Great dramatists are great and versatile lawyers. They make the best case possible for each of their characters. The Batman movies are not good dramas. Tim Burton is not a good lawyer. Christopher Nolan, Todd Phillips, and Matt Reeves should be disbarred.
Burton’s villains are perverse freaks. The wild fetishism of Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman demands admiration, but Jack Nicholson’s Joker and Danny DeVito’s Penguin are cut-out grotesques. The villains in Nolan’s trilogy, produced in the decade following 9/11, are quasi-military terrorists, not one of whom would ever be mistaken for a freedom fighter. The more recent takes on the Rogues Gallery—Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker and Paul Dano’s Riddler—suggest a different set of real-world evils, both of them banal: the incel and the mass shooter.
Can the superhero genre—a genre predicated on the good vs. evil binary—do the work of great drama? Yes, and it has, several times in the comics, and at least once on television, in Batman: The Animated Series, which premiered on Fox in 1992. The show, which borrows freely from Citizen Kane and film noir, is remarkable for its aesthetics. Like Sam Spade, its Batman is only a degree less troubled than his villains.
And those villains are extraordinary tragicomedians. The show’s version of the Joker, unlike Heath Ledger’s, is a man, not a symbol. Mark Hamill’s raspy huff rises to a whiny falsetto within a single line; he is enjoying his perversions, and his disappointments register on his elongated face. He conjures the same sympathy one would grant any unhappy child. Baby Doll, a retired child actress debilitated by a physical condition, retreats into a demented version of the character that made her famous. Mr. Freeze, entrapped in a sub-zero suit, robbed of his beloved wife, has accepted a fate which denies him physical touch. He responds in turn by actively denying his obvious humane instincts.
It requires a particular magic to capture abject loneliness in a genre defined by silly costumes and power fantasies, to make loneliness something both human and superhuman. Baby Doll stares straight into a funhouse mirror where she sees the sophisticated adult woman she can never become. Mr. Freeze sits alone in his frozen cell, contemplating a woman twirling in a snow globe, the image of the wife he cannot save. With only a few notable exceptions—among them “It’s Never Too Late,” an episode in which Batman successfully works on the conscience of an aging drug kingpin— the show acknowledges the fear that we will never be any better than what we are now, that in the end, we are all alone with ourselves.
“Mad as a Hatter” tells the story of Jervis Tetch—here voiced by Roddy McDowall—a hideous man. He falls in love with his assistant Alice, who is herself in love with what we would now call a Chad figure. Tetch becomes the Mad Hatter, and his plot involves mind control, both of random citizens of Gotham, whom he dresses up as foot soldiers borrowed directly from Lewis Carroll, and of Alice herself, whom he transforms from a sweet young woman into an automaton. Batman, as always, wins the battle. In the episode’s final moments, the Mad Hatter lies defeated, trapped under rubble, left to look on as Alice falls into the arms of her lover. McDowall recites the doggerel of the “Lobster Quadrille” with quiet resignation born of frustrated sexuality: “Would not, could not, would not, could not, would not join the dance.”
This is more than a proto-incel fantasy. The Mad Hatter is doomed; as Batman says, even if he had won the battle on his own terms, he would not have joined the dance. And he is of a piece with the show’s other villains, victims either of capitalist overlords, psychosis, self-loathing, bullying, or simply the cruel laws of human existence.
In “Birds of a Feather,” the Penguin attempts to reinvent himself, not as a crime boss, but as the sophisticated fellow he believes himself to be. After his release from prison, he returns to a now empty criminal hideout, where he is greeted by Batman who informs him he is under the detective’s surveillance. “Just what I need,” the Penguin says, “a bat in my belfry.” Meanwhile, Veronica Vreeland and Pierce Chapman, a high-society couple, plot to convince the Penguin to attend one of their soirees. It’s Gotham City’s version of radical chic.
The show’s creators wanted to model the Penguin on the version played by Burgess Meredith in the 1960s television show, a dandy with a monocle, top hat, and long coattails. But Warner Bros. had toys to sell, and they ended up designing a version based on what was then the most recent live-action iteration of the character, the mutant version played by DeVito. This Penguin is short, enormously rotund, with flippers and a long-beaked nose. The creators found a way around the problem by casting Paul Williams, who endowed the character with a posh manner and precise diction, at odds with his physical appearance, thus marking him as a permanent aspirant.
“Penguin was actually trying to go straight and I took the view that Batman was the villain in that show,” the episode’s director Frank Paur told me. “He couldn’t see the change in him. He would just show up and tell him, ‘I’m going to wait for you to fuck up and then I’m going to beat the shit out of you.’” The show’s version of Batman has several motivations—a devotion to justice, comfort with a life of violence, a belief in civic duty, a commitment to noblesse oblige, a horror of death, a need for solitude, a fear of loneliness, and an insatiable intellectual curiosity. He spends most of the episode at a watchful remove. He is fatalistic, and knows this story won’t end well, but he wants to see how it will all play out.
The Penguin is only half-delusional. He plays the role of a proper gentleman, forcing his portly body to stand as straight as possible. Vreeland takes him to a fine restaurant where he horrifies fellow diners by swallowing raw fish whole, and to the opera where he stands in the balcony and howls along with Pagliacci. She compliments his “rapacious wit” and calls his long beak a “fine Roman nose,” eliciting from him a sweet boyish smile. She grows to like him, particularly after he saves her from ruffians in an alleyway; he notes that he associated with a “much higher class of riff-raff” in his criminal career. He has a genuine flair for old-fashioned chivalry, a quality lacking in her world.
At the actual party, the Penguin shows up with a necklace which he hopes to gift to Vreeland. Batman appears just one more time. Love has changed him, the Penguin declares. But of course, it has not. When he overhears Vreeland and Pierce talk about their actual plans for the Penguin, he grows enraged, falls back on his true nature, and seeks revenge. The denouement, and the Penguin’s humiliating defeat, occurs at the opera house. As he is taken away, Vreeland tells him that in truth, she really had grown fond of him. “I suppose it’s true what they say,” he tells her, in an attempt to regain a semblance of dignity. “‘Society is to blame.’ High society that is.”
Batman himself has contempt for the class into which he is born—as well as a willingness to take advantage of his privilege. Unlike his enemies, he can pass. It’s not that hard for him to maintain a secret identity. According to Brynne Chandler, who collaborated on the script, the original dialogue was different. It was Batman who enjoys the final word, and who offers the Penguin comfort, and, with his trademark irony, a sense of solidarity. “It’s for the best,” he says. “She’s not our kind, dear.”
The actor who would have spoken these words was Kevin Conroy, who found inspiration for his performance in a past as traumatic as Bruce Wayne’s. A gay man, born in 1955, he had grown up in a stern, Irish Catholic household, the son of an abusive, alcoholic father who committed suicide, and the brother of a mentally ill sibling. He trained at Julliard, but despite his great talent, his sexuality cost him major roles.
He had bigger problems. The early part of his career coincided with the first decade of the AIDS crisis, and he spent many hours by his friends’ deathbeds, all while remaining the primary caregiver of his mentally ill brother. When he discovered the firm, raspy voice that became his trademark, he was hit by a sensation. “It seemed to come from thirty years of frustration, confusion, denial, love, yearning,” he wrote in an autobiographical comic published shortly before his death in 2022. His Batman, accordingly, is no slummer and he has empathy for all his foes.
Batman: The Animated Series was meant to appeal to a wide audience. Action narratives for the kids. Innuendo and satire for the adults. But none of the above eludes the former’s intelligence. Children have a more sophisticated sense of humor than they are often credited with, and they have an acute knowledge of pain.
The simple, terrible question in Batman: The Animated Series is pre-political. Will you be all that different at 50 from what you were at five? The child fears that nothing will get better, and the adult recognizes that their eccentricities can at best be tempered and their failings managed. Superhero stories have a habit of mistaking a certain concept of “dark”—ultra-violence, graphic sexual assault, dorm-room philosophy, Holocaust references—for “serious.” Batman: The Animated Series is quite serious, and it swallows whole the implications of the saddest convention of the superhero genre: most heroes remain heroes, and villains, villains. “Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law / My services are bound.” In the early 1990s, it was the rare show that stood up for its audience of bastards.
Wonderful article! Thank you.
Yes, wonderful article that I’ve already passed on to several folks who might not have encountered it otherwise. Amazing how well an animated TV show gets what blockbuster movies just blow past.
Well written sir!
Even with all the acknowledgement over the years, B:TAS still has not diminished in stature, quality or relevance. The decision to depict a retro-futuristic Gotham with complex characters was not taken lightly and the result remains a high watermark in ‘childrens’ animation. Like justice, good writing will prevail.
If I had to pick a favorite, I think it would be Clayface. No doubt the excellent shapeshifting animation, the theme music by the great Shirley Walker, and the voice of the equally great Ron Perlman certainly drew me to the character, but he was also written with such wickedness and insecurity. Yet, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the poor bastard. As did Batman, who tried to help him find a cure. Good on ya, Bats. We have to try.
Regarding the Joker, see the classic episode, “The Man Who Killed Batman.” Wanting proof that Batman was actually dead, the Joker has his gang pull a heist to see if he’ll show up. When he doesn’t the Joker appears genuinely despondent, and orders the gang to return the loot, saying, “Without Batman, crime has no punchline.”
It’s not about the loot or the mayhem, it’s the performative, near-ritualistic battle that matters. And, later, during his “eulogy,” he muses on how he’d imagined finally doing in Batman (“Cyanide pie in the face? Exploding whoopee-cushion playfully planted in the Batmobile?”) and mourning how that ultimate triumph was not denied him.
“Well, that was fun! Who’s for Chinese?”
Interesting observation that B:TAS’s Joker is more human than other versions. I guess I can see that. Of course, he was a poorly written character in his first few episodes in production order (“Christmas with the Joker,” “The Last Laugh,” and “Be a Clown”), but once Paul Dini came aboard with “Joker’s Favor,” he gave the Joker an unforgettable characterization. What’s interesting about Dini’s Joker is what a pathetic bully he is. He delights in causing pain and humiliation to others, but can’t stand being the butt of the joke himself. And of course, by creating Harley Quinn, Dini developed the idea of the Joker as an abusive boyfriend, fitting right in with his malignant narcissism. I suppose all of that does make him a more grounded, realistic character than the comics’ criminal defined by either his eccentric comedy-themed crimes (in the Silver Age) or his arbitrary homicidal insanity (in later iterations; the Joker of the 1940s was homicidal but not insane). It’s a more recognizable, everyday form of evil, grounding his extravagant criminal schemes and flamboyant presentation.
“The show’s creators wanted to model the Penguin on the version played by Burgess Meredith in the 1960s television show, a dandy with a monocle, top hat, and long coattails.”
Rather, they wanted to model him on the Penguin from the comics, of whom Meredith’s Penguin was a fairly faithful interpretation. The comics Penguin’s defining trait was that he was a funny-looking, seemingly harmless little man whose appearance masked a ruthless criminal mastermind. The tragedy of Batman Returns is that Danny DeVito would’ve been an ideal choice to play a comics-accurate Penguin, rather than the grotesque mutant Burton turned him into.
I’ll counter-argue this one:
The writer of Batman Returns went on the record as having no interest in hewing accurately to the comics. Likewise they deliberately made him animalistic to ensure suitable presence alongside the other main characters.
For me the Penguin in Batman Returns is a grotesque Dickensian villain. Alongside the tragic abandonment mirroring Bruce Wayne there’s a touch of both Shylock and Fagin in the way he’s portrayed.
When the movie first released I had a wonderful debate/drink session with a fine bunch of folks (RIP Douglas Hill) on this subject. The assembled writers were keen to discuss the influences they perceived in the movie; the Bible (sins of the fathers), Shakespeare (Shreck the wealthy industrialist), class war, Kafka, neo-fascism and aspects of female emancipation came up a lot. Strangely, nobody thought the movie suffered from a lack of Jack Nicholson.
On a recent rewatch I came away thinking that the movie was still good but suffered from overcharacterizing, and oversympathizing with, the villains. This is something that we see a lot more of nowadays c.f. endless explorations of the Joker’s psyche where he can’t simply be a clown-themed boy-man as he is in B:TAS. I think this says much about the viewers’ investment in having these characters taken ‘seriously’.
“The writer of Batman Returns went on the record as having no interest in hewing accurately to the comics.”
How is that a counterargument? It’s exactly the point, that they chose to take the character in a completely different direction. What I’m saying is that if different filmmakers had chosen at the time to make a movie about a comics-accurate version of the Penguin, I can think of few actors who would have been as perfect for the role as Danny DeVito. He looked the part, and he could play both meekly comic figures like the Penguin’s public facade and menacing scoundrels like his true self. (Bob Hoskins would also have been on my short list.) So I find it ironic that they cast DeVito as a character he would’ve been perfect for as he and it already existed, yet instead transformed both character and actor beyond recognition.
Thank you for your gentle correction, and even more so for your astute take on the Joker. I think what we are building to is not just an idea of the Joker as an embodiment of what we now call toxic masculinity, but even more the “pathetic” villain. In the end, his motivations are petty, marked by ego, a desire for power even over those no confident person would need to dominate, best portrayed indeed in “Joker’s Favor.” If he ever stood before a good judge, the most damning indictment would be not “You have terrorized Gotham City long enough,” but “It’s all smoke and mirrors. Your just need to grow up.” It’s an idea worth exploring. Chris: Write that essay!
What bugs me about Batman is that most of the villains who are treated as “insane” in the comics (so that they get sentenced to Arkham Asylum with its revolving door rather than actual prison or worse) do not meet the legal definition of insanity. The Joker is unquestionably legally sane; he’s aware of objective reality, and he knows his actions violate the law and harm others. He just doesn’t care. He’s psychopathic, not psychotic. I think malignant narcissism is probably the best description. (It’s an interesting coincidence that the joker playing card was created to be a… trump card.)
That’s always been in the back of my mind too. The most “insane” things about any of these villains is the fact that they wear costumes and develop obsessions with birds, riddles, or clowns. Has anyone ever met members of criminal organizations? There’s a long history of criminals adopting nicknames and, unwisely, cultivating their personas. Batman himself is pretty convinced of his foes’ moral agency.
There’s even a 1950s Batman comic where the Joker pretended to be insane to get himself committed to an asylum so he could contact an expert forger there (I think it was), and Batman and Robin foiled his scheme by proving him legally sane. It wasn’t until the 1970s comics turned him back from a colorful thief into a serial killer that he began to be defined as “insane.” But they still took enormous liberties with what that term actually means. (Insofar as it means anything; it has a legal definition but not a medical one.)
“Batman himself is pretty convinced of his foes’ moral agency.”
Is he? There are quite a lot of stories where Batman wants to get his foes the help they need and see them rehabilitated or cured, and a lot of stories (particularly in B:TAS) where he sympathizes with their motives but still has to stop them from harming others.
You’re right…even then there’s often a lot of grey area. “We can get you the help you need” mixed with “Don’t you see what you’re doing?” and “I sympathize with you but with your victims more.”
Batman’s overarching goal is to prevent people from being hurt by crime, but he’s smart enough to know that rehabilitating criminals is the best way to prevent them from committing future crimes.
Although there’s that great bit in the Harley Quinn animated series where Harley (who’s just learned that Batman is Bruce Wayne) suggests to him that funding affordable housing would be a better crime-prevention method than beating up criminals, and the sheltered billionaire asks in surprise, “People pay for housing?”
Many of the series’ writers continued to explore the characters in the various spin-off comics, notably Gotham Tales. There’s a story I can’t presently put my hand to in which Riddler, having been rehabilitated as a successful game designer, isn’t the villain at all, but compulsively feeds clues to Batman exposing other peoples’ crimes.
Paul Dini did a cool arc in the mainstream Batman comics (i.e. not in the animated continuity, but in the “actual” DC Universe as it existed at that point between wholesale timeline reboots) where the Riddler went straight and became a private detective. He was still competing to outwit Batman, but as a rival crimefighter rather than a criminal. Although, this being comics, it didn’t last indefinitely.
Interesting! I’ll have to hunt that one down as well.
Dini’s run is collected in the trade paperbacks Batman: Detective, Batman: Death and the City, and Batman: Private Casebook.
Those are excellent but don’t miss out on Dini’s work in the Batman: Streets of Gotham books, collecting the short run of the monthly series by that name, penciled by Dustin Nguyen and inked by Derek Fridolfs, which pick up from their work together on Detective. (Nguyen turned in some great watercolor covers as well.) Edit: I have to admit that those don’t stand on their own as well, though, as they’re part of the Batman: Reborn era that saw Dick Grayson taking up the mantle with Bruce Wayne supposedly dead and tie into the earlier Hush storyline.
It seemed to me, as I tried to enjoy various live-action and comic-book Batman reboots before giving up, that the people making those movies and comics treated Batman as a power fantasy. I mean, so does the animated series, but the power fantasy in B:TAS is “What if I had the power to just keep on trying, keep on hoping, keep on having compassion, in this crazy world that demands violence and fear, and that was my first option before kicking butt?” The animated Batman walks up to a super-powered villain and offers to sit with her so that she won’t be alone. The animated Batman has to take Harlequin back to inpatient care because she isn’t coping with de-institutionalization, but he makes sure she gets the dress she was just trying to buy. The Goddamn Batman would never.
I fell out of love with Batman when the only version we were allowed of him was the soldier in a war on crime who is completely closed off to everyone else. Rewatching B:TAS I was reminded that that didn’t really set in till the very end of the 90s.
This general trend also allows Killer Croc to stand out as more than just another gimmick villain. While he plays the “poor, tormented soul” card on occasion, he’s just a jerk and a crook. Pairing him with Baby Doll in her second appearance was brilliant, because he was totally comfortable in his scaly skin and not even a little traumatized, while she assumed he was just as much a victim of his appearance as she was (something he cheerfully took advantage of, because he is a JERK).
I still love B:TAS! Andrea Romano deserves huge credit for perfect voice casting with Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill, frequently voted by fans as the best Batman and Joker, respectively. And of course–Arleen Sorkin. Paul Dini and Bruce Timm did amazing work, not least by creating Harley Quinn, a character I’ve loved since her first appearance, through her many iterations. Great article, thanks.
Well, maybe there is a point: freedom fighers are not quasi-military terrorists.
Sometimes they are, though. Terrorism is a tactic, not an ideology. It’s a tactic used by groups that can’t afford tanks and missiles, that are greatly overpowered by the opposition and have to resort to sneak attacks and psychological warfare. Both the Americans and the British used terrorist tactics in the Revolutionary War. The French resistance in WWII, the original Maquis after which the Star Trek group was named, used guerrilla tactics against the Nazis and the Vichy government and were considered terrorists by same. In Trek, of course, the Bajoran resistance used terrorism against the Cardassian occupiers. The TV series V and Falling Skies both depicted heroic humans using terrorist tactics against alien occupiers of Earth. Yes, sometimes it’s the powerful and dominant who terrorize the weak, but that’s the difference between bullying and self-defense. The tactic is one thing, the purpose for it is another.
Certainly if they were going for al-Qaeda analogues, then those characters couldn’t be considered freedom fighters. Al-Qaeda corrupted the language of jihad (an explicitly defensive principle) as an excuse for acts of aggression and ideological imperialism. But that was not about terrorism in general, it was about their own motivations for using it.
This article is beautiful. I grew up with BTAS, and it really struck a note with me. Even at 13, I understood that Batman was more than just a man in a bat cape and mask. I was moved by the villain’s tragic backstory and shocked at how Bruce’s past and Dick’s past was written with such depth and emotion I could only watch them twice.
The voice of Batman legendary Kevin Conroy made the entire series for me. He made Bruce/Batman real. He was flawed, made mistakes, was vulnerable, and more than his privileged past. He treated people without his privilege with dignity.
He used his wealth to help people. It was amazing to watch at my young age, and it instilled a value in me that is still there decades later.
He was also very fortunate to have a surrogate father in Alfred, a badass in his own right, too.
Because of the various elements that made Batman “appeal to a large audience,” including me, a woman of color with two children, now one is grown and the other a teenager. I introduced them to Batman, and they were able to also see more than just a mere cartoon, shows the diversity of the writers and also Bruce Wayne (Kevin Conroy)
I also agree with the writer of this article beautiful about the Batman movies. I watched the first two, and that was it for me.
The rest were foolish none, sensical tripe. Clearly meant as a cash grab and nothing more. I did try to like the Batman movie with Christian Bale, but nothing compared with Micheal Keaton.
I know my thoughts are everywhere, but I was moved by this article and the damn near poetic way Mr. Morgan presented this observation of a, in my opinion, animated masterpiece (I’m also mad jealous you have the extraordinary opportunity to sit and drink tea with the living legend George Takei. I was also enamored with Mark Hamil as Luke Skywalker and his other acting and voice acting roles he’s played. I was a trekkie too with again IMHO, Patrick Steward is the best between him and William Shatner. I also think Mr. Steward was the best and only choice for Professor X. Sorry, TMI)
Again, I enjoyed your article, sir.