Who's Killer Moth?

Who's This? Batgirl's original nemesis.

The facts: Killer Moth first appeared in the late Golden Age in Batman #61 (February 1951), in a story by Bill Finger, Dick Sprang, and Lew Sayre Schwartz. This "Earth-2 version" had a couple of appearances, and was 'ported over to Earth-1 continuity in the Silver Age fairly directly in 1967's Detective Comics #359, as the villain who would inspire Barbara Gordon to become the new Batgirl. His fate has often been tied to hers ever since, although he sometimes still fought Batman, especially after Gordon became Oracle (although flashback stories, like Batgirl: Year One, pitted him against Batgirl even in this era). In Underworld Unleashed, he was turned into a creepy mothman called Charaxes, which got him killed in Infinite Crisis. Though he was resurrected in the New52 as a Green Arrow villain, a new Killer Moth would rise in the interim to bug Batman, the Secret Six, and others. It seems that after Rebirth, the original (Earth-1) Killer Moth is back in action in his stripey jammies.
How you could have heard of him: The animated shows have made use of Killer Moth, often in mutated form, including Teen Titans (voiced by Thomas Haden Church), The Batman, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and such fare as Lego Batman (like, who doesn't?). Whether or not you consider the Killer Moth of the Batman '66 TV show (or rather, the unaired 1967 Batgirl pilot) the same character is up to you.
Example story: Detective Comics #486 (November 1979) "Crime Calls Killer Moth!" by Jack C. Harris, Don Heck and Joe Giella

Evidently from the era where Barbara Gordon was a congresswoman, my fascination with DCU geography is already distracting me. Like, where is Gotham City? Consider that New York and D.C. are 226 miles apart. Is that enough for someone to say HUNDREDS of miles? Killer Moth may be hyperbolic - anyone with that costume is probably a big drama queen (I mean, "Crime's Batman"? THIS guy?! - but it still calls attention to itself. Is Gotham not on the East Coast? Could it be on the Great Lakes instead? What were the DC offices thinking at this point in time? Okay, I'll stop before I hurt myself. Annnnnyyyyyyway, he's escaped from his last altercation with Batgirl, and Babs is trying hard to juggle her duties as representative and the whole Killer Moth situation. So a kid from Gotham getting off a bus to ask her help with his father's still unsolved murder (will there be a connection?) is really one ball to keep in the air too many.

But the thing about Killer Moth is that he's "crime's protector". That means he gets a cut from other people's crimes if he helps them out. So as Batgirl intervenes in a robbery, her efforts are stymied by the Moth showing up in his Mothmobile to facilitate an escape.

IS there a Moth-Signal ("they called me", so yes), or could Killer Moth just take the opportunities as they come (like Batman coming across a mugging in an alley)? I suppose he either has a standing deal with many or all crooks in town (it's organized), or he can extort money from criminals who accept his help. Failure on the protection racket (they get caught anyway), but he once again escapes. As it turns out, these are members of the Bolton Gang, as with the previous issue's, so yes, it seems like your organization can subscribe to the service, and naturally, Killer Moth is pissed because Batgirl is sure to hurt his business. Especially once she's had the chance to talk to the kid about his problem and hears him mention a suspect the police were never able to interview, a Mr. Van Cleer, a known alias of Killer Moth's! The kid's dad was a cobbler and had done some work for this Van Cleer, which tells Barbara that maybe the Moth-Signal is hidden in the gang's shoes! One visit to the local jail later and the Moth is getting a call on his beeper.

Of course, the criminal he's helping is Batgirl in a trenchcoat, and she's learned from the last fight that you can't flip a guy with wings, so she quickly smashes him against a car and (to mangle the idiom) smashes him with his own petard.

I didn't realize the Moth-Signal would turn out to be so important when I started questioning it, but since there's a Bat-Signal, it makes sense it would be a thing for Killer Moth, too. He's not the only "evil Batman" analog - the Wrath, Owlman and Cat-Man all fit the bill - and if he didn't have such a silly costume, he might even have been a contender. Still, as a recurring villain for Batgirl to humiliate, I suppose he serves a purpose. But it does diminish Barbara that he's not a more serious threat.

Who's Next? A Blackhawk villain (Nazi).