arc in which Black Mask is tormented by the presence of the mysterious Red Hood, who takes great and brutal pleasure in clinically stopping any and all involved in Black Mask’s drugs and arms deals. Of course, the Red Hood would ultimately be revealed to be the resurrected former Robin, Jason Todd.

For those not familiar with the Black Mask character, he debuted back in 1985’s Batman #386 as a creation of Doug Moench and Tom Mandrake. As his story got elaborated on, we’d find out that Roman Sionis and his wealthy parents were good friends of the Waynes, meaning he spent a lot of his childhood with Bruce Wayne. With his parents more interested in looking the part and living the high life rather than looking after their son, several nasty accidents involving young Roman were covered up by his parents in order to preserve their reputation. And then, as all good villains do, Roman killed his parents and took over their lucrative cosmetics company. Unfortunately, said company ended up deforming a whole host of women due to botched procedures and products. Ever the (dark) knight in shining armour, Bruce Wayne stepped in to help out his old friend by bailing out the company. Sionis would resent Bruce for this, and it was this that eventually sent him fully off the deep end, smashing up his own father’s coffin and carving himself out a mask from the chaos. It was then that he became the villainous Black Mask, scaling the ranks of Gotham’s underworld and becoming one of its most infamous crime lords. With a hair-trigger temper and a vicious streak a mile wide – just ask poor Stephanie Brown – Black Mask has gone on to become one of Batman’s most notorious rogues over the past few decades, notably appearing in the Arkham Asylum video game franchise and the Under the Red Hood animated movie.

On Gotham City Sirens, very little is known right now bar that Robbie’s Harley Quinn will headline and that the film will feature some of DC’s most famous female characters. At this stage, it seems as if Harleen will be joined by the likes of Catwoman, Poison Ivy and Black Canary amongst other notable females.

As ever, expect more on all of this as it develops.