The Batman Review: The Clayface of Tragedy (S1E13)

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Original Airdate: May 7, 2005
Writer: Greg Weisman
Director: Seung Eun Kim

And now, I suppose, it’s time to talk about these guys.

Despite my fondness for (most of) Batman’s rogues gallery and my obsession with nitpicky little details, the name Clayface has always left me kinda cold. Part of it probably has to do with how I usually don’t like Batman’s villains to be genuinely superpowered, but mostly it’s because the character gives off the feel of that one “meh” movie that just kept on pumping out sequels even when no one was asking for any.

I mean, shit – even I couldn’t bring myself to care any more after the fifth one popped up, and if my ten-second glance at the Wikipedia page is right, twice that many people have now worn the name. If you’re really curious, here’s a quick overview of the first five.*

• One was Basil Karlo, an old-timey horror actor gone cuckoo and one of the earliest Batman villains. Just a standard knife-wielding maniac until he conned some sweet, sweet shapeshifter blood out of Three and Four. If Clayface pops up in any Batman story published after the ’90s, you can usually bet it’s this guy.
• Two was Matt Hagen, all-around generic thug and the first one to have actual shapeshifting powers. Lent his name to That Other Show’s Clayface and his powers to Three, but not really remarkable beyond that, unless you want to talk about how he was one of the few villains to get adapted into Jiro Kuwata’s ’60s Bat-manga.
• Three was Preston Payne, generally thought of as the most (potentially) interesting of the bunch. In a nutshell: genius scientist born with facial disorder, tried to make himself pretty by getting a blood transfusion from Two, it went horribly wrong and turned him into a monster whose touch melts flesh into protoplasmic goo. Kind of a precursor to the modern version of Mr. Freeze, super-strong exoskeleton and all. Also, he had a story written by Alan goddamn Moore, so check that out quick if you haven’t already.
• Four was Shondra Fuller, who… I don’t really know much about, since I’ve yet to start reading Mike W. Barr’s Outsiders run (though one quote – whose source I can’t place right now – claims that Barr went out of his way to give familiar villain names to totally new characters). Generally has the same power-set as Two, eventually got together with Three.
• Five was Cassius Payne, the kid of Three and Four (I don’t quite remember how they did it, and I’m not sure I want to revisit it). The most heroic least evil of the bunch (I think) and got experimented on a bunch by the men in black (I think).

Mind you, none of the above is really essential to understanding this Clayface, since most people (including, I reckon, The Batman‘s showrunners) are chiefly familiar with the version from That Other Show. That fellow boasted a dramatic two-part origin featuring some of the most gorgeous animation in the history of Batman, though I don’t really know anyone who considers him That Other Show’s most interesting villain. Or even its most interesting villain whose name ends in “-face”.

“Denied second place AGAIN?! Someone will pay for this!”

Still, he was almost certainly the most interesting take on Clayface circa 1992. Now, however, we’re in the wonderful world of 2005 – and I figure it’s time that the younger, upstart challenger got a second look…

The Batman Review: The Rubberface of Comedy (S1E12)

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(FURTHER DISCLAIMER: The author of this blog will engage in massive amounts of fanwank about tangentially related topics about halfway through this review. If such things make you sick to your stomach – and really, who could blame you? – it is recommended that you skip the paragraphs between the first shot of the carnival and the final page of The Killing Joke.)

Original Airdate: April 30, 2005
Writer: Greg Weisman
Director: Sam Liu

So, uh… this was recently announced.

What excellent timing.

Like it, hate it, that most infamous of Alan Moore yarns put its fingerprints all over this show’s first season finale, a fact I’m told continues to surprise newcomers to The Batman. I myself still don’t know why – or how – the showrunners suddenly went “Hey, let’s do a story based off one of the most grimdark Batman comics of all time!” after eleven episodes of largely standard Saturday-morning fare. Sure, the comic was red-hot merchandise even back then, and I’m definitely not sorry about the resulting product, but what the hell, Kids WB?

“We had an agreement. I’d prove that I could bring myself to their level, and at season’s end, they’d prove they could bring themselves to my level.”

Good enough for me. Let’s go.

The Batman Review: Bird of Prey (S1E11)

one (DISCLAIMER: The author of this blog owns none of the properties depicted below. All images used below are property of their respective companies unless stated otherwise.)

Original Airdate: February 12, 2005
Writer: Steven Melching
Director: Brandon Vietti

Good evenin’, all you Penguin fans, wherever you may be…

U.S., Russia, Ireland, Mexico or Greece…

What a mediocre tale that we have here today…!

You nerds can simply call it… the one and only Bird of Prey!

Alas, today’s episode is no showcase for Oracle, Black Canary, or any other sexy, asskicking ladies. One “s” makes all the difference.

What it is is basically “Batman vs. The Media”, an idea that sounds fairly interesting but which has never worked for me outside the grimy, super-political, dated-but-not-too-dated atmosphere of The Dark Knight Returns. Why? Search me – maybe pre-Sin City Frank Miller was just that damn good.

In any case, you may have surmised that this kind of plot doesn’t really need a specific villain to work, and you’d be absolutely right. The Batman volunteers Penguin for the job, which should surprise no one familiar with That Other Show; Penguin’s always been harder to nail down specific, character-driven plots for than the likes of Joker or Two-Face, so he’s often saddled with the thankless task of carrying “gimmick” pitches (Batman gets KO’ed in some kid’s basement! Batman’s car gets jacked! Batman is blind!) that the writers were too lazy to invent a new villain for.

That’s not to say, however, that such episodes are inevitably terrible. The Adam West show used this sort of plug-in-villain-here plotting with abandon, and the results – at least in small doses – were often delightful. It was an approach that let the actors, rather than the writers, scope out the villains’ personalities and quirks – and when you have dedicated souls like Frank Gorshin or Burgess Meredith on the job, you get character portrayals that are still kicking in the public consciousness to this very day.

Let’s see which side of the divide today’s episode falls on.

The Batman Review: Topsy Turvy (S1E10)

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Original Airdate: February 5, 2005
Writer: Adam Beechen
Director: Seung Eun Kim

So. Our first story to reuse a villain. And it’s the Joker.

Yippee.

You guys are getting fifty bucks to sit there. Would it kill you to smile?

I’m probably not shocking many of you when I say: get used to it. The Batman has something of a reputation for overusing Laughing Boy, often in badly undercooked plots to boot. I mean, in raw numbers it never really overtook That Other Show’s rate of Joker episodes, but even I must admit that having Mark Hamill in your corner can buy a lot of leeway.

Either way, I do not look forward to the day we hit this show’s fifth or sixth Joker story and I’ve run out of things to say about the character or even points of comparison. But right now, it’s still early in the game, so let the yammering commence.

Hunting folks down one-by-one – personal vendetta optional – is literally as old as Joker plots come. Luckily, it’s also as evergreen as they come, coupling the best parts of the comic-book supervillain and the big-screen slasher into one pants-darkening package. After all, this is a psycho who can keep up with the goddamn Batman trick for trick, gadget for gadget, disguise for disguise. When someone like that comes after you, who can you trust? Not your friends, not your family, not the cash in your hand.*

Just put the right talent behind it, and lo and behold:

Alas, today’s episode is not graced with the groundbreaking magic of O’Neil and Adams. But you know what it is graced with?

The Batman Review: The Big Dummy (S1E09)*

* A Crisis of Infinite Mousetraps tie-in

(DISCLAIMER: The author of this blog owns none of the properties depicted below. All images used below are property of their respective companies unless stated otherwise.)

Original Airdate: November 27, 2004
Writer: Robert Goodman
Director: Sam Liu

So I see that my pathetic begging masterful gambit for some advertisement for Dublin’s greatest polymorphic web comedian has panned out after all. Excellent.

With so many Bat-fans’ eyes ‘pon this blog, let’s talk about the second-most famous split personality case in all of Arkham Asylum. You know the one…

“Finally.”

Sorry, Harv. I said second-most famous.

“You’ve made a powerful enemy today, you vulcanized pansy.”

… well, I can probably look forward to a “bisected by giant penny” on my headstone, but it’ll all be worth it once we talk about one of my favorite Batman villains: this guy.

Wait, where are you going? Don’t leave me here!

So, yeah. I love the one-man duo that is the Ventriloquist, and it confuses and saddens me to no end that he’s found on so many “Worst Batman villains ever” lists. For me, he’s always been an ideal mix of the silly, the serious, the sympathetic, and the just plain bizarre that make him a perfect fit for Batman’s rogues gallery.

A quick biography: Arnold Wesker is a perfectly mild-mannered senior citizen, who just happens to have a violent and greedy alternate personality called Scarface. Scarface prefers to express himself through a wooden ventriloquist’s dummy dressed like something out of a Cagney picture, see, and he’s got big plans to take over all the rackets in Gotham, see. Anyone who gets in his way can go take a swim in concrete shorts, see?

(Prison talent shows, albatrosses, and an old gallows tree all figure in there somewhere, but I don’t feel like doing Wikipedia’s job for it today.)

Despite being created by two Brits in 1988, the Ventriloquist feels like a villain who could’ve been created in the Golden Age, right alongside Joker, Penguin, and the rest. Vaudeville acts and gangster pictures were all the rage back in the 1940s, after all, and it would’ve been entirely believable that someone would combine the two. I used to agree with that, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve come to feel there’s something quintessentially British about this character.

Not British like this:

But more like this:

I have neither the time nor the resources to go in-depth on what British comics were like back when America still had to contend with the puritanical Comics Code Authority, but suffice it to say they were not for the faint of heart. Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll blood were the order of the day, with the most iconic of the bunch being 2000AD‘s Judge Dredd, a strip hinging on the premise that ultra-violent totalitarianism was humanity’s only hope for survival.

The Ventriloquist was created by perhaps the most iconic writing team to ever work on Dredd: John Wagner and Alan Grant. Grant, in particular, is one of the most-overlooked members of the (other) British Invasion; in-between owning velociraptors and bonding with children, he held down a tenure on the Batman books that could easily rival Chuck Dixon’s. Over more than a decade, he fleshed out Arkham Asylum’s mythology and created dozens, maybe hundreds of Gotham’s B- and C-listers. You may have heard of one or two from all them newfangled vidya games.

When Grant and Wagner hopped over to DC, their very first story featured the Ventriloquist ordering a henchman killed and using the corpse to smuggle twenty kilos of hard drugs across the border. Directly followed up by this:

That, to me, is the defining thing about 2000AD and its ilk. No matter how many corpses they crammed the pages with, they never lost their sense of humor, and even Dredd himself was meant to be an object of both admiration and ridicule instead of a straight role-model (most of the people who worked on his comic trend libertarian in real life).

And so, much like the Joker, Wesker and Scarface can easily be played for humor or horror (or both, sometimes inside the span of a single page). Except unlike the Joker, there’s a powerful streak of pathos underlying it all. Arnold Wesker isn’t a bad man – at least, not the kind of bad man who wants to live on an empire of drugs and murder – but he’s far too much of a wimp to resist Scarface’s bullying, domineering personality. The little puppet physically and verbally abuses him 24/7, and all he can do is stand there and take it. And since this is Gotham, therapy (almost) never lasts.

Cartoons inevitably tone a lot of this down, but I can’t get too hung-up about that. Nothing about his gimmick says he has to commit ultra-dark crimes, and if the DID stuff also gets axed for The Sake of the Children, well… at least I’ve got the aesthetics to look forward to.

… won’t I?

The Batman Review: Q&A (S1E08)

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Original Airdate: November 20, 2004
Writer: Steven Melching
Director: Brandon Vietti

So.

Everyone got their equipment ready? Shot glasses, vomit bags, the lot? I got gin, vodka, vermouth…

Oh, for the love of… no one on this side of the Atlantic even knows you lot!

Overreacting? Maybe, but better safe than sorry.

For both fans and haters of The Batman, it’s generally agreed that this episode was the show’s absolute nadir. Even the usually (over-) tolerant folks over at The World’s Finest tore it a new one, and my own memories of it aren’t exactly peachy.

Damn shame too, since this is the first time The Batman went for a truly obscure villain (obscure here meaning “villain That Other Show never did”). Granted, said villain is Cluemaster, who’s never really been an A-lister, but ask yourself this: was That Other Show not facing the same odds – maybe even direr ones – when it tackled Mr. Freeze and the Mad Hatter back in the early ’90s?*

The Cluemaster began life as one of the Silver Age’s many, many forgettable Riddler knockoffs, with a debut story that I can’t remember a single damn thing about. But I suppose someone liked his costume or something, because he kept making little cameos here and there all the way up to the ’80s, enough to score an entry in Who’s Who in the DC Universe.

His luck started picking up around the late ’80s, as he was deemed so lame that a pair of folks named Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis picked him (along with such luminaries as Major Disaster and Multi-Man) to be a recurring villain in their Justice League books. I’m not especially familiar with that era of Justice League (I really only know DeMatteis from his more serious works), but suffice it to say that it wasn’t exactly an honor for ol’ Cluesy. The books were meant to be a mickey take on superheroes in general, featuring second-stringers like Booster Gold and Blue Beetle who acted more like sitcom characters than superheroes going up against equally ineffective villains.

Even in that environment, Cluemaster was a fairly nondescript straight man, existing mostly for other, zanier villains to bounce off of. It did, however, clear the way for his third (and last, as far as I’m concerned) evolution, helmed by none other than…

“Keep this up and I’m going to start charging for appearances.”

In many ways, Dixon’s Cluemaster is the guy I consider the quintessential Dixon villain. Dixon could write slick, (semi-) infallible masterminds with the rest of them, but like I mentioned in the last review, a lot of villains under his pen had a very blue-collar streak to them. Instead of rants about world domination or Ending the Bat Once and For All, they were street-savvy guys in it for the money more than anything else. Sure, they still relied on gimmicks like shock gloves or trained rats and looked every inch like stereotypical supervillains…

Pictured: two of the more soberly-dressed supervillains in Dixon’s regular stable.

… but they certainly talked and felt more like people you’d find down the street. People who just happened to have a wonky moral compass and lived in a world where someone’s doomsday invention is sitting in every third basement and dressing up in colored underwear to punch criminals is an acceptable career path.

Cluemaster was one of the earliest villains that Dixon used in his lengthy (89 issues according to Comicvine) run on Detective Comics during the ’90s, and Dixon took active steps to superficially make him even more generic than before. He was given the civilian name Arthur Brown, stripped of his one kinda-unique character trait:

… and made into a much more competent thief and cold-blooded killer. When I write it all out like that, it sounds like a typical ’90s grimdarkification of a classic old-time villain, but here’s the thing: Dixon didn’t so much ignore the previous characterization as built on it. His Cluemaster was still a cowardly loser that was often smacked around in the most humiliating ways possible (that fellow in purple up there? That’s his daughter Stephanie, and she did a lot of the smacking), but half the time it was due to the stupidity of his partners and/or the Universe just plain hating him. It became possible to believe that if you let his guard down, he could still kill you.

Personally? I love that. I realize that it’s tradition to build supervillains up to be as infallible as possible until their inevitable third-act defeat by the hero, but I find it much more organic and realistic when they occasionally trip and stumble and get dealt a raw hand just like the good guys. That’s not to say it’s inherently better, but…

The Batman Review: The Big Heat (S1E07)

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Original Airdate: November 13, 2004
Writers: Christopher Yost & J.D. Murray
Director: Seung Eng Kim

So. The Firefly. I don’t believe he’s ever been much more than a C-lister to people who prefer the comics version of Batman, but his stock’s grown rather nicely from all the appearances he’s made in the cartoons and video games. He even got his own action figure in The Dark Knight‘s toyline, for some reason that probably made perfect sense to the WB suits in 2008.*

And sadly, that’s probably not a coincidence. Firefly is what crueler Internet-goers would probably call a walking special-effects reel: a “character” who largely exists to blow stuff up good while laughing and twirling his mustache. One of my buddies once voted him “villain most suited to a Batman movie directed by Michael Bay”, and I can’t really contest that.

But God help me, I kind of like him (and today is Independence (to Blow Shit Up) Day in the States)**. Or at least feel more than crushing apathy towards him, like I do with Bane or Man-Bat. Maybe it’s because of how convoluted his history is – you can get the full details here, but the short version is that he debuted as a standard Silver Age villain (and was so forgettable that even his Brave and the Bold appearance needed to pull in stuff from two unrelated stories to keep it interesting), made a short-lived comeback in the ’80s, and kinda-sorta-not-really got melded with a similarly-named but different villain during the ’90s.

That last part, by the way, came courtesy of our old friend…

“Good to be back.”

Dixon’s revamp of the Firefly isn’t really the best villain revamp he’s done, but I like it well enough – his Garfield Lynns is still a former movie man, but with the added twist of being a psychotic arsonist who sees naked women in the fires he sets. The new armor-like suit that Dixon’s regular artist Graham Nolan (one of my picks for best Batman artist of all time, or at least the ’90s) made for him also caught on well, but to be honest, my favorite Firefly scene from the comics came from before he ever put on the suit. It’s just a lot more compelling when the sadistic monster looks (almost) like a regular guy.

Alright, enough with the history lesson. Let’s look at how The Batman tackles this ready-made action figure character.

The Batman Review: The Cat and the Bat (S1E06)

(DISCLAIMER: The author of this blog owns none of the properties depicted below. All images used below are property of their respective companies unless stated otherwise.)

Original Airdate: October 2, 2004
Writer: Adam Beechen
Director: Sam Liu

Ah, Catwoman. One of the truly old hands of Batman’s rogues gallery, surpassed by only the Joker (and maybe Hugo Strange if you want to get more obscure) in terms of longevity.

It’s a lot harder for me to sum up Catwoman’s history than for most of the other villains, because her origins and character have been all over the damn place since 1940 and from what I can tell, every one of her eras has its supporters and detractors. She began as a somewhat virtuous jewel thief (in her first appearance, Batman saw fit to “accidentally” let her escape; by her second, she was willing to give her loot to the Joker if he’d spare Robin’s life), and since then she’s ran the gamut from Julie Newmar’s beautiful-but-pure-evil supervillainess:

The funny part is that this is STILL better than the time she tried to lobotomize Batman so she could keep him as a sex slave.*

To an almost no-strings-attached heroine in the Bronze Age:

“Hold it, old chum… The year is 1986, and”Score” rhymes with “whore”… add in the”mill” and… OF COURSE!“

To everything in-between. As of this writing, she’s held down two ongoing comics that each lasted more than eighty issues, and that’s only a small fraction of all the appearances she’s made over the last seventy-five years.

So – sorry to say, but I’ve got sizable gaps in my knowledge of Catwoman, so I probably won’t be able to make as many comparisons to the comics and other media as in my previous reviews. Still, if I remember correctly, Beechen didn’t really get too imaginative with Selina’s debut on The Batman.

The Batman Review: The Big Chill (S1E05)

(DISCLAIMER: The author of this blog owns none of the properties depicted below. All images used below are property of their respective companies unless stated otherwise.)

Original Airdate: November 6, 2004
Writer: Greg Weisman
Director: Brandon Vietti

“Then Capizzi and Goguen, when they had secretly called the Weisman, determined from him what time the star [of That Other Show] appeared. And they sent him to the old WB studio and said, “Go and search carefully for the one called Freeze, and when you have found him, bring back word to us, that our show may come and worship him also.”
– Matsuda 2:7

Okay, so perhaps Mr. Freeze isn’t the literal Messiah, but there’s little denying that he’s That Other Show’s proudest legacy (facing competition from only the Mad Hatter – maybe – in that category). Sure, its depictions of the Joker and Two-Face, and of course Batman himself, are all justly celebrated, but those guys already had a pretty strong following from the comics. All they really needed were people interested in faithful adaptation.

Turning a C-list villain from the comics who used to look like this into a tragic, Emmy-winning A-lister, though… now that takes Paul Dini-at-the-top-of-his-game talent. And several more miracles.

(By the way – if you haven’t seen “Heart of Ice”, please go do so right now. It’s one of the few episodes of That Other Show that comes close to living up to the hype.)

Given post-’92 Freeze’s popular recognition and his massive toy potential, it was inevitable that The Batman would eventually take its own crack at him. Hell, he was getting theme-song coverage from day one. This, no doubt, horrified legions of fans who’d already been twice-burned by its portrayals of Joker and Penguin, but chances are that at least some of them breathed a sigh of relief when they got word that this Freeze was being handled by none other than Greg Weisman.

Weisman, as any self-respecting millennial knows, is probably the only writer in “serious” Western animation with a more sterling reputation than Dini. It was he who fathered one of the most beloved action/superhero ‘toons of all time, one that pushed envelopes and captured fans even That Other Show could never—

“Aww. thank you…”

                                                                    

“He meant ME, stupid.”

                                                                    

“Guys, GUYS. This is a Batman blog. I think we all know who he’s really talking about.”

                                                                    

“Who the hell invited you?”

                                                                    

“More importantly, didn’t you LITERALLY give us the worst Joker in history?”

                                                                    

“Oh, come ON! He was only in one episode!”

                                                                    

“Greater shows than you have been undone by less. Besides, I got cut short. I *deserve* this.”

                                                                    

“So did I!”

                                                                    

“Oh, you two want to play pity poker? Disney fucked me up so badly people WISH I got cut short!”

Gentlemen, please!

So, yeah. The most unfuckwithable villain in animated Batman history paired with the most unfuckwithable writer in Western animation. Let’s do this.

The Batman Review: The Man Who Would Be Bat (S1E04)

(DISCLAIMER: The author of this blog owns none of the properties depicted below. All images used below are property of their respective companies unless stated otherwise.)

Original Airdate: October 30, 2004
Writers: Thomas Pugsley & Greg Klein
Director: Seung Eun Kim

Contrary to popular belief, having multiple writers on an episode does not mean it’s less likely to be terrible. Case in point: almost every new episode of Spongebob Squarepants has three writers attached.

And my word, are Pugsley and Klein facing an uphill battle today. You see, this is a Man-Bat episode, and those of you who paid attention to my first review…

… will likely recall that I don’t care much for Man-Bat. And I still don’t.

Seriously, he makes Bane look like the gold standard of innovation and interesting plot development. In case any of you are unfamiliar with him, here’s a thumbnail biography from Wikipedia:

Dr. Kirk Langstrom, a scientist specializing in the study of bats (chiropterology), develops an extract intended to give humans a bat’s sonar sense and tests the formula on himself because he is becoming deaf. The extract works, but it has a horrible side effect: it transforms him into a hideous man-sized bat. The serum also takes away his intelligence, so he goes on a mad rampage until Batman can find a way to reverse the effects.

Sound familiar?

“My stealing sense is tingling! Excelsior!”

                                                                         

“Yeah, I’ll just bet it is, Stan.”

Even if you don’t particularly give a crap about Marvel (and to be honest, I don’t), Man-Bat is a pretty lackluster villain, mostly because Kirk Langstrom’s consciousness goes lights-out whenever he turns into the guy (which is almost always by horrible circumstance instead of intent). There’s very little emotional or moral stakes to be had – he’s a villain 100% built for action sequences, and incredibly predictable action sequences at that. I’ve seen Batman hitching a sky-ride on his claw about several dozen times now, and it was pretty boring after the first one.

But that was apparently good enough for him to carve out a niche, and he’s been a semi-recurring member of Batman’s rogues gallery ever since. As previously mentioned, That Other Show used him as their first villain, and the episode in question was almost entirely redeemed by how badass Tokyo Movie Shinsa’s Spectrum’s animation was. That might be written off as a chest-beating display of creative independence on their part (please realize that I spontaneously sprouted a beret, goatee, and Starbucks latte as I typed that), but then they did another one.

At this point, it’s probably for the best if we all admit to what his real appeal is:

I have it on good authority that none of these can even *stand* by themselves.

Oh, there’s been a few snippets of more interesting takes – mostly when they tried to play him as a hero who’s in full control of himself as Man-Bat – but those never last long. Let’s see if The Batman can make this bat fly, shall we?