Batman: The Animated Series just turned 30 (soon it’ll be buying a motorcyle and growing a ponytail)! To celebrate, we asked our staff to share their thoughts about their favorite episode of the groundbreaking, fan-favorite series!
“Joker’s Favor” by Matt Lazorwitz
There’s a particular type of episode of Batman: The Animated Series that I love. They’re stories where Batman is the prime mover, the impetus for the story, but where Batman himself plays a small part. “It’s Never Too Late,” “The Man Who Killed Batman,” “P.O.V.” and “Showdown” come to mind. But of all these, the best is “Joker’s Favor.”
Debuting on September 11th, 1992, this was the Joker’s first appearance on the series. It was a Friday afternoon, and I remember being completely enraptured with the episode. Mark Hamill’s Joker immediately took me in, and the plot of the episode gave him a lot to do.
You see, Charlie Collins was having a bad day. Tough day at work, lousy traffic coming home, and meatloaf waiting for dinner. And when he gets cut off in traffic, well, he catches up to the driver and curses him out (that’s what he says he does, anyway. It’s pretty mild since it’s a kids cartoon after all). However, that driver happens to be the Joker. And when Joker catches up with Charlie, he spares him, but says Charlie owes him a favor.
Flashforward a few years, and Charlie has moved away from Gotham and changed his name. But one day he gets a phone call. Joker is calling in that favor. So Charlie winds up back in Gotham, at a gala dedicated to Jim Gordon, and has to open a door at an appointed time. That’s it. But this is the Joker, so you know there is going to be more to it.
In the end, this episode showcases what makes Joker a great character. He’s a sadist with a wicked sense of humor. He needs to be the center of attention. He always has an elaborate plan. But it’s also the story of this poor schlub (voiced wonderfully by Ed Begley Jr., son of one of the Golden Age of Radio’s great voice actors, Ed Begley) who has been caught in one of those plans. You feel for Charlie, and in the end, when he gets to play one trick on the Joker? It feels earned and is one of my favorite moments in the series.
Oh, and it also marks the first appearance anywhere of a little known character named Harley Quinn. You might have heard of her…
“Over the Edge” by Sean Dillon
What if everything went horribly wrong?
That’s the most thought about question when engaging with fiction. What if the bad guys won? The heroes died pointless deaths? The world went to shit and everyone became worse? There are many stories like that, from The Man in the High Castle to Kingdom Come, but “Over the Edge” will always hold a soft spot in my heart for being my introduction to this style of story.
The premise is straightforward: what if Batman was on the run from the police? The methodology is rather straightforward and, admittedly, drab: Batgirl dies. But at the same time, it’s all the potential fail states of the base concept of Batman: The Animated Series. One of the sidekicks dies, the police are against the heroes, and Bruce Wayne’s identity has been leaked.
It’s a story of a world gone horribly wrong with no escape in sight. A hopeless, bleak story where everyone dies because the world is unfair and actions have consequences. So naturally, it’s all just a dream. There are limitations to what children’s media can do, after all. The goodies have to win by the end, even if it takes forever. For all its darkness, for all its horror, Batman: The Animated Series never forgot it was a work of children’s fiction. And, like the best of children’s fiction, it could take them to the brink without ever once going over the edge.
“Almost Got ‘Im” by Tony Thornley
At first, when we as a staff chatted about this project, I gravitated towards one of the more “important” episodes to the Batman mythos as a whole — “Pretty Poison.” It was an episode that introduced a major rogue to the series — Poison Ivy — and redefined the character for the entire Batman universe. But then I realized that when I bought the series on Blu-Ray back in March of this year, that wasn’t one of the episodes that motivated me to make the purchase. In fact, it wasn’t one I even remembered until I started watching.
No, the episode that got me, and honestly, the one that made me a fan of the series for life, was season 2’s “Almost Got ‘Im.” A series of vignettes told by five of Batman’s greatest villains — some silly, some intense, and one that was still ongoing as the episode unfolded — the episode is probably the piece of Batman media that prevented this avowed Superman fan from disowning the Dark Knight until James Tynion IV made me an actual fan. And honestly, it’s the episode that I watched first upon opening the Blu-ray, and the episode I’ve rewatched multiple times since.
To see these five rogues — Joker, Penguin, Two-Face, Ivy and Killer Croc — debate who came closest to doing Batman in is a delight. I still grin whenever I think of Killer Croc recounting his story with the simple “I threw a rock at him! It was a big rock.” And the third act twist of the Joker’s tale is perhaps one of the strongest villain plots in Batman history, showing that the Joker knows that he doesn’t need to kill the Dark Knight to do him in. He just needs to rip his heart out.
Written by Paul Dini, and featuring some top notch vocal performances from the best of the show’s recurring cast, this is the episode I always think of when I think of Batman: The Animated Series. It’s a perfect encapsulation of the series, and a great episode to serve as an introduction for someone who’s never seen the show before.
This is Batman at his best, and it makes me glad that they only almost got him.
“Beware the Gray Ghost” by Austin Gorton
“Beware the Gray Ghost” is a delight on so many levels. It is, chiefly, about nostalgia — the nostalgia of Bruce Wayne for his favorite childhood character, the Gray Ghost, the nostalgia of the creators for the Batman of their childhoods, the warped nostalgia of the episode’s original-to-the-episode villain (voiced by series creator Bruce Timm) which leads him to carry out copycat bombings.
It’s also a story about pop culture history and how that informs Batman, both via the involvement of Adam West, the 1960s Batman who voices the Gray Ghost, and the way the in-universe character of the Gray Ghost is himself a nod to the kind of pulp heroes like the Shadow who inspired the creation of the real world Batman (just as, in-universe, the Gray Ghost partially inspired Bruce Wayne to become Batman, in a kind of pop culture ouroboros).
West is brilliant in the role. It came at a relative low-point in his career, before the re-estimation of the sixties Batman show underwent its internet-driven reappraisal, before Adam West become a household name to a new generation through his repeated appearances on Family Guy (a little more than two weeks after this episode first aired, Adam West would voice himself on The Simpsons, throwing shade at Michael Keaton’s rubber muscles and wondering why Batman doesn’t dance anymore, all to the increasing horror of Homer, Bart and Lisa). He brings both a quiet sadness and a simmering rage to has-been actor Simon Trent and his inability to escape the shadow of his most (only?) famous role. It’s impossible not to feel the pathos West is bringing to the role. He also gets to carry out a character arc for Trent, transforming the character from a bitter misanthrope at the start of the episode to someone at peace with the impact of the role he can’t escape, no small feat for West or the script.
“Beware the Gray Ghost” is also a story about the power of stories, their ability to connect with us and connect us to other people. Bruce’s Batman identity is clearly meant to be seen as an emulation of the Gray Ghost, his childhood hero. But my favorite detail in that regard is a small one. Whenever we see flashbacks to Bruce as a child watching “The Gray Ghost”, his father is always there in the background. He is reading the paper, and is present mostly to remind young Bruce that bedtime follows the conclusion of the show. He doesn’t really need to be there, plot-wise. We’d get the overall point — the Gray Ghost was Bruce’s childhood hero — without his presence.
But having Thomas Wayne in those flashbacks connects him to Batman through the Gray Ghost. Just as Batman is an attempt by Bruce to execute the values imparted to him by his father, his choice to do so via a flamboyant costumed identity inspired by the costumed hero whose adventures they both shared together in a happier time further connects the two men via Batman.
In this way, putting on the costume and becoming Batman is another way for Bruce to remember his father, via a connection forged by the power of the stories they shared together.
Batman: The Animated Series, A Retrospective by Matt Lazorwitz
This guest editorial first appeared in the weekly ComicsXF newsletter (subscribe here if you’re not already!), but is being reprinted here for your enjoyment as it speaks to the spirit of the piece.
Picture it: Union, New Jersey, Sept. 5, 1992.
An 11-year-old Matt Lazorwitz is sitting on the carpet of his living room on Saturday morning, a little closer to the TV than usual. His little brothers, 7 and 2 years old, are making a lot of noise in the background, but he barely notices. What he does notice, what he is enraptured by, are the first strains of the theme music to the new cartoon he has been waiting to see. The one he read a big feature about in Wizard magazine a few weeks prior: Batman: The Animated Series. And by the end of that episode, “The Cat & The Claw: Part 1,” he knew this was something special.
This week marks the 30th anniversary of the launch of the series that is, to me, the platonic ideal of Batman. In case anyone out there hasn’t read any of my Batman articles, listened to any of my Batman podcasts or seen my Staff Picks in the newsletter that are 50% Batman books (and only that small a percentage because I actively try to pick non-Batman stuff on the regular), I am a huge Batman fan. And a lot of that is because of Batman: The Animated Series.
The cartoon takes decades of continuity, of timelines and reboots, and cherrypicks the best parts of it. We get new characters and slightly different versions of established ones that make their way into comics continuity. And we get an animation style that sets the gold standard for superhero cartoons moving forward.
I’ve started and stopped this editorial a few times, backing over what I was writing to come at it from a different angle, because it’s hard to do the show justice. Even if we were just talking about the things the show did for the comics, it would be hugely important. Batman: The Animated Series introduced Renee Montoya. It turned Mr. Freeze from a generic cold-themed villain into the tragic figure he is now. It helped further develop Poison Ivy from the maneater stereotype of the ’80s into an eco-warrior. And most importantly, it gave viewers the most popular character DC Comics or any adjacent entity has created in those 30 years: Harley Quinn.
But there is so much more to the show than that. B:TAS never talked down to its audience. Episodes like “It’s Never Too Late” and “P.O.V.” did something that no other animated series aired for kids at the time did: They focused not on costumed people but on the everyday cops and crooks of Gotham. The series used Leslie Thompkins, a character whose whole purpose (when used correctly) is to talk about why violence isn’t the solution, something often preached in kids’ cartoons right before the punching starts. And it showed a complex Bruce Wayne, one who is somewhere between the campy Adam West of the ’60s and the barely controlled madman of the Tim Burton films.
The importance of the look of the series can also not be understated. The lush, art deco style was nothing like the stiff animation of Super Friends and other superhero animation that predated it. This was the height of the Warner Bros. animation renaissance, and we got animation that moved, flowed and gave a sense of life to a Gotham that we had never seen before. And these designs can’t be beaten; no wonder all Mr. Freezes will be measured against Mike Mignola’s design.
The final element, and the one that might be even more definitive, is the voice cast. Handpicked by the legendary Andrea Romano, I can think of no more definitive a voice cast in animation. Kevin Conroy has never stopped being Batman, nor has Mark Hammil stopped being the Joker. When I’m reading comics, I almost always hear the characters in the voices of the cast of this show.
That’s a lot of gushing, I admit. I have spent so much of my life reading, watching and talking about Batman. But I think, in my heart of hearts, I’m still 11 years old, sitting on the floor of that living room, and listening to that theme music play. Here’s to another 30 years.
Sean Dillon
Austin Gorton also reviews older issues of X-Men at the Real Gentlemen of Leisure website, co-hosts the A Very Special episode podcast, and likes Star Wars. He lives outside Minneapolis, where sometimes, it is not cold. Follow him on Twitter @AustinGorton
Matt Lazorwitz read his first comic at the age of five. It was Who's Who in the DC Universe #2, featuring characters whose names begin with B, which explains so much about his Batman obsession. He writes about comics he loves, and co-hosts the creator interview podcast WMQ&A with Dan Grote.
Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist, and all around awesome guy. He’s also very humble.
