Mad Hatter

## Tarrant Hightopp

### First Adventures

On her first visit to Wonderland in 1865, Alice Liddell met the Hatter. The Hatter explained to Alice that he, the March Hare, and the Dormouse were always having tea because when he tried to sing for the foul-tempered Queen of Hearts, she sentenced him to death for "murdering the time", but he escapes decapitation. Soon after this, the three were visited by Time, who according to Hatter is a "He". Time asked for Alice, who the three had not met yet. They infuriated Time enough for him to imprison the three until Alice arrived, keeping them stuck at 18:00 (or 6:00 pm).

When Alice arrived at the tea party, the Hatter switched places on the table at any given time, making short, personal remarks, asking unanswerable riddles and reciting nonsensical poetry, all of which eventually drove Alice away. The Hatter was seen again as a witness at the Knave of Hearts' trial, where the Queen appeared to recognize him as the singer she sentenced to death, and the King of Hearts also cautioned him not to be nervous or he will have him "executed on the spot".

Alice also met the Hatter and the Hare during her visit to Looking Glass Land, albeit briefly in a crowd. This incident occurred when Alice was 6 years old.

### Hatter Madigan

Unknown to her, Alice's trips to Wonderland created a counterpart to her in that realm which went by "Alyss". Alyss' memory was ruled by imagination and was the source of all imagination for all other worlds. Wonderland featured a class system similar to that seen in England during the 17th century, though on a far more minimalist scale. The government was a Queendom with an advising Parliament dominated by a playing card based hierarchy, with the Heart family at the top of the proverbial stack (i.e. the Wonderland Queen is a member of the Heart family, and the parliament is composed of reigning members of the Spades, Clubs, and Diamonds). Females were the dominant sex in Wonderland, as the ruling families were matriarchies.

Wonderland, ruled by Queen Genevieve Heart, was still recovering from a bloody civil war between "White" and "Black" Imagination which ended twelve years prior. Enough time had passed for those in the middle echelons of government to forget the day-to-day horrors of war and focus once more on the petty intrigues of a land at peace. Alyss turned seven years old while in Wonderland.The Hatter was working as a bodyguard and had taken the alias of(or due to his insanity decided that his new name was) Hatter Madigan.

During a bloody *coup d'état* led by Alyss' murderous Aunt Redd, the enemy of White Imagination, Alyss was forced to flee Wonderland in the company of Hatter Madigan, with Redd's top feline assassin (called only "The Cat") in pursuit. Queen Genevieve and Redd clash against one another in a final battle as Alyss barely managed to escape from the palace; Genevieve was killed by Redd.

The two fugitives, Hatter and Alyss, entered an inter-dimensional gateway called the Pool of Tears, from which they emerged into Earth through an exit portal: a puddle. Alyss was separated from Hatter during the journey and she arrived in London, England, and Hatter in Paris, France. Lost and alone, Alyss spent some time with street orphans, then found herself adopted by the Liddell family, possibly due to the resemblance to the daughter that had left their care after her trip to the Mirror caused he internal organs to reverse and she now remained in Wonderland to survive. Alyss was given the name "Odd Alice" for her tales about Wonderland and the way she insisted her name be spelled. In absence of the original Alice, Dodgson approached Alyss with his manuscript for *Alice's Adventures Underground.* This caused Alyss to shun her imagination and resolves to believe Wonderland false and lost to her forever.

Meanwhile, Hatter was searching every corner of the world to find the lost princess "Alyss". Believing that men dealing in headwear were men to be trusted above all others, he stopped in every hat shop he could, inquiring the whereabouts of Princess Alyss Heart. Along his search he also trailed people alight with the glow of White Imagination, knowing that Alyss would most likely glow the brightest. In the process, he becomes a mystery to people on Earth, who caught glimpses of him and created legends of a blade-wielding man on a strange quest leading him to headwear merchants around the world. Hatter discovered Alyss and through a meeting with Alice's adopted sister, Alice, now had a chance to return to Wonderland, but chose against it, choosing to remain in the human world where it was safe while the Hatter returned to Wonderland to aid in the fighting against the Red Queen. Both Alice and Alyss moved back into the world. Unfortunately, while Alice was seven, a fire started in her house, killing her family. While Alyss survived, in the moment she believed she would die, she transferred the ability to alter the world to Alice before her apparent death. Alice was not aware of Alyss's survival and attempted suicide, being sent to an Insane Asylum. Alice's mental breakdown warped Wonderland into a dark corrupted form of itself and the Mad Hatter was not immune, becoming a monster which Alice would be forced to decapitate, though be unable to kill upon returning to Wonderland when she was 17.

In 1875, Alice was 19 years old. She experienced another return to the transformed Wonderland. this encounter allowed her to discover her sister's killer and the doctor that truly caused the fire that killed her family. Afterwards Wonderland and its inhabitants were restored to normal(or some semblance of normal). However,this experience proved traumatic and Alice would mentally forget the entire thing. She would later be adopted by the Kingsleigh.

When Alice did return at the same age. The Hatter was one of the few to recognize her. The Hatter took Alice toward the White Queen's castle and related the terror of the Red Queen's reign while commenting that Alice was not the same as she once was. The Hatter subsequently helped Alice avoid capture by the Red Queen's guards by allowing himself to be seized instead. He was later saved from execution by the Cheshire Cat and called for rebellion against the Red Queen. The rebellion was successful and the Red Queen exiled. The Mad Hatter then decided it was time to retrieve Princess Alyss Heart with the threat on her life subsided.

In 1876, Hatter found Dodgson's book; he used this to track down the author, and in turn, find Alyss, who was now twenty years of age. Upon arrival in Oxford, Hatter discovered that the princess was to marry to Prince Leopold, youngest son of Queen Victoria in order to cement an alliance between England and Wonderland. Before Hatter was able to rescue the princess, he was unexpectedly wounded and driven back to Wonderland. Dodge himself went into the Pool of Tears, and rescues Alyss. Alyss, and the Hatter returned to Wonderland. Despite the Queen's exile, her forced had continued fighting, though Alyss's return garnered enough morale for her to be defeated once more and Alyss to be crowned Queen.

In 1878, The Hatter fell into a depression when he discovered an item belonging to his family and fell into a depression, since he had now become the bearer of Imagination after Alyss relinquished the role, this was extremely dangerous and threatened to alter Wonderland into a dark realm. Alice Kingsleigh was able to discover his family was indeed still alive but imprisoned, this was after an encounter with Wonderland's native Master of Time.

### Hatter

A Different Hatter, possibly a relative of the original, was encountered by Alice Hamilton in 2009. This Hatter was a smuggler who started off working as a double agent for the Queen of Hearts and the Wonderland Resistance. Over time and by aiding Alice, he began to side more and more with the Resistance, and ended up falling in love with Alice as he helped her along the way. He ended up staying with Alice in the Human world.

## Jervis Tetch

While growing up, Jervis Tetch never had any friends, due to his appearance. In his adulthood, he became a neuroscientist, and at some point moves into a boarding house owned by Ella Littleton. There he befriended Ella's daughter, Connie, and her friends in her junior high school computer club, sometimes helping them with their projects. A few years later, when Connie was in high school, she became pregnant. Fearing the reaction of her extremely strict mother, Connie lied to her and claimed she had been raped by someone on her high school's baseball team, the Gotham Hawks. Ella, in turn, approached Tetch for help and convinced him that the Gotham Hawks were "bad kids". Tetch agreed to use his mind control technology on a member of the team, making him use a pipe bomb to kill the other players. Although this is Tetch's first known criminal act, his involvement in the locker room bombing would not be discovered until years later.

## Toon Version

A Toon version of the Hatter exists. He is a frequent guest at Mickey's *House of Mouse* and an acquaintance to the Toon Bonkers.