As night falls in Gotham, the city is gripped by terror when a mysterious bat-like creature goes marauding through robberies and violent assaults. There are only two people who know it isn’t Batman, and one of them is Batman himself, who sets out to solve the mystery of Gotham’s latest ne’er-do-well.
As first episodes go – and recall, this is the first episode (at least, in production order) of the entire DC Animated Universe, not just of Batman: The Animated Series – “On Leather Wings” might initially ruffle a few feathers. Neither retelling the classic origin story (rarely tweaked since 1939) nor pitting Batman against one of his most iconic foes, “On Leather Wings” instead demonstrates my favorite thing about Batman: The Animated Series: namely, how damn smart it is.
On the surface, “On Leather Wings” might seem fairly boilerplate – a bat-like creature is terrorizing Gotham, and Batman figures out what’s going on, tousling with the beast until he brings its crime wave to a halt. I’ve often wondered why “On Leather Wings” was the first episode, but I think I get it now. This episode isn’t about Man-Bat, as so many episodes of Batman ’66 were more about the colorful guest stars than the Caped Crusader himself. “On Leather Wings” is a show bible unto itself, a manifesto for who Batman is (and even a wink toward how he came to be).
First, any sense of how this episode defines the rest of the show in microcosm needs to acknowledge the stellar title sequence, which lays out in an eloquent 57 seconds the show’s take on Batman. I really can’t do a better job than Chris Sims in dissecting why the title sequence works so well, only to add that this teaser sequence also introduces us to the lushly gorgeous art deco aesthetic that governs this Gotham City somewhere between Tim Burton and Bob Kane.
The opening titles tell us facts about Batman, but “On Leather Wings” proceeds to interpret Batman for us through the most classic of comic book storytelling techniques – by pitting him against his direct opposite. As we’ll see, every Batman villain comments in some way on the Dark Knight’s psyche (Joker – order vs. chaos; Two-Face – identity crisis; Riddler – brains gone wrong, etc.), but Man-Bat is about as inverted as you can get. Instead of a Batman, he’s literally a Man-Bat. He’s a criminal instead of a hero. And he’s utterly inhuman, contrasted to Batman’s intense humanity.
That last part is very important. Notice in the final confrontation, Batman suffers multiple injuries, scratched and bloodied by episode’s end. Yet Man-Bat remains unwounded. Both men have refashioned themselves into bats, both fearing extinction (Batman, having seen his parents murdered, vows to end crime before it claims his life too, while Kirk Langstrom senses the impending evolutionary extinction of the human race), but Man-Bat has become a monster in the process. He injures the innocent, while Batman defends the police, even from their own grenades. (Hmm, if Gotham PD is so inept, maybe that bit about extinction wasn’t far off.)
Finally, they’re both detectives of a sort. Kirk Langstrom deduces the chemicals he needs to steal, and Batman pieces together the clues that lead him to Man-Bat. My favorite part of this episode is how methodically the episode depicts Batman as the world’s greatest detective, following the leads until he unites disparate cases of mistaken identity, theft, assault, and unethical biological experiments. It’s here that we’re introduced to a hallmark of the show – Kevin Conroy’s vocal variations between airheaded Bruce Wayne and cool meticulous Batman, another contrast that juxtaposes who Batman is with the performance he isn’t.
See, in contrasting Batman with a dark reflection of himself, we can learn something about what he is by seeing what he isn’t, but we also get a sense of what he could be if he loses track of his humanity. We see how important it is that Batman not lose those things that separate him from Man-Bat, lest he become the thing the city fears. That’s another great angle in “On Leather Wings”; the episode seeds a longer story about Batman’s status in the public eye. Is a costumed vigilante by definition a criminal? How much faith are we to put in him, as opposed to in the police force itself? It’s a battle for Gotham’s soul – a plot thread more directly picked up by Christopher Nolan – but the show wisely introduces us to the conflict and its central battlefield – Harvey Dent – all in the first episode. Tall order, “On Leather Wings,” but I think I finally get you now.
Writer: Mitch Brian
Director: Kevin Altieri
Villain: Man-Bat (Marc Singer)
Next episode: “Christmas With The Joker,” which is exactly what it sounds like.
🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇
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