It is perhaps unsurprising that with the recent passing of Kevin Conroy kicking me directly in the dick I finally ended up paying a potentially shady seller to send me the complete Batman the Animated Series on bluray, because that's been on my "pick this up on physical media before WB decides to bury the series forever as a tax writeoff" list since before WB was burying beloved franchises forever as a tax writeoff. I'm sure the passing of a beloved voice actor being the trigger for this purchase says nothing good about me, but there we are. We take the brains we're given.
The point is, I watched the first couple of episodes tonight (okay the first two episodes in production order because the dvd/bluray release is in production order, the real first episode was the first part of a two-part Catwoman episode, then Man Bat, then Heart of Ice, which is really starting the show with a motherfucking show-stopper (and dear fucking god they follow that up with Feet of Clay? Jesus CHRIST), but when I say "first episode" and "second episode" I am talking about production order, okay? Okay) because I had time to watch a couple episodes and hey guess what? That show is really extremely good (also it opens with a gorgeously-animated episode that is nevertheless one of the dumbest episodes (Man Bat is a garbage-tier villain, I'm sorry, he sucks) but they follow it up with a straight fuckin' banger that is also a Christmas episode and introduces the platonic ideal of the Joker (and somehow, I'd forgotten that Robin is just Around in the series from its second episode and his origin story doesn't come until much later). I mean first of all... hang on, this is probably going to go long so imagine zat you are zee Batman, so cool, and jump off the roof/hit the read more thing and we'll carry on down below.
Okay well first of all Kevin Conroy's Batman is incredible from the jump. There is a sequence in the first episode where he's talking in the Batman voice doing Batman research and then answers the phone as Bruce Wayne, and it is such a complete shift of tone and character that it feels legitimately weird to hear Bruce Wayne's voice coming out of Batman. It's phenomenal, and he immediately establishes himself as the goddamn Batman, and god, what a huge loss to have him gone! Plus like... you know, on a personal level his being quietly this insanely successful and openly gay voice actor was a big deal to me and a lot of other people, and now I have gotten distracted from my original point, which was I was going to talk about Mark Hamill as the Joker but it's fine, Kevin Conroy deserves his flowers and more praise than I can heap on him while I am making a point about something which we'll get to, I promise.
So somewhat famously, Tim Curry was the first choice to be the Joker (and there is some really impressive footage out there of his performance which is, to be clear, a good Joker performance). He apparently recorded like, all of season one as the Joker before they decided that actually Hamill nailed the tone of what they wanted from the character more - which is to say, Tim Curry's Joker is all murderous, theatrical clown, whereas Hamill's Joker is playful murderous theatrical clown. It is more believable to me that Hamill's Joker would both bomb a railway bridge in an attempt to kill hundreds in a train crash and do the whole thing just so he could give Batman a big present that launches a custard pie into his face and nothing else. That's quality unhinged behavior, baby! That's the goddamn Joker! There's simply nothing like it, except maybe Ceaser Romero's Joker.
That tension exhibited by Joker - he's going to murder a hundred people but also he really wants to hit Batman in the face with a pie - is something that gets lost (I think) in like 99% of the portrayals of the Joker. I mean shit, the Scott Snyder Joker was running around ripping his face off and stapling it back on and it was just... I dunno, I generally liked Snyder's early Batman run (before I fell off of superhero comics in general, I should say) but something about his Joker never quite worked for me. Which is part of a greater point I'd make, which is that Batman TAS' portrayal of Batman is easily, to me, one of the better takes on Batman because it gives its characters broader humanity and life than a lot of other performances. It also remembers that Batman actually cares about people - I stand by my "Man Bat is a trash villain" but like, Batman actually deals with the problem in a humane way. That does involve punching Man Bat in the face, but it also involves finding the cure for what ails him and then bringing him back to his wife like "yo come get your man, he's okay now, keep an eye on him." Which is maybe a little irresponsible, but honestly I will give Batman credit for keeping the cops out of it.
In the second episode, Batman (obviously) saves everyone, including the Joker, because we all know Batman doesn't kill. He does, however, pretend like he's lost his grip on Joker a little because Batman is kind of a little shit, particularly (I suppose) when he's just had a pie shoved in his face as the culmination of an evening of murder attempts. I adore this episode, and not just because Joker sings the Jingle Bells Batman Smells song, although that is a big part of it. It shows Batman (and Bruce Wayne) grudgingly participating in family activities (I respect his decision to never watch It's a Wonderful Life, because fuck that movie) and admitting, on some level, that he does, in fact, have a family. Plus it's honestly a great introduction to Joker (his first appearance during the initial run, however, was Joker's Favor, which I will freely admit is a better episode by an enormous margin).
Anyway, I was thinking about way back when ComicsAlliance (RIP) did some reviews of some BTAS episodes, and then I tried to go find those, but ComicsAlliance (RIP) as a site does not... really function, so I couldn't find what I was looking for and now I am frankly dying for a good episode-by-episode journey through the series. You know, like A More Civilized Age, but watching Batman the Animated Series instead. I am sure that something like it exists, but I don't know where to start looking and also (and this is the important thing), I'm not sure I actually want that, because I would be looking for a very particular approach and I dunno that I would find that approach in what we'll just refer to as Comics Podcasting as a genre. You know what I mean? Maybe you know what I mean. Maybe I will have to make a goddamn podcast myself, although that would mean finding my good mic and also a cohost and probably like, getting music and art and suchlike in order to do the damn thing properly, and your boy does not know if he has the juice for that.
Maybe you will just get more of these long posts instead, including one about how I played some Arkham Asylum after watching the show and it really put into contrast the difference in how Batman acts and like, its excessive GRIM DARK ways that are, to me, everything wrong with Batman (even if I do still like hearing Conroy and Hamill's voices, and even if the gameplay still arguably stomps the shit out of any superhero game's combat released in the last like five years. The perfect game from a structural and mechanical standpoint? Quite likely! From a storytelling standpoint? Fuck no, but I'll play it anyway because it is the best Batman game by, as one Brad Shoemaker might say, a country mile). Anyway, see you next time, same bat time, same bat... well, you know.