Wearing waiting. Welcome back to midnight Viewing the horror anthology. Oh wait a
minute, Actually I need to welcome you to a separate but equals midnight viewing.
This is Midnight Viewing Anthologies Attack, where we discuss anthologies in all the
various media and genres and sharing the midnight view with me is the director of
the award winning live action cartoon Space Detective, mister Antonio Lapour. Hey there,
father Malone. How are you today? I'm doing wonderful. We just
were talking about Batman without recording. That was really dumb, but that's just
how how it goes. Man. You get excited, you know you hate
dedicated to the bat And in tonight our inaugural outing, we've chosen to absolutely
certified anthology classics starting back in nineteen ninety two, we're doing two episodes from
Batman the Animated series, almost got them and Legends of the Dark Knight.
Now I say that they're from Batman the Animated series, and they've certainly been
folded into the Batman Animated series. If you were to stream it now available
on Max, everybody go check it out. Actually go watch it right now
and then come back because We're gonna be spoiling the shit out of these things.
These are two. The second episode, the Legends of the Dark Knight,
is actually from the New Batman Adventures from nineteen ninety seven, which ran
for one season, maybe two, I don't know, And and it's now
been reappropriated. Now we're gonna talk. We're gonna be talking Batman today,
Batman the animated series. It didn't spring whole cloth from the creators of that
animated series. No, we're gonna have to go back to nineteen thirty nine
Batman. Wow. Yeah, I'm gonna let Antonio take over. I just
want to say that Batman was created by Bill Finger. Bill Finger, Yeah,
oh, and Bob Kane. He did some of the drawing it.
You know, this is this story and now what I'm gonna preface it.
If you get a chance, there's a brilliant documentary you can catch it on
I think it's on Hulu. It's called Batman and Bill and it's about Bill
Finger, and it gives you the whole history of it. But I'm going
to give you, you know, the cliff notes basically. But so,
Bob Kane was a you know, up and coming cartoonist, I guess like
everybody in Brooklyn or whatever. They were probably New York in the late thirties.
You know, he was a teenager just that a high school and he
they he knew the folks over at National Comics, which was, you know,
the original DC Comics. Detective Comics was come out, you know there,
and you know, Superman had just come out and was huge, and
the editor was like, hey, I need a new superhero. And Bob
Kane is like, all right, let me see what I can come up
with. And he just pretty much saw a drawing of Da Vinci's Flying Machine.
Yeah, oh, I'm going to make a superhero out of that.
And he drew this dude in a red costume, in a red unit hard
with black shorts and a black Domino mask and blonde hair, and he had
on black bat wings. Here's my character. I guess he's gonna be bat
Man. Maybe, I don't know. Bill Finger went, oh, I
guess this is going to need some BackStar. Yeah, basically had some characters,
right, Yeah, can remember the guy's name now, but the guy
who ran the company, he set him up together with Bill Finger, who
was one of the up and coming riders. And Bill Finger was the writer.
So Bill Fingers, Okay, this costume was stupid. He was gonna
fight crime in a red costume like that, and he's gonna be a scary
Batman. No, so he made the costume gray and black and they put
together the mask. I don't know who designed the mask though, I mean,
we'll just give it to bobka Yeah, I guess, but he had
eyeballs though if he were here he would take credits. Well, yeah,
obviously he The Batman mask had eyeballs in it, and Bill Finger got rid
of the eyeballs. He gave it the color scheme. He even and Kane
drew stiff wings. Bill Finger made it a cape. So basically he revamped
and then made the Batman that we know today. Well, yeah, then
he came up with everything else, you know, Bruce Wayne, Gotham City,
the Batmovie, or Robin. All this other shit came up thanks to
Bill Finger. Now, Bob Kane did come up with the Joker. No
he didn't, Yes, he did. No, the Joker was Jerry Robinson.
It was really a combination of the three of them. If you want
to be fair, say I was just being the normal fan who assumes that
Bob Kane did everything else. Bob Kane has been crying about his creations for
ever. No, it was a combination of more than likely Jerry Robinson and
Bill Finger. Jerry Robinson had the card with the Joker face on it.
He had drawn that. That's how legend goes. The other legend is they
had seen the movie The Man Who Laughs, you know, was ten years
old. That movie wasn't like right and oldie, it was just a movie
that come out well it was silent, and that was, you know,
a German film by a guy named Goula Pane who was a circus freak who
had his face carved into a hideous smile. And if you guys look at
this up online, the Man who Laughs, it's the fucking joker. Yeah,
Like it's that ear. Yeah. But the funny thing is it's the
best joker makeup there ever been. Like it's just this giant mouth with these
teeth. It's always smiling and this really it's always smiling. Even when he's
sad, he's stuck in that smile. And none of the movies have ever
got that, maybe the Burton movie. But yeah, they tried became surgical.
Yeah, we did a short film called Joker Does Shakespeare Man like twenty
years ago. You can find it on YouTube and at my our website,
Swamp Media Group dot com. But in it, the Joker performs they Halet's
soliloquy to a dead guy. That's basically and I show up as a Batman
reference in it. I'm not in a Batman costume. You're trust for you
know, You're okay. I was imagining. And anyways, we tried to
do that permanent smile thing and we you know, we use the Halloween mask
and gat I'm gonna tell you right now, it doesn't look great, so
I don't know how to do it nowadays. Conrad Vite they just took to
wires and yanked his mouth back and then those ears or something great. Yeah,
they chanyed him that. But then, anyways, everybody has seen that
movie that I think the Joker came out of Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson and
maybe Bob Kane. I don't know how involved he was. I feel like
he was in the office stan Lee and they was saying, I'm stan Lee,
hello, I'm doing everything. But really he's just like dignating. Why
do we love stan Lee for doing exactly what Bob Kane was doing, because
stan Lee was fucking charming. I've met stan Lee and he's just laying it.
I shot an event that he was at, a signing, and I
got him to say Excelsior. It was great. I'm like, hey,
stank and I got an excelsior. He turns around and he excel sia and
I'm like, wow, that's amazing. And he actually did a ton of
right, he did do a ton of writing. But then I mean,
come on, Jack Kirby, and we need to get into that. Yeah,
that's a whole nother one. That's a whole other show. We can
stick to Bob Kane filtering all the glory. Bill Finger is the name that
generally when you think of all cool stuff that Batman has, Bill Finger came
up with it, you know. And there was a whole slew of artists.
There was Jerry Robinson. I was probably my favorite of the Golden Age.
He if you see, like, his most recognized piece is that Detective
thirty eight with Robin's first appearance, and it's got the little Robin jumping through
the circus circle or whatever, you know, the hoop, Yeah, jump
into the hoop and breaking the thing and he's smiling, and that's Jerry Robinson.
Bob Kane could not draw that well. Detective twenty seven, Now,
okay, that's Bob Kane. Probably ain'ts by Jerry Robinson. We can't deny
Bob Kaine's contributions to Batman. But Batman didn't get cool until everybody else got
their hands on him, and Dick's there was Sheldon Meldoff was another writer.
I mean it was another artist. The other writer was Gardner Fox. Gardner
Fox is known for creating the Flash and the Justice Society and all that and
those guys, and he wrote Batman for a little bit too. If the
early early early stuff, if he was you Batman holding a gun, that's
a Sheldon Meldoff Batman and the gun thing. They got rid of that nineteenth
by tight Robin showed up No guns, no killing. That was by nineteen
forty. Robbie came out like nine months after Batman debut. It wasn't like
a big weight with no because we're getting back to the original Batman, the
original Batman, but no Robin was like six months Man and then the gets
shot up and then the Batman that we know in love that doesn't kill people,
that doesn't have a gun. That's been there pretty much since the very
very beginning. The Batman who doesn't kill right from the beginning, interesting,
Zack Snyder. Yeah, I mean yeah, sure, Like it's the forties,
so it's a literal it's a liberal view of killing. Yeah, the
monster might get killed or you know whatever. But Batman's now women had a
gun and shooting somebody. He's not murdering anybody. I seem to remember a
run of comics where Batman used to carry again, but this was during the
seventies early eighties. That was Batman year too. I just remember him draped
over a grave with a forty five in his hand. That was Todd McFarland's
big break was really Yeah, he only does two issues of it. It's
it's so weird. Two issues are done by him and two issues are done
by Alan Davis. I've seen Todd McFarland sketching Batman just for fun, and
I actually love his style with him. McFarland Batman the action figure statue back
behind me with the giant oversized cape and everything. Yeah beautiful, Yeah,
it is beautiful, And you know That's that's funny thing. It's my second
one of those things because I got it and I opened it and you can
put the arms on it and stuff in the arm broke like immediately, So
I got it refunded and got another one and then I haven't opened it again.
The McFarland Batman is sort of echoing the gothic style of Denny O'Neil.
Oh. Yeah, it takes to Denny O'Neill and Neil Adams stuff and then
pluses it. But you know that Blue Cape Batman that was the seventies and
eighties and all that stuff. The best guy is from the eighties. That
was Jim Apparrel, Like Jim and Parol was Batman in that time period the
best because he did it the longest my entire child. Jim Apparrel drew Batman
up until I got to high school. So does that make him your Batman?
They say that about Saturday Night Live, Like, whoever your group was
in high school, that's your cast. The Neil Adams bat this is an
extension of the Neil Adams Batman. You know, the Jim Apparrel's Batman and
Neil Adams is pretty similar. Neal Adams is much more detailed than deliberate with
this stuff. And Jim Man Jim Apparel just had great camera angles, a
lot of Dutch angles. Was really good at action and I feel like you
just do it forever. And then the other great one was the Marshall Rodgers
and the Marshall Rodgers and Terry Austin Batman is the best looking one of the
bunch. That's the but they only did the six issues. Yeah, and
that's the late seventies. It was my first Batman comic I gotten as a
reprint in the mid eighties. And that's the Laughing Fish. That's a gorgeous
drying and you know the end of the Dark Night with them on top of
the of the scaffolding and stuff. And that's the end of the Marshall Rogers
Laughing Fish. It ends with them on the scaffolding and the lightning gets the
joke and he falls into the river rather than getting caught. But oh,
that and that Marshall Rodgers had a really exaggerated cape too. My favorite Batman
artist obviously is Bernie Wright's in his work on the Cult. Oh yeah,
everybody's really ripped and there's some giant bat ears that he draws bat ears that
he draws so far up they seem to reach to heavy. Yeah, he's
one of my other go to favorites. It's sick lawless. The more restrained
version of that, to me is the Brian Bowlin version of Batman. He
draws the Joker and Batman and everyone so long. It's unlike anything we've seen,
certainly cinematically, we'll get back to the artists. Let's talk Batman in
the cinema or Batman in a visually moving media. And this started back in
the forties with the cereals. See the first cereal is nineteen forty three.
That was a Batman named Robin. I know it was Batman, the Batman,
I think it was, And it was Lewis Wilson was Batman. He
was some guy in his twenties and his costume kind of looks really good,
but it's hella, saggy and doesn't move well, and in the movie it
looks terrible. There's a couple of publicity shots it looks great and they were
driving a sedan and they're driving a sidan. The Robin is played by Douglas
Croft, who is also in the Greatest Movie of all time. He plays
little Charles Foster Kane. Wow, I got the right. Yeah, Okay,
So cereals, that's the first taste of Batman. Or he's either that
or he's Kine's son. He's one of the two. And then there's another
one in forty oh and then that one they fight doctor Daca, who's you
know, a guy with the wax eyelids. None of the Rogues gallery of
villains show up in the cereals. And then in forty nine you get Batman
and Robin, where you the Robin looks like he's thirty and they drive a
darker Sedan. Yeah, but that one introduces the bad signal. That's the
first place you've seen in anywhere was in that cereal. When I was growing
up in the town next to mine, Chelsea, Massachusetts, there was a
movie theater that was a second run revival house where I got to see the
cereals on a Saturday morning, and I got to tell you, I was
crazily disappointed. I was we were going to go see Batman. I thought
we were going to go see a Batman cartoon, or at the very least,
we were going to see perhaps the greatest incarnation at least from television up
until the show we're talking about from nineteen sixty six, the Adam West Batman.
I love that each of the iterations of Batman will include at least a
few characters or situations that will resonate so hard that people think that they've been
there since the beginning, that it's some sort of new innovation. Well,
you know, Kryptonite was introduced first on the Superman radio show. Well,
he was just too powerful. It's amazing, And Bratman and Robin's first Leady
appearance was on their radio Superman didn't even fly to begin with. No,
he just jumped. Yeah, you know, I'm a little younger, but
it's you know, it lived in reruns. I remember being a little boy
in Vegas and waking up at six o'clock in the morning on Saturday because they
ran in two episodes of it, and I'm being like eight or nine,
going, this is my only way I can get a Batman fix. And
you got both parts. Yeah, I got both parts and it was awesome.
But if you look back at that show, that is literally the most
faithful adaptation of all of it. Yeah, it's silly and it's wacky,
but it's the sixties, man, everybody's either drunk or high, and it's
perfectly fine. And you know, and they know it's a joke. They
know it's a joke. Man. They're basing it off of the silver Age
of Batmans. Yeah right, I mean those comics were that, like you
pick up a nineteen fifties Batman comic drawn by the magnificent genius Dick Sprang.
Who're gonna get to today in today's episode, Dick Sprang is? I mean
that's from the episodes they adapted from that comic, I mean for the show,
from the Dick Sprang era when he was drawn as the joker's utility belt.
That's you know, that's a Bill Finger Dick Sprang comic. You know
what. The the only thing they'd never got tough was like the giant typewriter
like that. But they probably had a giant typewriter on the ad of My
show. But they didn't have the penny. No, he didn't get the
penny. Well, we didn't get two Face on the show. He was
too weird, which is bizarre considering they were concocting characters just for the show.
Two Face, like they had False Space, who was playface, but
then two face. It never got to what it was cool? Was that
a few years ago they did those animated movies. Yes, well that before
we lost Adam West, The Return of the Caped Crusaders, the Two Face
one Bill William Shatner has two Face, and I'm just like, wow,
whoever cook that one up at orders animation just because somebody should have played two
face got out of West movie. I had it on videotape, you know,
I've taped off ABC or whatever, and I just watched it so much
as a kid. It's just such a blast, and added West and Burt
Ward are great man. Yeah they're in off a joke and all that stuff,
and it's a comedy show. But here a little kid that's clearly Batman
and Robin because I bond into it one as a kid. It's only when
you become a teenager you realize that Zang and pow those are a bit silly,
and you start to see all of the seams, and there was a
whole culture around what a joke the show was. But they were in on
that joke. But the Burton you look back and look at the Burton pictures
and were the Burton movies, not even the Joel Schumachers that were trying to
be Adam West. But the Burton movies themselves are pretty silly. I mean
this, scripts are ridiculous, you know, like they don't have the scripts
of those movies don't capture all the nuanced drama and flug did the comics give
you. They just look amazing and they're really well paced, so they're very
entertaining movies, but they're shitty scripts. Before we get to Burton, there's
a period between say nineteen sixty eight and the present where the only Batman we
were getting were the super Friends appearances, and in Scooby Doo movies you had
two guys playing Batman. Basically you had Adam West actually plays him on the
late seventies filmation Batman, which is probably the first thing I saw, I
would assume, and then Adam West plays it on that last season of super
Friends, which is the first place you get Batman's origin. Actually I remember
distinctly when he took over the part, and that's a great episode. That's
the first place I really got that origin, you know, as a little
boy, and I'm like, oh, I get it now. I lost
my dad when I was seven, and it was you know, and it
was I was there and it was very traumatic. You know, it was
just a heart attack. It was a bugger. But I got it.
And now, as you know, in the eighty or nine, ten eleven
year old boy watching that super Friends, how old I was, I got
it. I'm like, oh god, Batman, he gets it. And
I was like, that was I had always loved it. You will find
me pictures of two year old me with Migo Batman toys or stuff. But
that's where I got it. That's the connection. Yeah. But the other
Batman was Olan Soule, and he was the guy. He was the hey,
great Robin, that guy on the super Friends. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, but you know, he played Batman for fifteen years almost. He
was Batman in the late sixties show that was pretty much a cartoon version of
the Out of Us show, I guess, right, and then on the
super Friends all through the seventies, and then on The Scooby Show that was
him too. That episode of super Friends where you get the origin and they
fight the Scarecrow, you know, that is loosely based on like a seventies
comedy. They swapped Wonder Woman for Batgirl, but it's kind of the same
thing. And that was a backdoor pilot for a Batman show that that never
happened. But sixty six, no, this is the eighty six eighty seven
super Friends. It was a backdoor pilot for the for a Batman show,
a Hannah Barbara Batman show. So in it you got al Ford, that
you got Robin, you got Batman's origin, and you know, now it
just lives on as that meame video that Hey look out, Ruth, He's
coming after you. Oh my god, you know that one with like the
wacky voices of that. It's a pretty big internet me But that's about it.
And I remember always searching for that episode, hoping a rerun I would
catch it, and I think I saw twice when I was a little kid,
but it stuck. Batman sort of comes into his own in popular culture
in nineteen eighty nine with the Batman film, the project that had been ges
dating forever since the seventies, but really since Superman. That's when Mankowitz writes
his script. That's when Michael Uslan gets the rights to it. Michael us
was like some twenty year old kid that worked at DC Comics has already started
as an internal or something, and he might have written some copy for them
or something, and he saw Superman. He's pro I love Batman. I
wonder if I could get the rights to it. And so another he found
this old, tiny Hollywood producer who was like seventy five years old named Benjamin.
Yeah, that's it, and he put up a little bit of money
and they got the rights for nothing. It's insane. He still has those
rights, still has those rights. Every time you see Batman and anything,
you're gonna see Michael hous Lynde's name. I had his book sitting on my
table right now. The boy who loved Batman I saw the documentary. You
know, we owe him a debt of gratitude because all this media that we
have really exists because some kid was like, dude, I love Batman.
I wonder if I could get the rights to its wild And I've read that
Mankut with Script, and that manke with Script is great. It's a lot
of fun. It's the Superman. Yeah, it's the same, it's the
exact same tone, but it's fun. It's got a giant typewriter and it's
got Robin in it. I didn't right, but it was attachment, and
they wanted any Murphy to be Robin and Bill Murray to be Batman. And
that manscript Thomas Wayne I think might have been running for mayor or something and
the Joker. And there were some interim scripts as well, because at one
point Joe Dante, right after Gremlin's Oh no kidding, and he said that
he read the script and kept going over and over in his mind about how
he would shoot it. But the next day he went back to the producers
and he said, I can make this movie, but I can make it
about the Joker. That's all I'm interested in. And that's not what you
need. You want a Batman movie. So he bowed out. That's amazing,
that's I can't believe that. See, that's a weird thing because back
then, these guys don't realize that there's a comic shop of over on,
a really good comic shop over on Sunset. You know, they can just
go take a taxi down to Golden Apple and spend the afternoon and there's your
movie. Tam Ham or Warren Scarrot, one of those guys been making the
rounds lately talking about, you know, the Burton movies and how they're coming
up with the shit for Batman Returns, and there m and Burton are just
coming up with it. That's Daniel Waters, that's Dan Waters. But they're
just coming up with it and not cracking open a comic book or anything like
that. I'm just like, are you guys that big of snobs back then?
I don't know if it was snobbishness. I happen to think that Batman
Returns is my favorite Batman movie. I mean what we have right now,
the current Batman, the Matt Reeves the Batman. That Batman is the actual
comic book Batman I like, and I like that movie, and I want
to see more of it. But I love the fairy tale aspect of the
Tim Burton film. It feels like a one off issue of a comic by
a guest artist. I like the world that he makes in those movies.
I like what he does visually in those movies, and I equate it to
getting a Batman comic where the guy where the story's on, but the art
is so good right that you just can't help just go back and keep looking
at it. That's jelly what I feel. I prefer the first one a
little more only because I just love Jack Nichols and it's a lot of black,
and it's the Prince music and it's just and it was that movie at
that age for me, right, And it's like that movie at that age,
being obsessed with it, reading the novelization and in a day did the
comic book, learning how to draw Michael Keaton accurately at that age, and
then a few months later realizing what the fuck did the Joker kill Batman's parents?
Did the Batman just drive that fucking batmobile to the and kill all these
guys? And I started finding all the things that I didn't like about it,
and I go, well, if I made a Batman movie, and
if I made a Batman movie, and if I made a Batman movie,
and then as I'm like, oh, I want to make a Batman.
Oh, I want to make movies, even though Star Wars is my whole
you know, and even yeah, even though that year I saw Goodfellas and
I discover what a director does watching good Fellas, because I remember not liking
Goodfellas the first time I watched it, and going I didn't wait a second,
I don't think I just didn't understand it. Let me watch that again.
But that Batman though, let me tell you, And when Batman Return
Turns came out was I was all over that too, and it's a beautiful
movie. But that summer they announced that there was gonna be a cartoon show
and that they were gonna spend money on this cartoon show and there was gonna
be something you had never seen before, and it premiered like on Sunday night
at seven thirty. They aired that on leather Wings episode with men bat and
I recorded that shit because I had to be at church because you know,
I was like a Catholic kid and whoa I was. I'm like, I
can't believe it. This is I go, Michael Heaton is need and everything,
but this is Batman. For fans of the comic. It was the
first time we got Batman, and I was obsessed with that comic that you
know, I was just I was going through puberty, so self Catwoman,
I'm you know, I'm Jason Todd is Dying the Dark Knight returns and oh
Arkham Asylum, Oh my god. Arkham Asylum still makes me melt my brain
when I read it because I can just discover new stuff when I go back
to it, and of course the killing joke alls you what a time to
be twelve thirteen years old. It's renaissance, yeah, and you know to
this day it's because of that. But that show was funnies at the time.
In the mid eighties, people started taking comic books seriously, and it's
mainly due to Watchmen, But I argue that people were still saying this was
for kids until Batman blew up. So now all of the media that we
had been consuming as comic book readers, which was no longer a kiddy cartoon.
He was dealing with very adult issues and themes. Finally the rest of
America accepted it, but then we were dealt a horrible blow with Joel Schumacher.
But those don't matter because we're not talking about them right now. We're
talking about nineteen ninety two Batman, the animated series, which for the first
time in any media that Batman has appeared. You can tell the creators are
actually fans. This show deserves a lot of credit for keeping Batman in the
zeitgeist. It deserves a lot of credit for keeping a generation of kids younger
than me interested in the characters and stuff. Because of though Joel Schumacher movies
were so off putting, you know, and you know you can make the
argument then oh, I'm just being a fuddy duddy and this and that,
or I'm being you know, some kind of phobic or the other whatever,
because you know, they like Batman Forever takes a father son relationship and these
two guys who are the same age living together. Okay, I'm going wrong
with that, but it makes the relationship that I grew up with weird.
Yeah, it makes it weird to be when you don't hang on a lot
of biker bars, do you. I'm like, what kind of line is
that for Robbie to give Batman? And then the next one is awful too,
And it's too bad because all Cabra would have been great in a decent
Batman movie, and George Clooney, would you have been better? Because there's
a couple of scenes and that and that awful second one, or he's there,
there's a scene where he's because he him talking to to gras O'donnald is
more fatherly. They look older, you know, there's the age difference is
more apparent there and him yelling at him. I make the rules that we
live and you will by by them. I'm like, okay, And then
when he's with Alfred, I'm like, oh, okay, Yeah he deserved
he deserved Batman for Batman Begins or whatever, and Batman Begins, it kind
of sucks too. They are their pretentious There's one thing Batman can't be his
pretentious man. We just lost our one listener. I know, right,
you can't go against the Holy Holy Trilogy. I will argue that the scripts
for the for Begins and Dark Knight are pretty good. I don't like the
script for Batman Begins, but then I've never been a fan of Rasshak Ghul
and that whole plotline. I appreciate it's where he would come from, but
I don't need any more dealings with Rasha Ghul or his Ninja assassins. Yeah
that was you know, that was Denny O'Neil and Neil Adams attempt to James
Bond defy Batman a little bit, and it works in the comics, but
I and I don't have any trunck with it. But ultimately it's just I
want Batman in Gotham exactly what you just said. It turns Batman into an
international affair, like James Bond. That's fine, and it's fine that Batman
is with the Justice League. But for me, Batman in Gotham City with
his Rogues gallery. I don't need one thing more. Yeah that, I
love all of that other stuff. I love the super Friends, you know.
I would love to make up a Justice League film. I know how
to do it, I know what to do with it. But at the
end of the day, don't need any of it. The only thing that
I just Batman and Gotham and any other comic book heroes. I don't even
know. I just need Batman, I think is of the genre, it's
the most interesting, it's the most contemporary, and it's the most adaptable.
I mean, and I'm talking about to other media. I'm talking about to
the times. Batman comics can always be relevant for some reason or the other.
Superman always has to fight for his relevance. So there's always periods where
in time when you people are going, oh, why Superman, He's not
relevant anymore, and someone's got to come on, Superman's good because A,
B and C. Batman is always relevant. That's true. No one ever
has to go, hey, remember Batman now, and we're gonna forget him.
He's the best guy. He's got the car. There's the wish fulfillment
of it. To a certain degree, I can be batman. I don't
know anybody would want to, because losing a parent is the worst, and
there's all these other things, but I don't know. It doesn't seem like
a fun life. But it doesn't seem like a fun life at all.
No, he has chosen the hardest thing he can sensibly do. The only
guy who's really having a good time is Dick Grayson, and even he had
to go through hell. I bet Alfred's having a good time. He's at
least amused, right, And if you keep up with the comics, the
boy I raised and he called her by now he just calls him my boy.
What those comics really are at their heart about. It's about this kid
who lost his mom and his dad horribly, and here's this makeshift family that
he kind of builds for himself. You know. Yeah, it's about avenging
the night and all this other wonderful stuff, But there's an emotional heart at
it, and there's always that it doesn't matter how big the family is,
like in some iterations, just him in Alfred and other iterations. It's Batman
or Batman and Robin or Batman, Catwoman in Alfred or now Batman, night
Wing, Red Hood, Red, Robin, Barbara, Stephanie. It's the
dog's name Ace. His dog is Ace, and Damian's dog is is Titus.
Damien Wayne is a whole other facet. Okay, we could talk to
this universe forever, but we have to talk about mister Bruce Tim. So,
Yeah, Bruce Paul the actual architect. I guess the show roaders was
what they would be down. Yeah, Bruce Tim is technically the showrunner.
Paul Denis, story editor, Dan Rieba, glenmur A COMI. I think
you know that's a bunch of it. It's a lot a group of exceedingly
talented people given them the chance of a lifetime to make the ultimate Batman television
series, and they fucking did it. Not only as far as story goes.
They finally got plots correct, they got the characters correct, and they
made it gorgeous. Hand Drawn animation is a lost art and it was pitiful
on television. The best stuff you got you had to get from Japan.
Transformers and Gi Joe actually looked pretty good, but they were made by anime
studios, and they were made by the cheapest anime studios available. I mean,
the animation is not even great on them, but forget it. And
like key Man, the animation on he Man is awful, and it's too
bad because it's from fromation and filmation and a lot of good stuff in the
seventies. But by he Man, they're just phoning it in. Man,
it's like they have three or four rotoscope animation cycles for every character and then
that's what they go with. All the mighty houses have fallen by nineteen ninety
two, but thank god Warner Brothers. I remember driving I lived in Los
Angeles at the time, and I remember seeing the Batman, the animated series
billboard go up, which at the time was just the red silhouette of the
bat of his cowl. There's no verbiage on it. All I could think,
well, fucking something specials on the way. Yeah, I remember that.
A lot did that explosion, I mean a lot of it because of
Spielberg, right, because he influxed a lot of cash in the Warner Brothers
animation to do tiny tunes and animanias and stuff, and a lot of the
Batman staff came out of tiny tuons. Pauldineed, for example, came out
of tiny tuons. So all of these guys come together and the character models
are kind of my favorite of all time. Bruce Tim's style. If you
look at all of those character models, Yeah, he did all the character
models and his and the show of alved even with his own style a little
bit, and you know, it's all they started with. Who was the
designers on the show. He was a designer, comic book artist Kevin Nolan,
he was literally designer too. There's a couple other dudes, but Tim,
Bruce Tim was the main guy. Bruce Tim, I will say here
draws ladies better than any other animator. Every comic book artist has a problem
when they're drawing women. It's either they drop perfect body in a terrible face
or a perfect face and a terrible body. Bruce Tim can can. Bruce
Tim can do both. Who's that fine artist out now that does like all
those a lot of princes, like very sixties kind of stuff. Yeah,
Shag And the first time I saw Shag, I'm like, man, that
motherfucker's biting t bur Bruce him. That guy's that motherfucker. Shag is biting
Bruce Tim, because it's that kind of Bruce Tim. What I think he
gets it is he gets just the basic geometry too, like you know who
every character is without any color at all, but you mentioned the ladies.
He gets the shape, the triangle, the oval. You know, he
gets it. And I think his style translates so well to animation. You
know, people but the uninformed to call it cartoony, you know, but
no, it's efficient. It's like super Friends, they get away, they
try to get away with kind of more realistic looking, not realistic, but
more anatomically full. Yeah, closer to realism, closer to the comic book
than not. But to annimate that it's hard man. So you get a
lot of stiff people with just the Moutains movie. But with the Bruce Tenn
style, I mean they're able to be more fluid. I think because it's
there. They're basic shapes on the animation that's really revolutionary. Everybody's all that's
not going to work. It doesn't look it looks like a Disney cartoon,
and I think it is. I think his argument is like, well,
yeah, there's a reason why those work, and not only the character models
but the animation itself, and the color palette and the amount of shading and
shadow that goes into this. It's very that the noir influence is undeniable,
the influence from the Flisher Superman's. That was when they started. They said,
we want to do the Fleischer Batman. Basically, they want to do
something that was as handsome as those flags are Supermans and those flights are Superman's
are gorgeous, the most beautiful and all rotoscope too, by the way,
but very painstakingly, very expensive too. The best cheat on the Batman the
animated show is that all the backgrounds are in black paper. It gives it
life though, and I was rewatching it. You know, they've remastered it.
Now it's high daff and stuff, and you can really see the detail
on it, and it's magnificent. You can at this point you can almost
see the grain of the paper. It's it's gorgeous. It's just I want
to say, there's never been anything like it. But these guys kept chugging
on even after the series ended. The subsequent shows and you even see it
when this switch is the Superman. But even the New Adventures season three of
this show, a little lot lighter, no but paper for example, you
know, oh, they've discovered photoshop the color of them now and then by
the time in Justice League, they're you know, CG animating the big things
and all that stuff. And it's not their fault. It's just a budget.
People can'st to get hand of Barbara for their cheap style. But I
counter that they were the ones keeping animation alive. So pick your goddamn battles
TV animation because they did the Flintstones. Yeah, the Flintstones is cheaply animated,
but it was popular and it was on TV for a thousand years,
and you know, yeah, and Yogi Bear is really cheaply animated. Speak
of writing, we're talking about Paul Deani because very far into the first season.
First season has what sixty episodes, So if you haven't seen the show
available on Max right now, you better get going. There's one hundred and
nine total of the original show plus the other stuff. This is episode thirty
five, written by Paul Deany, directed by Dan Arriba and starring Kevin Conroy
as Batman, Mark Hamill is the Joker, Richard Maul as Harvey two Face,
Arlene Sarkin as Harlene quinzel A word about Harlene Quinzel and what I was
saying earlier about how each popular iteration of whatever media Batman happens to appear in
at the time tends to echo. Everyone loves Harley Quinn. She's been around
forever, right. No. Nineteen ninety two Harlen quinzell Arkham psychiatrist who becomes
the Joker's paramore and eventual lover of poison Ivy begins here from the pen of
Paul Deaniy the first they do. If you go back and watch some of
the old Outam West shows, there are proto Harley's on that Caesar o'd merrill
always had a girlfriend and stuff, and there was a couple, you know,
bimbo ones. But I can't believe this was like a one off character.
And Paul Deedy I think it was, or one of them was friends
with Arlene Zorkin and she was a soap opera actress and she had done an
episode in Harley gwent costume with kind of that voice, and now it's like
she's always been there. Yeah, and she's magnificent, And there are other
Harley's, but she's the gold standard. Also starring in The Penguin There have
been lots of great iterations of the penguin over the years, Burgess Meredith,
Danny DeVito, Robin Lord Taylor, now Colin Farrell. But I have a
soft spot in my heart for the voice of the penguin here, mister Paul
Williams, you know he's in my head when I you know when he's pretty
good. She doesn't have the raspiness that like Burgess Meredith had, which I
adore. But he's still playing that penguin. I believe this penguin doesn't lift
a finger if he doesn't have to. And I love the way he speaks.
I love his alliterations, his quotes, and your malicious decavations. I'm
like man, I love that. And the script very keenly observes all of
these characters to the point where, well, of course he's drinking a pot
of tea while they're playing poker, and of course Harvey two faces drinking coffee
with half and half. The episode itself, the plot is it finds Batman's
rogues gallery in the form of the Joker, Penguin, Killer Croc, Harvey
Dent, and Poison Ivy. I think Harley's in there, but she only
features into the story she features in the story. Yeah, initially I misremembered
this as them telling stories in prison, but no, they're in a bar.
But that's a traditional thing with Batman villains. I feel like the upper
echelon Batman villains tend to hang out with one another to a certain degree.
I feel like there should be a certain lose camaraderie with them. Okay,
they're not gonna invite Firefly, and they're not gonna you know, they're not
gonna invite killer Moth, you know or whatever, or tweetled up with tweetled
But if you the Joker and the Penguin, you know, And I feel
like they don't like inviting the Joker, but he's gonna go anyways. The
more modern, I guess iterations of some of these characters whether more than just
loonies that are on a caper, whereas now they're, you know, the
Scaracole kind of has the corner on the drug market. The Penguin kind of
feel like stealing the void of the mobsters in the town, and you know,
they all kind of have their long running rackets now, rather than the
way of the army before it would be just whatever random crime and this show
does it when you get to the Penguin stories, I'd put word out in
the underworld that I was gonna steal this rare bird and make the main or
whatever. I'm just like, what like the Bird Crimes the Aviary of Doom.
Paul Williams looks like you know, I know you're a big fan of
his. Yeah, so you know he If you're a young person listening to
this, you have no idea who the hell Paul Williams is. Well,
if you ever heard of the Rainbow Connection, you know Paul Williams. He
wrote all of them Uppet songs. If you were bored sometime, you know,
in the seventies or something like any time before or a little bit after,
this guy was like the go to, Like he was always pumping up
somewhere. If you watch something when you were a little kid back then,
Paul Williams in an inadvertently show up at some point, was a Muppet Show
or the A Team or the Dukes and Hazard he was gonna be a guest
on it. But he's this famous ass songwriter and singer, and he had
just a string of hits throughout the seventies. There's really a documentary on him
that I saw not long ago. It's huge in the Philippines, apparently well
for me. Paul Williams will always be Swan, the antagonist of Phantom of
the Paradise Brian to Palm was glam rock musical from nineteen seventy five. You
know, I've seen him perform a bunch of times. I will attend Paul
Williams huddle me up and sing a song directly to me because we had requested
the song and he had forgot to sing it on stage. He just huddled
me up and said, here, I'll do it for you. And if
you see him visually, he looks like the comic book Penguin, like he's
a little short diy Lit Shelby, and he put him in a tuxedo and
a big rubber nose. Man. He could have just knocked it out of
the park. If this had just been Batman, the series not animated,
he could have stepped into the role easily. So these guys all get together
that they have play poker, have some cocktails or whatever they're gonna do.
Joker's obviously getna cheat at cards. The first shot of you see him,
he's got all the cards fanned out in his hands at the same time.
Now Killer Kroc begins telling a story about Batman. It's important that Killer Kroc
is the one there it who was The actor is Aaron ken Kaid. He
was an American actor. He looks like he did a lot of the beach
party bingo movies in the sixties. He was actually pretty good too. I
look like the tenor of his voice when he talks, like, let me
tell you a story. I almost head Batman. I threw a rock at
him. This version of Killer Croc is great. I hate to default to
the character designs here being so fucking spectacular, but this is simply the best
Killer Croc of all time. And he's not even green, No, he's
gray and weird looking. He's a fucking creek. Now. The character Whaler
Jones is from the South. He's a black guy now. I think they
write him as a black dude now, But back then he was just you
know, studying on a comic book. Characters always evolve and stuff, especially
if you know their b listers and they and I liked him in that terrible
Suicide Squad movie. I liked the performance to a certain degree. And he
looked cool. But this is the best Killer Croc there's ever been like,
and he's stupid and he's but he's kind of lovable. They eat in the
in the season three they green them up in it. But he's got a
great episode of baby Doll and they like, you know, have a couple,
and it's really well done. It's a cool character. And I love
the way he plays out of this and how the other villains are very dismissing
him of him man and by the end of the episode, you really,
oh Man. Of course he's gonna use good Killer Crock. Killer Krock is
telling a story about he almost got Batman. He almost killed Batman, which
prompts a roundtable discussion from the Rogues Gallery of villains about their favorite or most
important time. I'm the one time where they almost killed Batman but he got
away. It's almost like they almost got him. And starting our tails is
the lovely Poison Ivy, who tells a tale about how she rigged an entire
pumpkin patch at Halloween time with poison gas. In the original script, evidently
this was supposed to take place at Christmas time, and she was supposed to
explode a Christmas tree killing everyone in the vicinity. Standards and Practices said,
Nope, can't do that. There there is I have a handy dandy Batman
the animated series Bible book. You know the overview of this of the series
by Pauldiny and famed graphic designer Chip Kid, which is really me. And
there's a drawing in there of the there's right here the standard of practices and
as you know, it's all the stuff that they couldn't do for our listeners.
Let me describe it. It is Batman and the Joker tussling. They've
broken through and are falling out a window. The Joker has a forty five
caliber pistol in his hand and has shot a hole through Batman. There's a
kid sitting on Batman, so that kid is in danger. There's a hypodermic
needle in the bottom of the frame falling out. There's also a bottle of
booze and top it off, Catwoman is on the bottom flying out the window
as well, and she's completely nick I really want to see this episode.
So like there's standards of practices, like you read the book, it's just
they were on them like white on Rice Man. They just would not let
them, so they had of course get creative and they snuck some stuff in
there. You know, something I always thought was like super industry interesting,
is so my family's left to you know, we're super Catholic, right.
I grew up with the Catholic school my whole life, and you know,
I'm a really you know, you know, lapsed. I guess I'm growing
up. But anyways, what I always what struck me about the show this
was the first place I had ever seen an actual priest on the show.
There was an episode about a gangster trying to go straight and his brother was
a priest, and you know, the very nineteen fifties movie kind of episode
that like, what other show are you going to get a super he shut
and I got a little treat this on this But the guy's brother was a
priest, not a parson, not a reverend, not like every other show
always had these generic So I feel like they kind of fried a little harder
with this show. They tried not to make a kid show. They just
tried to make a show that everybody would watch. They made a show that
they wanted to watch. They also get the regular citizens of Gotham right in
the form of Commissioner Gordon, Rename Ontoya, and particularly Harvey Bullock. These
are all mainstay characters. They're all major Batman and they were just background characters
at that point in the comic books. I think re Named Ontoya actually came
from this show, right, and now she's one of the main supporting casts
in the comics. Very weird because of the Dark Knight. That's clearly Renee
Ontoya and Harvey Bullock in that movie where she's the dirty cop and he's they're
both dirty cops or something like that, and it Dark Knight, but their
names are different, and I'm just like, why the fuck would you change
their name? Clearly John Nolan and go write some comic books and this is
what they came up with. So I like the script of that. I'm
like, I see there's a Batman movie in there, but it gets all
anyways. Rosie Perez ended up playing her in that weird Birds of Prey movie,
and that was a missed opportunity to get black Mask correct on screen,
and they just made him a spoiled rich kid, whereas black Mask is probably
the most terrifying Batman villain. He's really scared with a black Mask is Yeah,
he's a spoiled rich kid. Okay, he's a spoiled son of a
mobster who was jealous of his dad, so he killed his dad and then
made a skeleton mask out of the mahogany of the of his dad's casket and
then takes over the Gotham mob In my eventual Batman, we were gonna say
at this point, right, I'm gonna do it when I swear there's a
gang war if you did a Banguin in the black Mask, because those two
characters I don't think could exist in the same city. Okay. Poison Ivyes,
rigged some pumpkins. It actually kind of bothered me that she was using
play plants as the explosive device, Like it seemed like she wouldn't destroy plants
in any form. It's Gotham City. If you're a super villain, you've
got a you've got a drug guy making you the craziest shit imaginable. Yeah,
this is the every and if you notice in this episode the wacky drugs
are like I she's I've got this gas ready for Gotham City and my pumpkins.
The penguin has his poison. The humming birds with their wacky gas and
you know, wacky poison, and the Joker's got his joker thing. Batman
and Robin must be high just constantly throughout. There's a great there's a great
essay by Grant Morrison, who I think is hip and Denny O'Neil and Bill
Finger, those are the three great Batman riders. And Grant Morrison says that
you know, Batman's whatever, how old he is now, but you can
see it. You know, when he starts out, he's initially twenties.
He doesn't know what he's doing. He's got a gun for a little bit,
you know, but maybe no that he meets this kid, so he's
gonna lighten up a little bit. And by the sixties, you know,
the villains are using so much like hallucinogenic gases against them that they're actually seeing
the automatopoeia show up on because they're just hallucinting, so they see pow biff
and bash and all that stuff. So it's you know, and to a
point, ye, they all use that shit. They're always gassing Batman,
They're always this and that. It's just reader Hayworth. Yeah, and in
her flashback she's not wearing her tights. She's just in a bathing, so
she's barefoot. It's oh weird. They redesign her later, and what's funny,
the design here with the trench coat and the Casablanca hat will become a
major part of her character design henceforward, it's as important as the leotard,
the sexy version of her. Now you were going into the Harley, we'll
go back. We'll stick her back to a Poison Ivy on Harley. But
her redesign is actually one of the redesigns that I prefer. I love readA
Hayworth. Like I say, I'm a huge Horson Rolls fan, so obviously
I love readA Hayworth. The Poison Ivy in the later episodes, where she's
pale with the kind of green undertone and kind of almost gothy, really plays
well to the characterization of her. I think Poison Ivy moving forward in comic
media, not talking about Uma Thurman, but in comics and in the video
game certainly, I think that's the kind of direction they went. The next
story is the Penguin in his aviarya of Doom. What I really liked about
this is how silent Batman is, and he's silent pretty much throughout. He
could be cracking wise the entire time. Batman cracks wise with only Alfred and
the kid, you know. But you know, depends on your dynamic of
the kid. You know, if it's Dick, it's a little more looser.
If it's one of the younger ones, it's a little more dad like.
I do think that if I was writing him, you know what,
I give him a lot of not with the bad guys or with anybody else,
but among the family. I would write him with bad dad jokes.
Yeah to me. That so Batman is like this father figure to me work,
you know, with some mino background. But he doesn't he can be
equipping with the bad guys. You know that Spider Man's job. But if
you know that, there's a theme in the episode two in the death trap,
they've all got some crazy death trap and that is the number one Batman
one of the number one Batman troupes is he gets out of death traps,
he pulls that thing out of his butility about the last second, pull it
out of his ass in the last second, you know, and here you
know, he has he's got the pig. What I like about it is
that think was well, I thought psipating your genius moves here and getting out
of my death trap. Right, yeah, I know you're reaching for your
prepared and he talks, well, here's this ostrich with whatever that's gonna come
eat you. Like he's like Scaramanga, the man with the Golden gun.
He's just practicing and waiting to get his hands on bond. But he gets
out of it. He's Batman, that's what he does. But his method
here is birds with poison tipped beaks, birds that are slowly flying after Batman,
this heavily armored super vigilante. But Batman's solution is fucking ingenius. He
just turns the sprinklers on and it wints the birds down and they can't fly.
And that's what's so great about that Character's always love too. It's just
his ability to problem solve, you know, it just it's always that's all
right, I got this on Batman. The greatest innovation from The Dark Knight
returns Frank Miller's book was we finally got to hear Batman's inner monologue, which
is missing in the adamptation. But we'll get to that one night when we
cut to the next episode. Yeah, so for Batman fans, now we
know about what he's saying to himself. So even if you see him in
a silent scenario, you know the wheels are turning in there. There's something
that the Miller misses, I think, and I love the Miller. My
favorite Batman stories. That's when my first ones were Year one and Dark Knight
Returns, and then Grant Morrison's Archaemus Alumals were really like and of course killy
joke. But Miller's interior monologue is really good, but it's very hard.
Ones in Year one when he's writing the younger Bruce Wayne, I like the
vulnerable of him trying to figure it out and he's just no, I'm not
a killer. But the penguin. But the one thing I have to say
about the penguin, it is the most atypical I mean, it is the
most typical penguin story imaginable. Yeah, when you think about the penguin,
this is clearly it. The Bois and Ivy one is all right, but
it's not a traditional It's not a boys and Ivy story. Is she kisses
some powerful man into doing something to save the environment. But and at the
same time committed crime. The remarkable thing is each of the stories presented here
boil their character down to their basics, except Poison Ivy. And maybe this
is because it was in a pumpkin patch that it's jogging this sort of connection.
But that story should have been Scarecrow. There's no seduction part. There's
no part where she uses seduction in any way. It's just about blowing shit
up. And the thing is, and I think the character of Poison Ivy
really matured in all media because of this show, because she matures in her
episode too. They develop her a lot over the road of the show.
You know, I think she's very kind of one dimensional, and by the
end of it, you kind of understood, Look, she's got these plant
children and she cares about her children. Oh, I see her connection to
the you know, it's a little bit both, Yeah, and the teaming
here with Harley and realizing after all these years, Oh yeah, of course
she's gay. But of course poison it is gay. That was something like
she's so hyper sexual and in her powers and all that stuff. Of course
she doesn't love these guys. Yeah, and like when they got together it
was this of course, but it started as this weird sex fantasy, not
a weird sex fantasy, because it's a sex fantasy that I would have written
to a twenty something years old do. But it's just, hey, let's
get these two guys and these two girls in their underwear. Togain. I
like that her eventual acceptance of her homosexuality echoes backwards because in this one there's
tension between her and Two Face because they used to date. I wonder why
it didn't work out. She there was an episode, it was one of
her first episodes. She was dating Harvey Dent before it became Two Face,
and she was manipulating him and it was like in the early runs of the
earlier episodes, and she was, you know, using him as one of
the vict It's kind of incredible how influential. The more you get into it,
the more you look at all the characters and situations and everything like this
is informed Batman. The next story is the Two Face one, the Giant
Penny, and the penny, of course is common knowledge lives in that batcave.
You know, if you were a passing fan of the comics of the
TV show, you would always see these the trophies that Batman has in the
Batcave a Tyrannosaurus rex and a giant typewriter and a joker card, and there
was this giant penny. Most people believe that the penny comes from Two Face.
Not true. The penny originated in a nineteen forty seven issue I think
called the Penny Plunder, and that was a prop and that story and Batman
kept it. I think it worked so much better. It does work better.
And another death truck. Ah, Batman, I've got you tied to
this penny and I'm gonna flip this coin and smush you like good Lord Adams
could have been tied to that thing he sais literally, you know, I
think it was a fly swatter they were tied to on the sixties show or
something like that, you know. But again, that's a Batman trope.
Is a death trap. I love this is Richard Mole, by the way,
playing two Face. It's a great version of two Face. You know.
As a little kid, you know, I watched night Court, so
you know, wow, I haven't seen night Ball like it was that.
But he's so good because his two face before getting scarred is really just a
normal guy and it really does a lot of things with the voice. When
I find a music about the whole scenario is if the Penny Lane lands face
down, Batman's going to be squished, But if it lands face up,
he's going to be broken into pieces. Anyway, I've seen it online.
There's a you know, there's a million things on YouTube. Yeah, and
one of it was like, there's a psychologist trying to psychoanalyze these characters.
I don't think he even gets it right. I've been reading. I know
these characters better than the psychologist does. And he said, two face,
this thing is actually OCD And I'm like, that's part of it. And
Harvey Dend's a really rich character. They explored him a lot on the show.
They really go through the whole transformation with him. He's Harvey dead for
a while, then he becomes too. It's on a TV show. Now,
Harvey Dentz the guy, and he doesn't. He turns into Harvard into
two Face at the end of season two. And you've liked this guy,
you know all this time? Oh jeez, now he's his monster and you
know, for a sixty something and whatever, how many episodes they do this
show. That's pretty cool to develop on a kids show that much character development
and continuity like it's And the cool thing is that all the episodes still operate
as their own little individual short films. As serialized as it is, it's
really epistomic. You can still drop in anywhere. That's the neat trick that
these shows were doing on regular epis television. There was never any attempt at
a through line. So that's pretty neat. I mean, that's very sophisticated
for a show I think aimed essentially a teenagers in college kid. It's drafting
off of the success of the Batman film. Speaking of which, the theme
for this show, much like Star Trek Generation looked over at Star Trek the
motion picture and said, hey, you know that main theme you've got there?
I could I just take a look at it. I'm just gonna hold
it. No, I'm just gonna hold it here. On Batman the animated
series, they appropriated Danny Elfman's score, which you know, of course it's
brilliant. How can you not love it. What Shirley Walker ends up doing,
though, is pretty magnificent because she doesn't ate a score at all.
She likes she builds on it and makes it her own and I always are
her liking, really liking dum dum du dum dum du. The other thing
is just an echo of some other Batman because it's and it's majestic, and
it's and they do it in massive the phantasm with the choir. It's great
that lady, she got a lot of accolades for the show, but her
name should be more more well known. And I wish she had been able
to do films. The Batman films criminally underused because you know, I don't
want to. I don't like the bash on their filmmakers, so I want
to like, Oh, I don't like the louva movie Outo. But those
movies don't have a theme. There certainly hasn't been one memorable Batman theme score
in Batman and Nolan's defense, since The Batman, there hasn't been a memorable
superhero score either. Star Spangled Man for Captain America's pretty catchy. Okay,
all right, well that's fair. We ever heard the Who's Batman cover?
Okay, We're gonna listen to that later. Yeah, they do. They
have a cover of the sixties song that they dropped in the sixties, Batman's
Everywhere Man. That was what's cool about I think on our last podcast I
was on and I said that movies aren't cool. Yeah, but nineteen eighty
nine Batman was very cool. Prince was very cool. Prince had a whole
fucking album of it, and it's terrible and it's ridiculous and it's brilliant.
I love that album separately from the film, although I do like hearing it
in some of the backgrounds of the scenes and the opening they're playing the Future,
which you only hear briefly, But that's a fucking great song. I've
seen the Future and it will be. Oh yeah, I've seen the future
and it will be. I love that whole album and get shit on a
lot. But he was right. You can't convinced. My friend Todd Rowling
Cutter, and we were I think we were starting high school or the eighth
there or something. There's a talent show and I'm like, hey, let's
dress up like the Joker and Batman and act out the Batman. I want
to get laid. At some point in my life, I was trying to
direct, you know. Then I went as a Joker for that Halloween.
My aunt made me this gangster ass velvet like top, you know, the
tuxedo coat with the tails. Yeah, and I had some pajama pans and
my sisters. Man, I was a gangster. It was so cool at
the Flower that squirt water and shit, and it was the best. All
the movies had a cool song in it that's so seen, the manche song,
and Batman returns that YouTube banger from Batman Forever, and the worst Batman
movie has the best song, that Smashing Pumpkins song. Reading an interview,
he said, why did you do this movie? He's like, I like
Batman comic books, and I wrote a song about Batman. This so exactly
about Batman. So it's cool. But this episode is great because I love
it boils down all the characters and as you know, the two Face with
his coin and traditional because it ends the way ninety percent of all Two Face
movie appears. His end, Batman fucked with his coin. This is what
he pickpocketed the coin off of him. This is the first time I've ever
seen the coin damaged on the edge though. That's true because they needed it
to be. They needed to because I've got my little replica of the coin
in my bedroom. Still. It's the book The Pitch so it's very quick.
Essentially, he does something with the coin to fuck up two Face.
It's part in person. Like I said, each of these episodes so perfectly
encapsulates each of the characters without having to do it in twenty two minutes.
Not that any of these stories wouldn't be fine in a twenty two minute segment,
You Knows the Penny. After Batman escapes the penny in mid air,
it lands on the goons. But yeah, they don't kill the goons.
Oh it kills them. That coin slamming down on those guys. They are
at least never walking again. Batman didn't kill those people. Kamail nan Gianni
has this theory that Batman has a different definition of death than the rest of
us. But here's the thing with him and killing. It's like Batman's arch
enemy isn't the Joker. Archenemy is death. Batman's arch enemy is Bruce Wayne.
Maybe one of those is keeping him from being Batman forever. Well that's
the thing though, if he stops being Bruce Wayne, he's gonna fall into
this trap or just being that guy, and he needs to go out and
get laid. I don't like if Zack Snyder had him drink. Batman does
not drink, He does not smoke weed. He he does meditation. Like
everything he does is perfect. He only eats lead meats. Zack Snyder's whole
take on Batman is based off of Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns. But in
that story, but Bruce Wayne has been retired for years and years and that's
why he's drinking. His Bruce Wayne copes with his parents. He's absolutely quote
is like his Bruce Wayne copes with his parents' death banging women and drinking.
And I'm like, no, he comes with his parents' death by being Batman.
He doesn't do Batman halfway. I you know the things I like.
Ben Affleck's another actor. I think that would have been fine in a better
movie, because he's actually pretty good in the movie. I don't like what
his Batman's up to. I don't like that he's got wanting to kill people
and and you know whatever. But like when he's goofing off as Bruce Wayne
and then he's nice shoes, that's fucking great. And when he's in the
bat gave with Alfred, he's great. And he's even in the suit and
that fight scene is amazing. Yeah, but anyways, this show, on
the other hand, he's never off and this in this episode shows you how
well rounded and except Batman does all these ridiculous things in these episode and it's
all believable because the character, it's all part of his you know, makeup,
and you know, now we get to and each episode shows you the
villain more or less at their core. And of course, now the Joker,
the episode that short encompasses what the Jokers like. First gag was taking
over a radio station and telling I'm at a murder. This guy, the
Joker, takes over TV shows all the time. He does it in the
Roland movies, he does it in Love That Joke movies. The Joker understands
the power of media better than any other Batman velt. Yeah, he's the
show business guy. They've kind of turned the Riddler into that with the latest
film him taking over the broadcast airwaves. Yeah, but the Riddler, I
think is more about I like the Riddler with the death traps. They've gone
the extra fucking mile here, given us a television broadcast that is somehow more
consistent than Late Night with the Devil, where the Joker takes over the dark
Knighty Jernsys or TV show the Joker takes over and then that gets aped in
and the Woking Phoenix Tophilps movie Joker takes over the TV show. Yeah,
and oh there's Harley and again you know, Harley Guinn, this character that
was supposed to be a one off and they liked the design of like nostringerback
we I'm friends with this actress and that voice and that performance is ah,
what's you know? Like it goes from this to down and it makes you
believe that's not Harley's real voice. Harley talks like you or me, you
know. Okay, she might be from the you know, Brooklyn or the
Bronx or whatever, but she's a friggin I mean, she's a psychiatrist.
She's a medical doctor. She's got it. She went to If she's a
psychiatrist, then she's a doctor, you know, because there's a difference between
a psychologist and a psychiatrist. And psychologists you get a PhD and you just
do therapy. A psychiatrist really just gives you plays. Some of them do
the therapy so they know what pills to give you, but for the most
part, they just give you bills. She was a clinical psychiatrist that worked
in an insane asylum and who was an Olympic alternat or something. She was
that girl you went to high school with it. You never saw it because
she was always away at some tournament or something. She was this overachieving perfection
like you. They don't explore that enough. The last episode of the series,
Madlove delves right into it, and it's based in a great comic too,
by these guys, by these guys, and they finally give you what
she's about. Ultimately, she's the star almost of this entire series because but
you don't care. She's such a delightful character, and you know what,
it doesn't feel anything but natural. I've got kind of a criticism of the
fucking Star Wars universe. And I know I'm not the first person to say
it, but that fucking cowboy had a guy, Dave Faaloni slowly sticking all
of his characters into every fucking possible media, cementing his place in the universe.
It's like, we get it, man, you didn't create Star Wars,
but you're goddamn gonna make sure we remember your name. I never felt
that way about Paul Deny or Bruce Tim They kept building characters, and it
just kept happening, and it just kept getting better, and they kept any
new character they created was equally good as the ones that were already there.
Also, another thing is that characters that are invented, that are created for
outside media rather than the comic books always suck. Right, Who the fuck
is Matt Shrek not Stretcher but black? He should have been that They could
have rewritten him as an industrialist who, by the end of it is worrying
his black skull mask because they would have been. Now he's just got a
superhircut. And he's named after a German silent film star that only was in
one movie because he was really a vampire. But that's in a whole other
That's a whole other thing. And Harley's a character that I should hate right
like that, as a devotee of the comics that I learned how to read
on or whatever and raised me as a fault you know, has played that
pother figure because of that comic book. She's awesome. I was a kid.
I was working at the Warner Brothers studio store and I worked on the
art gallery and in nineteen ninety three or whatever. So were my first jobs
ninety four, ninety five, whatever it was. You know what, Harley
shit Be sold the Little Statues a couple hundred dollars. She was two years
old, that character and already a phenomenon. And the reason why is that
even though she's the Joker's girlfriend, Harley's not a murderer. Really. I'm
sure she's killed a bunch of people, but at her heart, he's not
evil, right, She's misguided, and she's a lot like Bart Simpson.
Let's be real. She'll feed you to hyenas Mart Simpson the ten year old
equivalent of because they're pure id. They're just pure id impulse. Harley's gonna
do it for you. Speaking of perfect casting, the final segment belongs to
the Joker, and you can't get much more perfect casting than this. Mark
hamil Mark Hammill's a genius, man. I think he's one of the finest
character actors out that you know. And I think we were robbed of a
really delicious movie career from him because, you know, Milosh Foreman didn't want
to cast them Skywalker in Amadeis or everybody just saw Luke Skywalker and didn't want
to give him a shot after Star Wars, and I'm like, you watch
Star Wars. He's really good at that, Like he's a spoiler, Brad
and the first one and by the last one, she's the most unbelievable badass
in the galaxy. And you buy him defeating going up in the Emperor and
this little tidy. He was a little bigger than Michael J. Fox doing
all of this. Geuse's a good actor and you buy that shit, and
all we get is Corvette Summer. Mean, come on, I was excited.
Remember Slipstream Luke Skywalker in a different space outfit with funky blonde hair.
Jim Curry's joker just didn't cut the mustard for these guys. And then they
read Mark Campbell went in just because he wanted to be a part of it.
And he read a character in Heart of Ice. He reads dagged or
when there's a Daggon on the show, he reads the antagonist that causes Victor
Freeze to become mister Freeze. I've heard that, Tim Curry. It's not
bad, you know. I would have liked to have seen a live action
Jim Curry. He would have been dynamic man. He would have been amazing.
He would have gotten the fact that the Jokers a showmen, and he
would be give you a song and dance and you never know what he's gonna
do next. And you know, had he continued in the part, we
were going to get a lot of singing episodes, Yeah, we weren't going
to get a lot of singing jokers. Much loved to Tim Currey. I
mean, we all love Tim Carrey, but you listen to Mark Hampbell,
and when Mark Hamill does is to find what the joker sounds like. I
think everybody listens to everybody kind of does an impression of him. Even Keith
Ledger to a certain degree, kind of gets into that little neighborhood, that
kind of low Gravelly neighborhood that Mark Hamill sometimes visited, and he voices him
like a looney to his character almost other times like he does every word is
a meal to this guy, and like he's an actor over actors dream almost
like I can you can just cut loose with it. And the chemistry that
he develops with Kevin Conroy over the years is magnificent. They were so good
together. Yeah, because when I hear Batman and anything that's that's a voice
I hears Kevin Conroy's obviously, you know. Oh, the episode Batman escapes
the Joker's Crazy DEATHTOPI is a catwoman and he and the Jokers all these I
almost got him, but Batman got aways. Yeah, but I got Catwoman
tied up in a cat food factory downtown and I'm gonna send him a nice
bag of cat food tomorrow. I got but then Killer Croc starts talking.
So it's Batman disguised as Killer Croc. This is why cartoons ultimately and are
the best medium for this kind of shit. There's that reveal, So that's
the shot. It's a profile or three quarter profile on Killer Crock with the
swinging overhead lamp swinging off, and in the shadow it becomes Batman and swings
back as Killer Crock and in the shadow it's Batman again. It's painstaking,
it costs money, but they fucking did it because it was absolutely appropriate,
just spectacular man. And it turns out rips off his mask and Batman's there
and everybody at the bar is a cop. My favorite part of this whole
thing is that Batman gets his most hated villains to give him information by asking
them each to tell a story in which Batman is the hero, such a
great idea that is the equivalent of a Batman wise crack. And then of
course at the end, him and Katwomen are up on the roof, you
know, he's got her rescued and she's trying to get into his pants and
he's having none of it. And then ultimately it's about how Catwoman almost got
almost got him, and ultimately she did so, and they're doomed to be
on again, off again, on again, off again until they decide to
stop doing what they do for a living. That is the end of Batman
the animated series Almost Got Him, I think arguably one of the best episodes
of the series. Yeah, it's really good. This is going to amount
to the end of part one of our discussion of Batman. We've talked about
Almost Got Him in on our next episode, we're going to be discussing his
further adventures in Legends of the Dark Knight, which I cannot wait to talk
about. We're going to get really into the nuts and bolts of the different
Batman artists and their different styles and the various iterations of Batman through the decades,
because That's what Legends of the Dark Knight is all about. Yea,
everything bends and they really adapt different looks and different styles, and for God's
sakes, Michael ironside and dark Man returns Batman, Let's not forget Michael McKean.
What are you working on? Where can people find you? Antonio Lapo
or Well? You can find us that my company, Swamp Media Group at
swap Media Group dot com. And you can watch my feature film Space Detective
over at our sister site, Spacedetectivemovie dot com. I'll work it on a
couple shorts. It'll be out later this year. You can find everything I
do at Weirdingwaymedia dot com. I have a couple of shows over there,
Dark Destinations or radio drama I write and produce. And you can hear me
on HP's show Night Mister Walters, a taxi podcast. Until next time,
try to enjoy the daylight midnight viewing. The Horror Anthology podcast is a proud
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