Batman: The Animated Series - "The Cape and Cowl Conspiracy"

“Where iron horses go to rot / And children toot their horns a lot / A damsel’s pleas will come to naught.”

A charitable delivery of bearer bonds is intercepted in Gotham City, with the robbery bearing all the hallmarks of Josiah Wormwood (Bud Cort), alias “The Interrogator.” Batman attempts to find Wormwood by squeezing one of his known associates, Baron Waclaw Josek (John Rhys-Davies), but after being humiliated by the vigilante Jozek takes out a contract of his own, hiring Wormwood to steal Batman’s cape and cowl.

“The Cape and Cowl Conspiracy” is another great episode! (See, I told you the good stuff was still coming.) The storytelling is tight, scripted by comics scribe Elliot S. Maggin, and it’s always a good sign when Batman: The Animated Series goes back to the comic book well because it’s evident that the crew have a healthy respect for the source material. The effect of reverence is compounded by the fact that Maggin is adapting his own story, an event that’ll be repeated down the line in another first-rate episode when Dennis O’Neil is charged with introducing Ra’s al Ghul into the animated universe. Here, Maggin delivers what comics fans call a “one-and-done,” a self-contained story that exists in a shared universe but restricts itself to its own proceedings.

Although as much as I would have liked to see more of Josiah Wormwood and his death traps (or heard more of John Rhys Davies in any capacity), I can’t say that Wormwood accomplishes anything that The Riddler won’t later prove capable of achieving. We’re about ten episodes away from Riddler’s debut proper, but Wormwood’s modus operandi seems less about demonstrating how smart he is and more about inviting his prey into a carefully orchestrated mousetrap designed to extract information – or, as is the case in this episode, valuable goods. As for Josek, I love the way that he’s emblematic of this seedy underbelly always already at work in Gotham City; it’s delightful Batman lore to think that at any given moment there’s a goon Batman hasn’t arrested purely so he can squeeze him later.

If you thought that the twist to the episode would be that it’s all a plot by the Mad Hatter, that was last episode! You’d be forgiven for thinking, though, that Jervis Tetch and his enormous teeth might turn up, since stealing Batman’s cowl does reek of a Mad Hatter scheme. (Sidebar: there’s a fantastic issue of Superman Adventures in which the Mad Hatter kidnaps Bruce Wayne and threatens to kill him on television if Batman doesn’t surrender his cowl; Batgirl enlists Superman to help untangle this conundrum.) But no, I won’t spoil the real twist. I will say that the episode bears rewatching once you know the twist, because it lets Maggin really show off how deftly he concealed the narrative trickery, precisely into which baited trap the viewer falls without even realizing it.

It’s also worth noting that this is the first episode in which the Bat-signal appears (if we don’t count the improvised Bat-signal in “Joker’s Favor”), kind of surprising given that this is the 31st episode of the series. It’s even a minor plot point, with Batman remarking on Gordon’s “new toy.” I don’t recall if the Bat-signal ever played a major role in an episode – unlike in the Gotham Central comic, in which one character worked at the GCPD solely to turn on the signal – but it’s such an iconic part of the Bat-mythology that it makes the show feel that much more comfortable, and it’s handled with noteworthy dexterity such that its arrival actually feels important.

“The Cape and Cowl Conspiracy” is a solid Batman episode without too many of the classic Bat-bells and –whistles but with a tightly crafted story that gives us Batman at his level best. I’m sorry that this is Maggin’s only episode, though true believers (or whatever the DC equivalent would be) are directed to his seminal “Must There Be a Superman?” from Superman #247, either of his Superman novels from 1978-1981, or the fact that he created Lexcorp, leaving a major mark on that corner of the DC Universe.

Original Air Date: October 14, 1992

Writer: Elliot S. Maggin

Director: Frank Paur

Villains: Josiah Wormwood (Bud Cort) and Baron Waclaw Jozek (John Rhys-Davies)

Next episode: “Robin’s Reckoning,” a two-parter that sheds some light on the Boy Wonder.

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