Batman: The Animated Series- 25 Years Later

Last Tuesday marked the 25th anniversary of the premiere of my favorite animated series of all time, which should surprise no one to be Batman: The Animated Series. And while I didn't have time to get up a post on that day, I decided to hold it back until today, as today marks the 25th anniversary of one of my personal favorite episodes, "Joker's Favor," the episode that introduced one of the series most enduring legacies: Harley Quinn. So today, we say happy birthday to Harley, and we look back on 25 years of the animated series that changed the way people looked at "kids" cartoons, and specifically how it helped foster the already growing devotion of one pre-teen to all things Batman.

I remember the first time I read anything about the upcoming Batman cartoon. In those long ago pre-internet days, you got your comics news on paper, from various periodicals, and the one that had a big feature on the upcoming cartoon was the tenth or twelfth issue of Wizard magazine (it was 25 years ago, cut a guy come slack on not remembering the exact issue number). This was back before Wizard became the slick, glossy embodiment of everything good and ill in comics in the 90s, and was more a price guide with some articles. I remember walking home from a news stand, and stopping dead as I looked at the character models sheets that were published in the magazine: this was a style that wasn't a super slick and "realistic" as comics in the 90s, but was stylized and different, but very cool. I wasn't in love with the clearly Batman Returns inspired Penguin, but everyone else looked great! I liked Batman's costume which was grey and dark blue, something between the classic version from comics of the past twenty years, which had a lighter blue, and the black costume of the Burton films. I even recognized the names of some of the voice actors, although I didn't know this Kevin Conroy who was voicing Batman, or Tim Curry, who was voicing Joker.

The series premiered on a special Saturday morning showing, as the cartoon would normally run Monday through Friday at 4:30 on Fox, back when cartoons were aired on Fox and the WB (or just syndicated Channel 11 before the WB was a thing). That first week, from September 5th through September 12th of 1992, there were actually going to be eight days with eight episodes running, including a primetime, seven o'clock airing on Sunday! This was the kind of buzz you didn't get around a cartoon back in the 90s.

That Saturday morning, I can actually remember sitting down on the floor, closer to the TV than I usually would because I didn't want to miss a moment or a word, and Saturday mornings were primetime for screaming two and seven year old brothers. And when that opening sequence began, with its action and explosions, its mobsters and Batman, it's shadows and substance, I was drawn in entirely. The first episode to air was not the pilot, but "The Cat and the Claw Part 1," probably to capitalize on Catwoman's popularity after the previous summer's Batman Returns, and I was surprised to see a story much closer to what I was just starting to read in the comics than to the still syndicated Batman 1966 TV series: terrorists stealing a chemical weapon, a Catwoman who was sympathetic, and a Batman whose voice was like something out of a dream; immediately I knew that Kevin Conroy was THE voice of Batman.

I'm not going to bore you with a rundown of every episode of the series, but I will say that first week showed exactly what this series could do. "The Cat and the Claw" (part 2 aired the following Saturday morning, wrapping up the initial eight day run) was an action story, akin to classic movie serials, but the rest of the episodes were different. The true pilot, "On Leather Wings" aired on Sunday, and debuted Man-Bat. It was a horror story, with a bat monster, and was truly beautiful to watch; I dare you to look at it and not think it could have been animated today.

Monday's episode was "Heart of Ice," the debut of the animated series Mr. Freeze, whose Mike Mignola redesigned armor is still the gold standard for Mr. Freeze looks today, and more than that, it's a true tragedy, about a good man driven by love to extreme lengths, and the pain he feels at his loss, a story that redefined Mr. Freeze completely. Tuesday and Wednesday was a two part story that introduced Clayface, creating a version of the character with the same name as the second comic book Clayface and a background with similarities to the first, but twists all the animated series own.

Thursday was a complete curveball, an episode entitled "It's Never Too Late," with no supervillains at all, but featuring mobsters! And not funny mobsters, but serious, gun toting mobsters. I remember watching this with a friend who kept waiting for some costumed crook to show up, but I loved it. The episode had heart and pathos, about an old mob boss who was given one last chance to get out of the life. I don't think anything shown in an animated block before had ever strayed so far from the typical toy cartoon model of the 80s so far.

And finally, Friday, came the day I was waiting for: the introduction of the Joker, my favorite Batman villain, to this new version of the Batman mythos. I linked to a piece up above where I wrote about this episode in detail, so I won't go into that here, but other than featuring the story of an everyman trapped between the Joker and Batman, and introducing Harley Quinn, it featured the debut of a voice actor whose Joker would go on to define that character as much as Conroy would define Batman: not Tim Curry, as I had read in that first article, but Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill. It was a perfect week to start off this series, showing it's range, from comedic to tragic, and it's style.

Over the course of 85 episodes, Batman: The Animated Series would introduce most of the great villains and supporting characters of the Batman mythos. We would see the TV/film debuts of villains like Two-Face, Ra's al Ghul, Bane, and supporting characters like Harvey Bullock and Leslie Tompkins, characters who are major parts of the pop culture landscape of Batman now. Not only would we get the surprise superstardom of Harley Quinn, but Renee Montoya was created for the cartoon as well (although she would appear in the comics first due to the longer lead time for animation). And while original characters Lock-Up, Baby Doll, and Roxy Rocket aren't household names, they are still interesting characters, and I personally think Roxy Rocket is one really good story away from being a big hit.

Not every episode was perfect, but give me one series where that is true. What you got though, was a vision. A vision of what Batman can be. I was talking on Thursday to a friend, and we were discussing how there is no platonic ideal of what Batman (or any character who has existed in the public mind for so long) is; everyone has their own interpretation as a creator, and fans gravitate toward one or the other, or create their own head canon. For me, my choice for the platonic ideal of Batman is Batman: The Animated Series. It is a dark knight who is not a psychopath or a fascist. It's a Batman who cares, who exists in this nebulous Gotham City that is somewhere between the 1940s and the now. It's villains are bright or dark, and sometimes both, but aren't a joke. It synthesized aspects from all the previous 50 plus years of Batman into a streamlined, easy to comprehend version of the character that never spoke down to its audience and made them think about right and wrong. It's a world of fleshed out characters like nothing that existed in children's animation before.

That legacy is key to this series. Not only would the rest of the DC Animated Universe not exist, as The New Batman Adventures, Superman: The Animated Series, Justice League/Justice League Unlimited, Static Shock, and Batman Beyond all followed directly on the heals of Bruce Timm's style and vision, but do you think Disney would have been comfortable enough to let Greg Weisman craft his dark fairy tale Gargoyles without precedent for smart kid's TV? Or Fox would have let the X-Men animated series, which appeared about two months after Batman: The Animated Series appeared, push the envelope with some of its darker themes? And series like Avatar: The Last Airbender, Samurai Jack, and other modern action classics all owe a little something to the first show that tried to be more than just a 22 minute toy commercial. This was trailblazing work, this was something different, and something that happens once in a generation.

I mentioned the series that followed in the same universe as Batman: The Animated Series as key to its legacy, but there are other places where the series reached. "Mad Love," Paul Dini and Bruce Timm's one shot comic revealing the origin of Harley Quinn, won an Eisner Award. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, the feature film that was set in the same world and crafted by the same creators, is a lost gem, and was recently released on Blu-Ray if you haven't seen it, or haven't seen in in a while. DC Direct is in the process of releasing a shockingly comprehensive line of action figures based on all these designs, Funko just released it's second wave of Pop! figures inspired by the series, and both a card game and a dice game were released this year with Batman: The Animated Series themes. And just a few weeks ago, Batman & Harley Quinn, a new animated movie featuring art style and many of the voices of the original series, was released, showing that there's still interest (it's a lot of fun, by the way, and you should check it out).

So, twenty-five years later, where am I? In my heart of hearts, I'm still an 11 year old, sitting on the carpet in front of my family's TV in the living room, listening to those first strains of the theme to Batman: The Animated Series. It still sweeps me away to away to a world of dark heroes and villainous clowns, a world that might not be as black-and-white as the other cartoons that I had loved to this point. It's animation, it's stories, everything about it was something that redefined the way superhero cartoons were looked at, and I'm grateful every time I see a new cartoon that is action and story packed, that these creators made something as special as Batman: The Animated Series.

Why I Love Tim Drake

Tim Drake has been all over the comic book news sites this week. I'm not going to talk about the details of why right here, just to make sure everyone who doesn't want to be spoiled has a chance to read the issue that's causing the furor. I'm just going to make a short post today about who Tim Drake is as a character and why he's not only my favorite Robin, but one of my ten favorite comic characters ever.

I started reading comic officially (or as official as you can get) with Batman #445. Tim Drake made his first appearance in costume in Batman #442 (although he would be out of costume, simply training, and wouldn't get his own until issue 457). So first and foremost, I grew up with Tim. Now, Tim is lucky that he's perpetually stuck at an age between 16 and 18, while I have continued to grow sadly older, but I don't hold that against him. There's something about that character, a character who was new when you were just starting out as a fan, that you latch onto and connect with. That's, frankly, why sidekicks were created, to give readers an entry point for these stories about adults.

But more than just our relative newness, the thing that made Tim Drake great is he was a good kid who got into superheroing because it was the right thing to do. Ultimately, all of the many tragedies that Tim would encounter over the years took place after he took up the mantle of Robin; I'll discuss the changes made in the New 52 and why I feel they detract from Tim as a character later. Tim wasn't an orphan (although he was a rich kid with absentee parents which I doubt many readers had), he didn't have a reason to become Robin except he felt like Batman needed a Robin and Gotham and the world needed a Batman. Tim, like one of my other favorite sidekicks made good, Wally West, was basically a fanboy who got to live the dream: he got to partner with his favorite hero. And who amongst us in fandom wouldn't like that?

The other thing that made me love Tim Drake initially was that he was a brain. He had figured out Batman and Robin's identities using his natural deductive skills. Tim's first solo mission isn't a Robin mission, but is Tim trying to use his computer and detective skills to try to find a hacker called Moneyspider, who turns out to be the Batman villain Anarky, a teenage villain, who would go on to be one of Tim's nemeses. Tim was naturally more physically capable than most of the readers, but he wasn't a kid acrobat like Dick Grayson; there's a great moment in Robin #10, a Zero Hour crossover where Tim briefly meets a time displaced teenage Dick Grayson, where Tim marvels at Dick's acrobatic skills and doesn't think he'll ever be able to live up to them. And that was fine, because Tim was the smartest of the Robins, the best detective of the lot. And for readers who love Batman because he's the smartest guy in the room, that made Tim the ideal Robin.

After finally taking on the name of Robin, Tim would develop his own rogues gallery and supporting cast as he starred in first three mini-series and then an ongoing series that lasted for well over one hundred issues. Tim would fight the blind martial artist and gang leader King Snake, his lieutenant, Lynx, and their street gang, the Ghost Dragons; the aforementioned Anarky, the teen anarchist; Ulysses Hadrian Arstrong, the teen strategic genius known as The General. The characters around him included his dad, Jack Drake and step mom Dana, his geeky best friend Ives, his first girlfriend, Ariana, and his on again/off again main squeeze, Spoiler. That's not to mention his friendship with other heroes as a member of the teams Young Justice and Teen Titans, and of course his regular team-ups with Batman and the other members of the Batman family. There is a wonderful issue of Nightwing, issue twenty-five, "The Boys," that really looks into the brotherly relationship between Tim and Dick Grayson. This was a richer life as a character than either of the previous Robins had while they were Robin, and made Tim a much more interesting character,

Eventually, when a new Robin needed to come along, in this case Bruce's son Damian. He was a very different character than Tim. While Tim was an everyman sort of sidekick, Damian was completely unique and uncommon: while Tim was a fanboy, Damian had been trained since birth to be a deadly assassin. And when the time came for Tim to take up his new identity as Red Robin, the first storyline in his series reaffirmed his status as the number one Batman fan: he was the only one who believed that Bruce Wayne had not died in battle with Darkseid in Final Crisis, and he went out to find him. There's a wonderful meta-commentary there about how the hero who started out as a fan would be the one who would persevere through apparent death to believe wholeheartedly that the hero he idolized would still be alive.

But with the introduction of Damian, Tim was a little at ends as a character. Dick Grayson was able to take up the Nightwing identity when Jason Todd came along and became Robin, but Tim had a second hand new identity; Red Robin was Dick Grayson from an alternate future, whose identity had been briefly co-opted by Jason Todd before Tim took it. His last ongoing series, the Red Robin ongoing, was cut short by the New 52 reboot of DC Comics, with Tim in a very dark place. And I was hopeful that the reboot would give Tim a fresh start and make him the fun, young hero he was at his beginning.

Alas, this was not to be. The Tim Drake of the Teen Titans series from the New 52 bore only a passing resemblance to his previous incarnation. He had never been Robin and wasn't even really named Tim Drake; that was a name he took when he came to work with Batman. He was suddenly a gymnastic savant, and had a tragic backstory, where his own carelessness had forced his parents into witness protection. And most keenly felt, he no longer had any real emotional ties to Batman and Nightwing. Batman had been a foster father to him, and Nightwing the coolest big brother you could imagine pre-New 52. Now, Tim kept them at arms length and always had; and while he was part of their family, he wasn't close with them. He did suddenly become close friends with Jason Todd, Red Hood, who had repeatedly tried to kill Tim in the old continuity, which did more to help further Jason's redemption than did anything for Tim as a character. And the greatest of indignities: while Tim did still figure out Batman's identity, so did Dick Grayson, using pretty much the same methodology Tim did in the old continuity, taking away yet another thing that made Tim unique.

I don't necessarily lay all of this on the heads of the creators of those titles. Tim has been a historically difficult character to handle when taken out of his specific point of introduction. The Tim Drake in Batman: The Animated Series is much more Jason Todd than Tim Drake, as he has Jason's origin and doesn't have Tim's intellect; he basically has Tim's good nature grafted on to Jason to make him less of a jerk. The Tim in the Batman: Arkham games is a little better, but is still more of a roughneck than Tim is.  Young Justice got it closest to right; while it gave Tim's hacker skills to Dick Grayson initially, when Tim himself appeared, he was the quiet, smart member of the younger generation of heroes.

So where did that leave Tim? Well, in the past year and change, thing have gotten better for him. Batman and Robin Eternal, the weekly Batman mini-series that focused on the various Robins and other Bat family members working together in a globetrotting adventure during the brief period of time where Bruce had no memory of being Batman, did a great job of re-establishing Tim's relationship with the other member of Batman's family, and the arc of Detective Comics that wrapped this week played on all of Tim's best traits: his intellect, how well he works with others, and how much he cares about people. It got everything right, and made Tim feel like Tim again, and that Tim is a character that readers will keep hoping to see more of.

Hope in Crime Alley: The Importance of Leslie Thompkins

Superhero comics have a language of violence in them that is implicit, if not explicit. Heroes fight villains. There's punching, kicking, shooting, bataranging, webbing, and blasting. It's been part of the lexicon since the formation of the genre. And I've been thinking a lot about violence this past week. Gun violence in particular, but also the fictional worlds I love, the violence in them, and their relationship to the real world. And of course there are no easy answers to any of the questions I've read or I've posed to myself, and I would feel strange writing some paean to better fiction worlds in the face of reality. But when I was thinking about a world that could be a better one, and how that interacts with reality and fiction, I thought about a character from the Batman mythos. Leslie Thompkins isn't exactly an obscure character, but she isn't a top billed one either; she's never been in a movie, and the incarnation of the character on television right now is about as far removed from the actual character in the comics as possible. But I wanted to write about Leslie today, about her history, and about why she's such an important character not just for Batman, but for superhero comics in general.

Leslie Thompkins made her first appearance in Detective Comics #457 from 1975, in a story entitled, "There is No Hope in Crime Alley!" Written by Denny O'Neil, one of the greatest of all Batman writers, and with art by Dick Giordano, this story establishes a bit of continuity that has been played on many times since, that Batman visits the alley where his parents were killed on the anniversary of their death. It also added another wrinkle. After his parents' death, a social worker came to the crime scene and talked to Bruce, and held him, and did her best to comfort him. This little bit of light in that darkest of days for Bruce came from Leslie Thompkins, who appears in that story as a little old lady. one who comes to the alley herself every year to remember the tragedy she witnessed, the one she spent her life working to help make sure never happened again.

Right from the start, Leslie takes the violence she witnessed and went in the complete opposite direction as Bruce did. She does her best to help people to prevent tragedies. And when Batman finds her being mugged in Crime Alley, and begins to savagely beat the mugger, Leslie tells him to stop, and condemns his rage. It's a ten page story, beautiful and perfect. It appeared in the excellently curated collection, The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told, that came out in 1988, which is where I first encountered it. At the time, Leslie was a footnote in Batman history, but the story impacted me enough that Leslie being at the Wayne's murder became part of my personal head canon, and my affection for the character was not alone, as I soon discovered.

Leslie only appeared twice more in the course of the next twelve years, once in another O'Neil penned story about Batman returning to Crime Alley on the anniversary of his parents' death, "The Curse of Crime Alley," which also introduced C-List Bat-villain Maxie Zeus, and once in "The Player on the Other Side," Batman Special #1, Mike W. Barr's introduction of The Wrath, one of the earliest anti-Bats. And while O'Neil introduced Leslie, and established the baseline of her personality, it's Barr who would take the character in new directions.

I've written a feature about Mike W, Barr and Alan Davis's run on Detective Comics, one of the most underrated runs on any Bat-title, and the final full issue of that run is the one that introduced the post-Crisis version of Leslie Thompkins (there's weirdness in the continuity of this issue, but I won't focus on that right here). This issue, Detective Comics #574, "My Beginning... And My Probable End..." (which is a quote from "There is No Hope in Crime Alley") features Batman bringing a severely wounded Jason Todd to Leslie Thompkins clinic to save his life.

The changes to the character are notable. Leslie is no longer a social worker, but is instead a medical doctor who runs a clinic in Crime Alley. She is also noticeably younger, not an octogenarian, but probably in her fifties or sixties. This is the story that introduces the idea that Leslie was Bruce's foster-mother for a time, taking an active part in raising the boy. It also establishes that Leslie is well aware of Bruce's identity as Batman, and that she disapproves. She does not consider Batman a heroic knight, but a tool that continues to forward the problems of violence in society; while sometimes Batman is necessary, she feels like Bruce would be better without being Batman. And more than that, she feels responsible for Bruce being Batman, that it was partly her failing that put him on the path. But for all the negativity and confrontation, Leslie cares for Bruce deeply, and is concerned that his crusade will lead to his death, and still wants to protect him.

Barr would use Leslie in his next arc on Detective Comics, "Batman: Year Two," which builds off the relationship established in the previous issue, but the next truly notable Leslie story would be another Barr story, "Faith," from Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #21-23. "Faith" is set prior to "Year Two" but after the events of Frank Miller's "Year One." The story deals with Batman's first encounter with the idea that people may want to follow in his footsteps; in this case a young former addict who he saved starts up the Batmen, a group clearly inspired by the Guardian Angels civilian patrol organization, down to the red berets, but are considerably more violent. Meanwhile, Leslie is furious at Batman and what he's doing to the city, and it's after Batman is shot by the man who he once inspired for being a disappointment, that Batman comes to Leslie and reveals his identity. Barr does interesting things with the idea of faith, Leslie's faith in non-violence and peace and the Batmen and their faith in Batman.

While Leslie would continue to pop up occasionally in the Batman titles for the next few years, usually when Batman or one of his allies needed medical attention beyond what Alfred could provide, and was further incorporated into Batman's origin in Batman #0, the post-Zero Hour origin of Batman, the thing that I feel helped cement her in the minds of Batman fans as an essential part of Batman's origin and life is her appearance on Batman: The Animated Series. Voiced by venerable actress Diana Muldaur (best known in geek circles as the argumentative Dr. Pulaski from the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and remembered fondly by me as the hardass Rosalind Shays on L.A. Law, who met with an unusual downfall), B:TAS captured everything that Barr and O'Neil had established and distilled it. Leslie was tough but loving, always willing to tell Bruce what she thinks and to try to convince him that Batman, and the violence he represents, is something that he can leave behind. While only in a handful of episodes, Leslie was woven into the tapestry of Batman's origins so seamlessly that she would be a part of it moving forward. There was one notable change to Leslie's backstory made in B:TAS, which established her as a co-worker and longtime friend of Thomas Wayne, Bruce's father. While I can see some problems with this, as it stops her from just being a good Samaritan as Joe Chill is just a random criminal, it explains how she was able to be such a big part of Bruce's life, and does not interfere with her as a strong and loving influence; this change would eventually be adopted by the comics as well.

Leslie became a more steady fixture in the Batman comics starting with the 1999 massive event, "No Man's Land." Leslie decided to stay behind when Gotham was shut off from the rest of the world, and kept her clinic running as a neutral space among the city's warring crimelords, where anyone could come to receive medical treatment or to find a safe haven. Alfred spent much time there with her, and she was befriended by both Azrael and a young woman who Barbara Gordon used as a runner through the wastes of Gotham, Cassandra Cain, Leslie had her own spotlight issue, Batman Chronicles #18, "Spiritual Currency," showing how, even in the darkest hours of Gotham, Leslie kept her hope alive and her pledge of non-violence, even when faced with more violence around her than ever before. It's a great issue, and one of the best spotlights on Leslie.

After "No Man's Land," Leslie would continue to appear regularly in the Batman titles. She befriended Selina Kyle in the early issues of Ed Brubaker's excellent Catwoman series, helping Selina and her protege, Holly Robinson, get their lives in Gotham's East End together. She remained a recurring character in the Denny O'Neil written Azrael series until that character's death. It was even established by Devin Grayson in an early issue of Gotham Knights that she and Alfred had flirted with having a romantic relationship for years, but their duties had kept them apart.

This next paragraph is going to be tricky for me to write, partially because it violates the blog rule about only writing about comics I like, and partially because it takes a good character and drags her through the mud. "War Games" was a Batman event that was released in 2004-2005 and featured a massive gang war in Gotham started by Spoiler, one of Gotham's younger vigilantes, who took an exercise Batman had run in the Bat Computer about how to get control of Gotham's mobs and tried to implement it without thinking of the consequences. It's a messy story for many many reasons, and in the end features the death of Spoiler at the Thompkins clinic after being tortured by Black Mask. After Spoiler's death, Batman discovers that Leslie, who had left Gotham for Africa, let the girl die, not treating her, to give Bruce an object lesson and hope to stop his endless crusade and save further children from dying in it. It's an ugly, out of character twist, and completely violates everything Leslie had stood for over the past thirty years. I'll be honest: I mentioned head canon earlier, that trove of stories you keep that "count" for you, and while I try to stick close to canon, this was a story I hated from day one and never counted.

Fortunately, Chuck Dixon took over as writer on Robin again in 2008 after a six year or so absence from the book and character he defined, and immediately set about making things right. He revealed that Spoiler, Stephanie Brown, was in fact alive, having asked Leslie to help fake her death so she could escape Gotham and the life she had lived. In one fell swoop, Dixon had returned Leslie to the good, noble woman she had always been. Leslie would return to Gotham and appear briefly in those Dixon issues of Robin, and would get a spotlight in the Gotham Gazette mini-series that took place around the "Battle for the Cowl." Her final pre-Flashpoint appearances would be in Batgirl, when Stephanie was the title heroine.

Since Flashpoint, Leslie's backstory has actually returned to closer to what it originally was, as she seems to now be a social worker for Gotham's child protection services working with children and adolescents. She has only made brief appearances, once in a flashback as Jason Todd's case worker after his parents died but before Bruce took him in, and a few times in We Are Robin, where she is working with Duke Thomas after his parents disappeared in the wake of Joker's assault on Gotham. Her one appearance with Batman in this context was in Batman #52, a flashback to her working with a young Bruce, but it could be taken either way that she's his case worker or a family friend. There is one odd appearance in an issue of Grayson, where Leslie is seen working in a refugee camp in Africa as a doctor, which doesn't seem to fit this persona, but we'll see if that gets folded in. In a recent Twitter interaction I had with him, new Detective Comics writer James Tynion IV said Leslie will be appearing in Detective Comics #935, coming out this Wednesday.

Just as a brief aside, There is a  Leslie Thompkins in Fox's Gotham, played ably by Morena Baccarin, however the character is Leslie in name only. In the series she is a former Arkham doctor turned medical examiner who has little to no relationship with Bruce Wayne and is one of the romantic partners of Jim Gordon. She has no problem with violence. So basically she's about as close to her comics counterpart as anyone is on Gotham.

But earlier I said I wanted to not just talk about who Leslie Thompkins is, but why she's important to Batman and comics. To start with, Leslie is a smart, driven, female character who takes no guff from anyone, even if it's Batman, which puts her in a league with character like Wonder Woman and Amanda Waller, which is worth noting. But more importantly, Leslie represents to me the path not taken. In a world where flashy people in flashy costumes fight and destroy everything around them, she is the calm blue ocean, the voice that says there has to be another way. She reminds Batman every time they talk that he could stop, that he could use the Wayne fortune not to fight the results of crime as Batman, but confront its roots in poverty and pain. And while she judges and will never go easy on Bruce or any of his allies, she also always has a kind word and an embrace. In a world where violence is on every corner, whether it's on the pages of a comic book or a newspaper, a person who holds out hope that people really can be better, that peace and non-violence is an option is a rare thing. And because of the laws of comic book plot, Batman can never take up the path Leslie offers, her mere existence assures that the option remains open, and hope for a better, more peaceful world is always available. And that hope is important to have in the dark days of Gotham, and anywhere else.

The Matt Signal Advent Calendar 2015 Day 1: Batman: The Animated Series "Joker's Favor"

After the rousing success of last year's Matt Signal Advent Calendar, Dan and I talked and decided to do it again! This year, we'll each be picking twelve of our favorite episodes of cartoons that are based on comics, or at least have comics in their DNA. We each had to pick twelve episodes from twelve different shows. Some shows might crossover from each of our lists, but I couldn't, say, pick nine episodes of Batman: The Animated Series, as much as I would have liked to. So, without further ado, here's the first entry from, you guessed it, Batman: The Animated Series...

Batman: The Animated Series

Season 1, Episode 7: “Joker's Favor” 1992

Matt Says:

To me, I don't think there will ever be a cartoon as masterfully crafted, as enjoyable, or as formative as Batman: The Animated Series. I think most of modern adventure cartoons have a little bit of this show in their DNA, as it was something completely different than any cartoon on TV at the time: it was serious, a  bit brooding, not a toy commercial, and beautiful to look at. While other shows, many from Bruce Timm and his cohorts at Warner Animation, have taken the ball and run with it, building complex, layered series set in this shared universe, none are as special to me as this one.

Picking one episode of this series was tough, and when I had it narrowed down to two, Dan sent me his list, and I saw he had  picked one of the two, so I went with "Joker's Favor." There are any number of reasons this is my pick. It's the first time The Joker appeared on Batman: the Animated Series, and rewatching it, it amazes me how Mark Hamill already has the Joker down (it is technically the third Joker episode, as two were recorded before this, but in those as well, Hamill is stunning). Hamill's Joker is at times hilarious and at times menacing, and you're never sure which Joker you're going to get.

I wrote about this episode once before, a long time ago, in an article about how many of the great B:TAS episodes feature very little Batman. Batman barely appears in the first two acts of the episode. Instead, it's the story of a put upon everyman named Charlie Collins, who while driving home, is pushed over the edge by a rude driver. Charlie drives up to him, shouting, only to realize that the driver who cut him off is The Joker. Charlie attempts to escape, but his car breaks down on a wooded road. The Joker's first full body appearance in the series is standing on a mound of earth with headlights backlighting him, hands in pockets, menacing Charlie who sits on the ground beneath. It's a beautiful shot and just perfect.

Charlie begs for his life and Joker grants it to him, but he has to do him a favor. Two years later, Charlie has changed his name and moved to Ohio, but one day he gets a phone call. Joker, who addresses Charlie as his hobby, is calling in the favor. Charlie flies back to Gotham to find Joker having escaped Arkham to help "celebrate" an award being given to Jim Gordon. Charlie's job? Simply open a door when a big cake is wheeled into the room. Joker, of course being Joker, has different plans, and Batman's third act arrival quashes many of them. But in the end, it's Charlie, poor nobody schnook Charlie, who gets the last laugh on the Joker.

Aside from the excellent plot and stellar animation, this episode has all the other hallmarks of this series. The humor, especially the scene at the end where Joker screams for Batman as Charlie menaces Joker with a bomb, is funny in a clever, non-whacky way. Ed Begley Jr. makes a great guest star as Charlie, at times put upon, at time manic when he's pushed too far. The moral of the story, about being grateful for what you have, isn't clubbing you over the head, but it comes around nicely at the end. And the music! Shirley Walker's Joker theme makes it's first appearance here, and I still whistle it to this day. And the bouncy piece that I think of as Charlie's Theme is some of the show's most memorable music.

And if that's not enough this episode features the first appearance of Rocco and Henshaw, Joker's two goons, who appear throughout the series. Oh, and another character debuts in Paul Dini's script too: Harley Quinn. But I'm sure none of you have heard of her...

Animated Discussions: A Very Animated DC Christmas

The past couple of years, the Friday before Christmas has been a holiday recommendation, both of them from writer Paul Dini. Aside from a single Christmas themed issue of Simpsons Comics, and an issue of Detective Comics featuring Joker driving around with a tied up Tim Drake, I couldn't find anything else Christmasy from Dini (although you really should check out those two books). I was getting ready to shift last week's Krampus! piece to this week, when it occurred to me I had one more holiday piece that would feature some Paul Dini: a look at DC Comics animated Christmas episodes!

The earliest example of a holiday episode in the modern animated DC Universe (I'll be passing on the 60s Batman cartoon that did have a Mr. Freeze Christmas episode, just due to time for watching and time fro writing) is the classic "Christmas with the Joker." While aired about two months into the airing of Batman: The Animated Series, it was actually the second episode produced, so it has certain markings of those early episodes, very specifically it was one of three episodes where Clive Revill voiced Alfred, before Efrem Zimbalist Jr. took over and held the role for many a year.

Since we're still so early in the series, "Christmas with the Joker" isn't a very experimental episode. It's fun, clever, and well executed, but it's a pretty darn traditional episode. Joker breaks out of Arkham, Joker has a crazy scheme, Batman and Robin stop said crazy scheme. But the details are great. Joker has hijacked the airwaves and is airing an old time Christmas special starring, well, him. He's kidnapped Jim Gordon, Harvey Bullock, and Summer Gleeson (a reporter character who I think the producers hoped would catch on, but never really did), and has them tied up as his very own Christmas family. The interaction between Joker and Gordon when Joker removes his gag, which is a candy cane wedged in his mouth, briefly is pretty darn funny. But the stakes are high. Joker plans on blowing up a bridge and crashing a train, which Summer's mother is on; this isn't a whimsical thing with Joker. It's deadly serious.

The episode has great set pieces. Not just the exploding bridge and train sequence, but there's a battle at an observatory and a factory with killer nutcrackers. There's also some wonderful character beats involving batman. When asked to watch It's a Wonderful Life, he replies that he could, "never get past the title," but it's clear the episode's writer, Eddie Gorodetsky, gets Batman when Robin tells him that it's the story of how much one man can matter to a city, to which Bruce has not much to say. More telling is how hard it is for Batman to let go and believe that Christmas Eve will be quiet. This is actually a theme from a classic Batman Christmas story, Mike Friedrich and Neal Adams's, "the Silent Night of the Batman."

When Batman returned to animation with the New Batman Adventures, the first episode was an adaptation of the Batman Adventures Holiday Special, the episode entitled "Holiday Knights." Instead of writing at length about it, you can go and check out the recommendation I did for the comic a couple years ago. It remains one of my favorite Christmas comics ever.

In 2008, a very different animated Batman came to the airwaves. Batman: The Brave and the Bold was a much lighter Batman show, with crazy plots, huge set pieces right out of the 50s comics, and every episode teamed Batman with another hero. Early on, the series did its Christmas episode, "Invasion of the Secret Santas!" which featured Red Tornado as the guest hero. In the episode, Red Torndao, a robot, tried to understand the Christmas spirit, while he and Batman fight Fun Haus, a villain who is clearly a Toyman riff, since Toyman wouldn't have been available to the show since he is a Superman villain, and Superman and his cast were unavailable to Brave and the Bold at the time.

The episode itself involved robot Santas running amok, an evil toy, and some holiday hilarity as Red Tornado tries to Carol and Batman winds up saving kids from a runaway sled. It's a good episode of Brave and the Bold, as it highlights so much of what makes the show different and fun from Batman: The Animated Series. The comedy is much bigger, the villain is more over the top, but Batman himself remains this solid straight man in the middle of the wackiness. Batman says crime doesn't take a holiday, so neither does he.

The thing that stands out in "Invasion of the Secret Santas" to me are a series of black-and-white flashbacks to a young Bruce Wayne on Christmas Eve. Bruce receives a Christmas present from his father, a nutcracker, which is not what the young Bruce wanted, and so he throws it away and runs off in a pout. It's notable for a few reasons. One, it's the first time in this series we see an unmasked Batman, even if he's only eight, and the first time we see Alfred. The series usually kept Batman in the field, so both Bruce Wayne and Alfred appear very rarely, The Nutcracker is almost directly lifted from "To Kill a Legend," a story from Detective Comics #500, only there it's a toy train, not a Nutcracker. I like the fact that Bruce wasn't always this perfect kid, and it's a nice touch. My only problem with the flashbacks is that it ends with his parents taking him to see a movie to try to cheer him up from not getting the Swashbuckler action figure. The movie is a swashbuckling movie, and I doubt anyone who knows Batman would be surprised it's The Mark of Zorro. The flashbacks end with Bruce still being mad as they walk down the alley, and well, the are two flashes of light. I'm generally not in love with the idea that Bruce had any part, even inadvertent, in his parents' death. Still the episode ends with Batman finding a very special Christmas present from Alfred in the Batmobile, something that brings the episode full circle, and is a nice Christmas touch.

Before I discuss my favorite DC Comics animated episode, I wanted to touch on one that's only tangentially related to the topic. Freakazoid! was a cartoon that aired on the WB network alongside Superman: The Animated Series, and was created by the same guys who created the Batman and Superman cartoons. It was a crazy cartoon with a hero who would make the Creeper say, "I think he's a bit much." But good lord was it funny!The first season episode, "In Arm's Way," features Freakazoid Christmas chopping on Christmas Eve, while arch criminal Arms Akimbo (a former model whose arms are stuck, well, akimbo) sells Oops Insurance (protection) to local business owners. If you've never see Freakazoid!, well, this is a fun episode, but they all are really.

Now, my favorite DC Comics animated episode doesn't even feature Batman. The episode is "Comfort and Joy," from the second season of Justice League, and it's written, not shockingly, by Paul Dini. After saving an alien world from being destroyed, we follow five members of the Justice League on their holiday adventures. I admit, the episode is filled with Christmas messages about the joys of family and friends, about giving to others, and about different manners of celebrating. It's a Christmas special in the way of holiday episodes of the 80s, and I love that. I am a complete sucker for these kind of things, and the fact that it's done so well makes it all the better.

One of the stories follows Green Lantern and Hawkgirl as the two explore their burgeoning romance by seeing how each of their cultures celebrate. Lantern shows Hawkgirl all the great snow traditions he has, like sledding, building snowmen, making snow angels, and snowball fights. After a particularly rousing super powered snowball fight Hawkgirl brings Lantern to a world that looks like the Mos Eisley Cantina's nasty brother and shows him how she celebrates, which is starting a bar fight and wailing on everyone in sight. It's cute, and does a great job of showing the relationship between the two characters, ending with a very sweet moment.

The Flash story has Wally visiting  an orphanage in Central City and promising to get the kids the present they want, a DJ Rubba Ducky, a rapping animated duck. We get some crass consumerism, as Wally can't find one, and when he finally does, he runs afoul of the Ultra-Humanite, who is destroying the Central City Museum because he feels the art isn't up to his high standards. When the Rubba Ducky is destroyed in the fight, Humanite agrees to repair it and he and Flash present the to to the kids, improved to tell the story of The Nutcracker as opposed to making hip-hop farty noises. And when Flash brings Humanite to jail, he leaves him a small Christmas tree. It's a sweet story of two foes coming together in the Christmas spirit and about how everyone deserves a holiday that is full of peace.

The third story is by far my favorite, the story of Superman taking Martian Manhunter to Smallville for Christmas. It's a very simple, quiet story. There's no action in the superhero sense. Superman is hilarious with Ma and Pa Kent, acting like a great big kid; they wrap his presents in lead foil to keep him from peeking. They give J'onn a sweater as a present that he bulks up to wear. And he goes out at night and sees the Christmas joy that the people of Smallville feel. J'onn became a favorite character of mine thanks to the John Ostrander monthly from the early 00s and his portrayal on Justice League, and this episode does a marvelous job of portraying the stranger in a strange land aspect of the character. There's also a cute nod to his love of Oreos from the Justice League International era. The episode ends with J'onn sitting in a window in his native Martian form, singing a beautiful sing in Martian, while petting Streaky, Supergirl's cat. It's a lovely moment, one that expresses the universality of having a place to be in times of celebration.

This is a good time to settle in with a cup of cocoa and enjoy a very super Christmas season, and each of these episodes are available on DVD, and many can be found on Netflix and Amazon Prime.

How to Relate to Your Batkid

Before I had a child, I had this irrational fear that, if it were a boy, he would be a jock and I wouldn't be able to relate to him. Mostly because I was a nerd and my dad didn't know what to do with me sometimes, despite many a good-faith effort.

And while he's only 3 years old and therefore far from having a fully formed personality, my son has gone down at least one path that differs from mine.

He's a DC kid.

Y'know, you try to teach a kid right, tell him about Spider-Man and Captain America and NFL Super-Pro, but one day the cool orphan with the gravelly voice comes along and just undoes everything.

Next thing you know, he's got all the Fisher Price ImagiNext figures (the Clayface I my personal favorite) and the Batcave playset and the Batmobile and the Batman fleece blanket and the T-shirt with the velcro cape and he's doing his own Christian Bale voice because that's how Dad reads Batman to him. I blame his godfather, the proprietor of this blog, who gave my son the plush Batman you see drinking black coffee in the photo at top for his third birthday.

In all seriousness, the great thing about Batman is that there's enough versions of him to appeal to every kind of fan. Grant Morrison touched on this, in his own perverse somewhere-between-Allen Moore-and-Warren Ellis-on-the-crazy-scale way during his time with the character. So in the New 52 comics, the Joker can cut off his own face and some lunachick claiming to be his daughter can wear it, while elsewhere, in else worlds, Adam West and Burt Ward can dance the Batusi with Catwoman while onomonopaeic word balloons fill the screen around them, and still elsewhere, Kevin Conroy and Tim Daly can slug it out while reciting lines from The Dark Knight Returns.

To my son, though, there are mainly three versions of Batman: Blue Batman (the Brave and the Bold cartoon), Black Batman (Batman Beyond) and Lego Batman (Darkness! No parents!)

Now, I grew up in the age of Batman: The Animated Series, a very no-frills, mostly serious (Mark Hammill's clown prince of crime notwithstanding) take on Gotham, perfect for a decade that took itself more seriously than it had a right to. Brave and the Bold is, in every way possible, the opposite of that. This Batman, voiced by Diedrich Bader, spends most of his time outside Gotham, teaming up with Blue Beetle, Green Arrow and Aquaman against crazy silver-age villains like the Clock King and Gorilla Grodd. And while my favorite BTAS episode is the minimalist "Almost Got Him," in which Batman's main villains sit around a table telling stories of their encounters with the Bat, my favorite Brave and the Bold episode is a musical in which the Music Meister, voiced by none other than Neil Patrick Harris, enslaves hero and villain alike through song. If you ever wanted to see Black Manta do high kicks, this episode is for you. If the show had a message, it's this: Hey, adults who grew up in the ’90s, Batman existed before “Year One,” and he was a lot of big, goofy, dumb fun. Deal with it!

Batman Beyond, on the other hand, is the future continuation of BTAS. The same mood and atmosphere (and Kevin Conroy as Bruce Wayne) are given a coat of cyberpunk aesthetic and an electronica score, with stories about getting addicted to virtual reality and picked-on kids using giant robots to exact revenge. It's exactly what we feared the future would be like 15 years ago, which of course means now it looks like a slightly cooler version of The Jetsons. I didn't really watch the show when it originally aired, and now I just wonder when Will Friedle, who voiced future Batman Terry McGinnis, is gonna guest star on Girl Meets World, reprising his role as Eric Matthews.

And then there's Lego Batman. I've probably watched The Lego Movie Blu-ray about 30 times since it came out, and Will Arnett's jerk-boyfriend, speaker-obsessed Batman is one of the best parts of a great movie.

But hey, there's Lego Marvel characters, too. How come Lego Iron Man didn't get to help Emmet and Wyldstyle fight Lord Business. He's a Master Builder! But I digress.

So while I probably wouldn’t let my son read Snyder and Capullo’s Batman or watch the Nolan films for at least 10 years, he’s still got plenty of time to enjoy, say, Justice League Unlimited or the Tim Burton Batman movies or the Batman ’66 comics or any Art Baltazar book or Teen Titans Go! So thanks a lot, Uncle Matt! (That’s actually not sarcastic)

P.S.: I’m totally cool with the fact that my son’s first live-action Batman is probably going to be Ben Affleck. That said, I’d like a do-over on his first live-action Green Lantern.

Dan Grote has been a Matt Signal contributor since 2014 and friends with Matt since there were four Supermen and two Psylockes. His two novels, My Evil Twin and I and Of Robots, God and Government, are available on Amazon.

Animated Discussions- Batman Isn't Always About Batman

So, yes, my move has prevented me from reading most of this week's comics, but I don't want you all forgetting me, do I? This is the first in a semi-regular feature that will be talking about superhero and comic book based animation, and what better place to start then the greatest superhero cartoon of all time (and not shockingly at all, my favorite), Batman: The Animated Series?

There are very few people who would argue that, without Batman: The Animated Series, the modern animation landscape would be very different. Batman: The Animated Series brought a level of sophistication to daytime animation that had never been seen there before. The show was moody, intense, and its detailed art deco inspired designs weren't like anything audiences were used to. The series has become so engrained in the minds of the people who saw it that Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill, who voiced Batman and the Joker respectively, have been credited with those rolls more than anyone else has, having performed in no less than four different series, plus movies and video games.

In rewatching the series is syndication on the kids network The Hub recently, I noticed one of the most fascinating things about Batman: The Animated Series: the lack of its title character in a number of episodes. The great Will Eisner would often write Spirit strips that barely featured the Spirit, but would instead be about people who crossed paths with him at one point or another in the story, and I feel like the writers and producers of Batman: The Animated Series took a cue from that. This is fairly unique, even in the generation of cartoons inspired by it. Sure some episodes Justice League/Justice League Unlimited focused on villains, and a couple of Batman Beyond episodes did use this formula, but it was really something Batman: The Animated Series did often and best. So, here are some of the best episodes of Batman: The Animated Series (abbreviated B:TAS from here on out) with the least Batman.

Joker's Favor

Joker's Favor is probably best known as being the first appearance of Harley Quinn, but it's also the first appearance of Charlie Collins, a put-upon businessman who, after a long day at work, curses out a driver who cuts him off. Unfortunately for Charlie, the driver is the Joker, who spares him with the promise that one day, Charlie will do him a favor. So, one day, even after changing his name and leaving Gotham, Charlie gets a call to come to Gotham and pay his debt. This is my favorite purely Joker episode of B:TAS. It's funny to see poor Charlie thrust into the Joker's sphere, and how he tries to get out if it. Batman appears at the end of the episode to sweep in and get involved in the action, but the star of the episode is Charlie, voiced by Ed Begley Jr., who in the end gets to play a joke of his own on the Joker.

The Man Who Killed Batman

On the other end of the everyman spectrum from Charlie Collins is Sidney Debris. Charlie just wanted to live a quiet life, but Sidney wanted to be a big man, and he got the chance when an accident makes the Gotham underworld think that Sidney killed Batman. This begins a series of misadventures for Sidney, as he crosses paths with the Gotham Police, the Joker, and crime boss Rupert Thorne. Batman's presence if minimal, since he is "dead" for much of the episode, and Sidney narrates his story. I pair this with Joker's Favor because they both show an aspect that is left out of many Batman appearances in media: they're funny. Batman might be a dark character, and he might be the driving factor behind these stories, but it doesn't mean there's no room for comic relief anywhere.

It's Never Too Late

It's Never Too Late aired towards the end of B:TAS first week on the air, and it was the episode that made my eleven year old brain explode. The first week or so of episodes had been very cool; Batman has fought Catwoman, Man-Bat, Mister Freeze, and Clayface. But this episode didn't have a supervillain. This was, for all intents and purposes, a noir. There was a mob war, and the episode centers around mob boss Arnold Stromwell, who is in a mob war with Rupert Thorne, It is Stromwell's story, with Batman acting as the angel on his shoulder, or his guide through the Underworld if you'd prefer, to give Stromwell one last chance to mend his ways. It's a very effective piece of television, and its use of Batman as an agent of redemption as opposed to violence and vengeance is different than many interpretations of the character and was another sign that viewers of B:TAS were in for something special.

P.O.V.

P.O.V. was the first episode of the series that really focused on the Gotham Police, and gave a full introduction to a character who would become important in both the show and the comics: Renee Montoya. The episode is told in the style of the legendary Akira Kurosawa film Rashomon: Montoya, Harvey Bullock, and Wilkes, a rookie, each tell their version of the events around a failed bust where Batman became involved. It's a great device to get different views of Batman, and had been used in the legendary story from Batman #250, "The Batman Nobody Knows!" (which was later adapted as the episode Legends of the Dark Knight).  The different police all see Batman in a different way: as a hero, a menace, or as something more than a normal man. And who's to say they all aren't a bit right?

A Bullet for Bullock

A Bullet for Bullock is a pitch perfect adaptation of Detective Comics #651 by Chuck Dixon and Graham Nolan, one of the most under-rated Batman creative teams of all time. Someone is trying to kill Harvey Bullock, Gotham's slovenly detective, and he has to go to Batman for help. It's another episode where there are no supervillains, just mobsters, and is told almost exclusively from Bullock's perspective. There's not much more to it than that, other than it's a great mystery that fleshes out one of the major supporting characters of Batman's world for the animated series.

Harley and Ivy

Harley and Ivy is actually one of three episodes that fit as kind of a trilogy in my head, the other two being Harlequinade and Harley's Holiday that really made Harley Quinn the breakout character from B:TAS. Arleen Sorkin's amazing voice performance is definitely a factor, making Harley such a distinct character, but these three episodes, each of which gave Ms. Sorkin a chance to shine, were instrumental. Harley, being a character created for the show, gave the writers a chance to play in a way they couldn't with more established characters, and they used that latitude to create some hilarious, as well a poignant moments. Batman really spends much of his screen time in these episodes playing straight man to Harley's antics, and in Harley and Ivy winds up not even being the person who captures the titular duo; that honor falls to Renee Montoya.

Showdown

Showdown is different from the other episodes I'm talking about here because Batman isn't even a part of the main narrative. Batman runs afoul of some of Ra's al Ghul's men, and finds an audio cassette (yes, the Batmobile had a tape deck back then), which recounts a confrontation Ra's had with Jonah Hex back in 1883. The story is really a Jonah Hex one, written by Joe R. Lansdale, one of the great Hex writers, and is a gorgeous period piece. I include it mostly because it was my first real exposure to Hex as a character, a character I've come to love over the years, and because the ending, after the Hex story is done and Batman confronts Ra's, is a strangely touching one.

Almost Got 'Im

There was no way I could talk about episodes of B:TAS that only sort of deal with Batman and not mention this one. Almost Got 'Im makes pretty much every best of list for B:TAS, and is often found in the top slot. Basically, Joker, Penguin, Two-Face, Poison Ivy, and Killer Croc are sitting around a table playing cards and talking about times they almost killed Batman. It gives great insight into the minds of the villains, as well as providing some of the show's best animation and dialogue. If you only watch one episode I've discussed, or one episode period, this is the one to choose.