“It’s no joke, I assure you. It’s the fear of victory and
the agony of... The Scarecrow!”At Gotham University, Dick Grayson (remember him?) discovers that not only has his star quarterback roommate been infected with a strain of fear toxin, but the Boy Wonder himself has also come down with a case of terror, courtesy of The Scarecrow (Henry Polic II). If Batman can find the so-called professor of fear in time to stop his next attack, Robin will have to face his phobias.
We should talk a little bit about Scarecrow and Robin, since for both of them this is his second episode (Scarecrow in “Nothing to Fear” and Robin in “Christmas with the Joker”). First, Scarecrow gets a facelift of sorts with a redesign that makes him less angular and more globular. I’ve always had a soft spot for this look, in large part because I had/have an action figure of this incarnation in my childhood toy box; it’s not as abjectly scary as his later appearances in The New Batman Adventures or the Arkham games, which play up the rotting appearance of his burlap mask, but it’s definitely more polished than his “Nothing to Fear” look, which always felt unfinished.
As for The Scarecrow’s scheme in this episode, I’m of two minds. In short, Scarecrow douses Gotham athletes with fear toxin, then bets against them to make a windfall of cash. On the one hand, it’s another underwhelming objective for Scarecrow – for the second time in a row, we’re seeing him put that brilliant academic mind to work for petty cash. Then again, I really appreciated the moment when Batman suggests that Scarecrow might be amassing money to pull off a more terrifying plot against Gotham City. We’ve seen more contemporary treatments of Scarecrow take advantage of the metaphorical depths you can plumb with a subject as rich as fear, and maybe in 1992 Scarecrow wasn’t “there” yet as a character, but it does make this episode feel a little undercooked, as though there’s more beneath the surface.
That said, “Fear of Victory” isn’t a bad episode by any stretch of the imagination, and a big part of that is that it differentiates itself from “Nothing to Fear” by subjecting Robin, not Batman, to the fear-inducing toxins concocted by The Scarecrow. It is a little odd to have Robin just drop into the plot as though he’s been there all along – his “origin story” is still eight episodes away – and this episode certainly feels tonally different by virtue of his presence. The captivating idea of Robin is that he’s at once someone Batman wants to protect because he sees that same orphan boy in himself, while at the same time he’s also a beacon of light and hope in Batman’s (self-) darkened world. The latter is certainly true, as Batman cracks a few jokes in this episode, albeit uncomfortably; I’ll chalk it up to the writing that makes these jokes seem mean-spirited, as Kevin Conroy has proven elsewhere he can give Batman a less sardonic sense of humor.
I’ll close by highlighting a surprise standout sequence in the episode, which has very little to do with the main plot of “Fear of Victory” and everything to do with the overall narrative and aesthetic successes of Batman: The Animated Series. I’m talking about the scene set inside Arkham Asylum, where Batman discovers that The Scarecrow has indeed escaped. For one, the interior of a madhouse at midnight gives the animators a chance to do the kind of shadow-play they do best, reminding us that BtAS was drawn on black, not white, paper to give that dark mood. But as Batman strolls past the cells at Arkham, each pane of glass revealing another of his colorful rogues, I realized this is the first good look we’ve gotten inside Arkham (aside, that is, from the cells seen in “Heart of Ice” and “Pretty Poison”), and boy is it nuts in there. More importantly, though, twenty-four (of eighty-five) episodes in, Batman: The Animated Series has done a masterful job of populating Batman’s world with thickly developed, instantly recognizable villains whose backstories are somehow gracefully expressed through their visual appearance. It might be difficult to believe, but Scarecrow is only the second villain (barring the mobsters) to appear in more than one single episode – The Joker, of course, is the other – and this walk down the hallway gives one the sense that BtAS has really been warming up at the plate and building its world.
Postscript: how awesome are those retro sports designs? Football hasn’t looked like that since the Great Depression, but it’s a delightful addition to the timeless atmosphere of Batman: The Animated Series.
Writer: Samuel Warren Joseph
Director: Dick Sebast
Villain: The Scarecrow (Henry Polic II)
Next episode: “The Clock King,” in which the tolling of the iron bell calls the faithful to their knees.
🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇
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