Batman: The Animated Series - "Read My Lips"

“You’ve had your share of odd opponents, sir, but this one does take the biscuit.”

A spree of successful robberies leads Batman to a new gang in Gotham. This gang, however, is led by Arnold Wesker – The Ventriloquist – and his gangster dummy Scarface (both voiced by George Dzundza). How can Batman stop a mobster who doesn’t know he’s a mobster? And who’s really in charge here?

Scarface and The Ventriloquist are relatively recent additions to the Batman canon, debuting in February 1988, but they’re pretty iconic for the simplicity of the concept – an evil ventriloquist who might be controlled by his dummy. (Sidebar: why haven’t we had a live-action Ventriloquist yet? Paging Colin Mochrie...) I know I took The Animated Series to task last week for its difficult handling of mental illness with Maxie Zeus, but with the Ventriloquist the waters are somewhat muddier, both here and in the comics, where it’s more overtly implied that Scarface is alive, carved from the gallows at Blackgate Penitentiary. This episode seems to fall on the side of mental illness, but there’s plenty of implication that the Ventriloquist is, to mix metaphors, pulling the strings. It’s that note of ambiguity that makes this episode worth revisiting.

Another real gem in “Read My Lips” is the casting of George Dzundza as both Ventriloquist and Scarface, one a sniveling coward and the other a gangster straight out of central casting. Dzundza would later take the role of Perry White on Superman: The Animated Series, which is really weird to hear when you know they’re all the same guy, but kudos to Andrea Romano, who chose the voice cast for BtAS, because she found a gem. Dzundza finds a distance between the two voices, sharp enough to tell the difference but near enough to recognize it’s the same person voicing both characters. The true mark of Dzundza’s power is that I still hear his Scarface in my head when I read the comics (to be fair, I still hear a lot of the voices from BtAS in my head – another feather in Andrea Romano’s cap).

As someone who watched a lot of those films at a formative period in his life, I really appreciated the way “Read My Lips” leans heavily into the gangster tropes, from the very name of Scarface to goons like Rhino, Mugsy, and Ratso appearing to have stepped out of the background of a 1930s James Cagney film. We’ve seen the polished gangsters of Rupert Thorne’s racket, and we’ve seen Gotham taken over by a better class of criminal (hat-tip to Heath Ledger’s Joker), but Scarface’s crew is a real throwback. The retro vibe of the episode puts Batman in a place where he has to rely on his wits more than his gadgets, though there’s a memorable bit with the Batcomputer which feels oddly reminiscent of Blade Runner. On the whole, though, this episode feels like it could have been a very good installment or two in the 1940s Batman serials.

It’s surprising to me that this is the sixty-fourth episode of the series (out of 85 or 109, depending on whether you count The New Batman Adventures), because I remember Scarface having such a looming presence over the show. Either my memory was leaning on his later episodes, or “Read My Lips” is a whopper of a debut, because it’s difficult to imagine that Scarface is wholly absent from the first half of the show. Just as Scarface is probably the best of Batman’s second-tier rogues, “Read My Lips” might not be a Top Ten episode, but it’s a strong contender for #11.

Original Air Date: May 10, 1993

Writers: Alan Burnett, Michael Reaves, and Joe R. Lansdale

Director: Boyd Kirkland

Villain: The Ventriloquist and Scarface (George Dzundza)

Next episode: “The Worry Men,” in which Batman goes galumphing back.

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