Batman: The Animated Series - "Trial"

“Court is now in session! The good people of Arkham Asylum vs. the self-righteous vigilante called Batman!”

Gotham’s new district attorney Janet Van Dorn (Stephanie Zimbalist) is frustrated that Batman’s brand of vigilante justice ties the hands of the court, shipping Poison Ivy off once more to Arkham Asylum rather than a life sentence at Blackgate. Ivy’s not too thrilled with her incarceration, either, though her mood sweetens when she learns that the inmates are truly running the asylum this time, with a harebrained scheme to capture Batman and place him on trial for creating them. Craziest of all, the rogues gallery pressgangs Van Dorn into defending the Dark Knight, with the Joker (Mark Hamill) presiding over the zaniest trial of them all.

Paul Dini, Bruce Timm, fantastic episode – you know the drill by now. Let’s talk about why this episode is so good and why it’s held up in my memory. First of all, this episode really captures the feeling of a kid playing with a box of action figures. All your favorites are in this episode, hanging around and waiting for their moment to shine, before they all converge and attack Batman. I’m pretty sure we all played out a version of this episode with our Bat-figurines (though I’m still sore I never had a Harley Quinn), right down to the figures who remained silent in our play but still nevertheless had to be there for reasons unknown even to our imagination. (Here, it’s Scarecrow and Riddler, who remain silent but would have felt like notable absences otherwise.)

For Dini, this episode feels like the culmination of so much of what he’s done with the show – bring out its best villains and present them in their best, scene-stealing form. Here Batman is almost incidental, a catalyst for the episode’s action, but he spends most of his time mute and bound. This is that apex genre of Batman episodes which could not take place in any other universe but needs not its ostensible protagonist to captivate an audience. And because it’s a Dini episode, we get some more spot-on Joker moments, from his Porky Pig impression to his hammy Irish accent, from his indifference to shooting his own allies to his stunned revelation about proper court proceedings – “Record? Is someone supposed to be writing this down?” Paul Dini and Mark Hamill surely belong on the Mount Rushmore of Batman: The Animated Series (joined, I am confident, by Kevin Conroy and Bruce Timm, with Arleen Sorkin impishly true-to-form looming with Harley’s giant hammer).

The greatest delight in this episode is the way that each witness’s testimony showcases their off-kilter personality, their warped sense of reality, and their sterling visual design. It’d be a shame to spoil each testimony by describing the subtle surprises in this episode. There’s a reprise from “Pretty Poison,” a smart reminder that the show frequently consults its own history, while the show also remembers the abusive core of the Harley/Joker “relationship.” Joker as judge is inspired, but so too is the Ventriloquist’s role as a soft-spoken bailiff. Even Killer Croc returns to his preferred method of personal injury with another callback to “Almost Got ’Im.”

Perhaps the biggest (and most welcome) surprise is that Dini and co-writer Bruce Timm also find a great one-episode arc for DA Van Dorn, who raises the very sensible concern that Batman’s involvement in crimefighting may be causing as many problems as it solves. There’s a delightful and typically Dini note of irony in the moment that Janet Van Dorn goes on a date with Bruce Wayne. Between the fact that she’s Harvey Dent’s ostensible replacement and the way in which the plot creates a credible shift in her perception of Batman, it’s a shame we didn’t see more of Janet on the show. But it is a treat to see her defend a case against former district attorney Two-Face. Dini closes the episode on a confident restatement on her character’s core – “I’m still going to work towards a city that doesn’t need Batman” – before breaking our hearts with a chilling “Me, too” from Batman, a sobering reminder that for all its colorful characters and outlandish plots, this show is about one man’s quest to save an entire city from the pain that scars him to this day.

Original Air Date: May 16, 1994

Writers: Paul Dini and Bruce Timm

Director: Dan Riba

Villains: All of them! The Joker (Mark Hamill), Ventriloquist & Scarface (George Dzundza), Killer Croc (Aron Kincaid), The Mad Hatter (Roddy McDowall), Two-Face (Richard Moll), Poison Ivy (Diane Pershing), Harley Quinn (Arleen Sorkin), The Scarecrow, and The Riddler

Next episode: “Avatar,” in which thankfully no blue people appear.

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Black Panther (2018)

At this point – a week after its release and eighteen films deep into the reliable Marvel Cinematic Universe – you probably don’t need me to tell you that Black Panther is great. I can’t say it’s the best superhero film ever, and indeed it’s hard to say if it’s the best film of Phase Three, which includes first-rate features like Captain America: Civil War and Spider-Man: Homecoming. But I will go out on a limb and say that it’s the best first entry in a Marvel sub-franchise since Iron Man, doing the work of building out the larger franchise’s world, distinguishing itself as a story in its own right, and managing to entertain the dickens out of a diverse audience who are helping it to shatter records.

After the death of his father, T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) assumes the mantle of King of Wakanda, a secretive nation in Africa guarding technological advances and a massive cache of vibranium, a rare indestructible metal. T’Challa also takes on the identity of his nation’s defender, the Black Panther, who is called to action when Erik Stevens – the Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) – and arms dealer Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis, upping the mania from Age of Ultron) steal a vibranium artifact from a London museum. All the while, T’Challa wrestles with his father’s legacy, wondering whether Wakanda should remain hidden from the world.

Marvel has not really made a bad movie since the inception of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2008. Your mileage may vary, as in the case of The Incredible Hulk and Thor: The Dark World (which I liked but have never felt compelled to rewatch), but by and large the MCU has been a case study in crowdpleasing. When introducing new characters to the universe, though, Marvel has struggled to break out of the mold set by Iron Man. With its scientific macguffin, Ant-Man is largely (no pun intended) “Tiny Iron Man”; when Doctor Strange has to set his ego aside to embrace a higher calling, it’s difficult not to see him as “Magic Iron Man.”

Black Panther is not, however, the story of a Tony Stark type who takes the throne and learns humility; it’s about a prince coming into his own, grappling with the weight of history and some very compelling arguments from his enemies. It might be Marvel’s most philosophical movie, and it’s certainly the most political (such is bound to happen when your protagonist is a king), but moreover it’s one of the more unique, giving audiences something we’ve truly never seen before in a superhero movie – a fully-realized alternate world which is entirely plausible and rousingly engaging. Wakanda is unlike anything in recent memory (though parts do feel as though it’s a pilot launch for a new Disney theme park, which I’d happily attend), and director Ryan Coogler is wise to give us Wakanda such as it is without the crutch of a point-of-view character; we’re dropped into the world, which displays a consistent internal logic without being overly explained. Even the film’s introductory history lesson, though expositional, gives weight to the film as we begin to wonder to whom the story was being told.

After seeing the film twice, I was glad to see that Black Panther really holds up, and that two different audiences had a consistent baseline of reactions to the film’s twists, punchlines, and triumphs. Black Panther contains a number of surprising reveals, each well-executed without the need for an explanatory pause. Perhaps the greatest surprise, though, is that the film’s ostensible villain, Killmonger, actually makes a lot of sense (surprising, I know, for a man whose name might as well be Murderman). “Where were you?” he asks of the isolationist Wakanda after recounting a litany of history’s horrors. Killmonger is a welcome relief from the generic world-conquerors Marvel has been known to give us, distinctive and fantastically performed by Jordan (proving that Marvel continues to be the rehabilitation clinic for former Human Torches). That he poses both a physical and philosophical challenge to T’Challa is one of the film’s greatest strengths.

Really, though, Black Panther is so full of good performances that it’s tough to single one out. Jordan has rightly gotten his fair share of critical accolades, and we knew from Civil War that Boseman had the kingly presence required for the Black Panther. As T’Challa’s sister Shuri, Letitia Wright steals her every scene; whether it’s playing Q to T’Challa’s 007 or testing out her sonic wrist cannons, with her infectious charm and rebellious streak, Wright is the next face to watch in the Marvel movies because she ought to be in every one of them going forward. (Can you imagine her bonding with Rocket Raccoon or Peter Parker?) I would say she steals nearly every scene because Winston Duke, as rival tribe leader M’Baku the Man-Ape, is an unexpected hoot, with an intimidating presence and a gregarious sense of humor to match. Lupita Nyong’o and Danai Gurira are just two of the many badass women in T’Challa’s life and by his side, and it’s remarkably refreshing to see a film so full of women who are always working together, never devalued by the male protagonist or by each other. (And yes, the film passes the Bechdel test.)

Look, I could go on and on, running down the cast list and finding something to praise. There’s not a bad performance in the bunch, and there’s not a single sequence that wastes time in the film’s 130+-minute runtime. I had worried that Black Panther might feel like a holding pattern before May’s Infinity War (to which, we’re told, this whole universe has been building), but instead it feels heroically fresh, such that I’m almost more excited to hear about Black Panther II. It’s equally gratifying that, as Marvel approaches their ostensible endgame, they’re loosening the reins on their house style and letting some fresh voices like Taika Waititi, James Gunn, and Ryan Coogler do their thing in the Marvel sandbox. It gives one the idea that Infinity War might not be an ending but rather a beginning, a prismatic expansion point from which the Marvel Cinematic Universe can spread out, diversify, and challenge our ideas of what a superhero movie can be. Wakanda forever, indeed.

Black Panther is rated PG-13 for “prolonged sequences of action violence, and a brief rude gesture.” Directed by Ryan Coogler. Written by Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole. Based on the Marvel Comics by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Starring Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Forest Whitaker, and Andy Serkis.

Batman: The Animated Series - "A Bullet For Bullock"

“We are speaking of the same person, are we not? Harvey Bullock? The detective who looks like an unmade bed?”

Harvey Bullock (Robert Costanzo) is no one’s favorite police detective, but one night he’s attacked in a drive-by shooting. Shaken but no worse for the wear, Bullock recruits Batman to help him identify his would-be assassin. Batman mounts a parallel investigation, but there’s no shortage of suspects – abuse from Bullock is in ample supply, including to those who would help him find the killer.

The word I keep reusing with this show is “solid.” “A Bullet for Bullock” is just one more solid episode in a show populated with winners; it doesn’t misstep, it does something new and interesting, and it proves to be roundly entertaining. Best of all, it does that quintessentially BtAS thing of turning its attention to a supporting character – Harvey Bullock – and makes him the star of an episode that makes the best use of him. He’s been at the periphery of the show, interjecting a snide remark or chomping a donut, but we get to see a little bit more of Bullock and how he ticks.

Like last week’s “Sideshow,” this episode is very much a thematic sequel to “Vendetta,” which saw Bullock framed for witness intimidation and explored his particular brand of extralegal behavior. Here, we see the consequences of Bullock’s prickly style; so numerous are the people he’s crossed that it’s literally impossible to predict which one might want to kill him. (If we hadn’t just seen Killer Croc in chains, he’d be a likely suspect.) The episode’s punchline – like the rest of the episode, adapted wholesale from Chuck Dixon’s Detective Comics #651 – nails the point about Bullock’s casual cruelty, but there remains something infectiously lovable about this crotchety cop.

When we talk about the score of Batman: The Animated Series, we usually talk about the genius opening sequence or mention how often the show invokes Danny Elfman’s theme from 1989. But the show has, even if I haven’t always acknowledged it, done really great things with its musical orchestration. From its opening moments, this episode has one of the snappiest scores in the show’s florid history. “A Bullet for Bullock” leans hard into the jazzy wails of archetypal detective stories. It’s an interesting musical approach to Bullock – who, as Alfred so aptly puts it, “looks like an unmade bed” – and it reminds one rather of the nightclub music from “Almost Got ’Im,” with Harvey R. Cohen filling in for series regular Shirley Walker on composing duties. In particular, there’s a standout moment when the main theme is remastered into a jazz-action cue that is well-suited to the moment when Bullock and Batman team up to clear a warehouse of its thugs (one of whom looks suspiciously like Lee Marvin).

We’ve seen throughout this show a slew of episodes – often among the best – devoted to Batman’s supporting cast, contextualizing what they mean to our main character and showing us what the world looks like from their vantage point. “I Am The Night” showed us what a Gotham without Gordon might look like, while way back in “P.O.V.” we saw how the police force perceived the Dark Knight. Even “The Man Who Killed Batman” ended up being as much about why The Joker personally needs a Batman as it was about the putz who thought he’d offed the Bat. Bullock’s partner Renee Montoya pops in for a few moments, and the curious friendship these two opposites have developed makes me wish that we’d gotten a Montoya-centric episode. It almost makes me wish we’d gotten a whole series about how Gotham behaves with a Batman in it. As it stands, one-and-done episodes like this one remind us how fully-realized this cartoon’s universe was, and it serves as a fine reminder of what the show can do.

Original Air Date: September 14, 1995

Writer: Michael Reaves

Director: Frank Paur

Villains: Vincent Starkey (Gregg Berger) and Nivens (Jeffrey Jones)

Next episode: “Trial,” in which Batman finds himself on the wrong end of a kangaroo court.

🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇

Batman: The Animated Series - "Sideshow"

“I know you feel a little funny being here, but it’s great; it really is. No one stares at you laughing, making you feel bad. You can be yourself.”

On route to a lengthy prison sentence, Killer Croc (Aron Kincaid) busts out of his chains and stages a daring escape from the railcar transporting him up the river. Croc plunges headlong into said river and drifts downstream until he encounters a clan of former circus performers – the giant Goliath (Brad Garrett), Siamese twins May and June (JoBeth Williams), Billy the “seal boy” (Whit Hertford), and their hunchbacked leader Richard (Kenneth Mars). These deformed refugees take in the escaped convict, unaware that Batman is hot on his tail.

Over the course of this review series, I’ve been surprised by episodes that were better than I remembered, and I’ve encountered episodes I’d forgotten entirely. “Sideshow,” however, is a horse of a different color, because I completely misremembered this episode. For some reason, my faulty memory told me this was an episode in which Killer Croc was reformed by a group of kindly circus performers, only for his monstrous side to reemerge when Batman attempts to apprehend him. That would have been a great story, very much of a piece with the recent reformation of the character over in the comic books, but “Sideshow” isn’t that episode at all.

Instead of a tragedy about Croc’s inability to rehabilitate himself, we get a tragedy about Croc’s unwillingness to reform. Time and again, this episode demonstrates Croc’s resolute dedication to bliking the circus performers, scheming to take their money and warp them into his own personal gang of henchmen. We witness him lie, confidently but not convincingly, and we’re horrorstruck when he convinces them to imprison Batman in a cage, reversing and reinscribing the violence done to them as “freaks.” The episode goes for an incredibly dark ending when Killer Croc tells the heartbroken performers that they gave him the opportunity to be exactly what he is – a monster. It’s almost heartbreaking how Croc realizes what a golden opportunity he’s squandered, but without the requisite penitence to allow that moment to change him.

This is probably, now that I’m thinking of it, the best Killer Croc episode in the show. It’s a short putt, to be fair, but someone’s got to come out on top. In addition to the sober treatment of Killer Croc, who was something of a generic baddie in his debut episode, “Vendetta,” “Sideshow” begins with a standout first act that is largely silent, a rousing fight-turned-chase that sees Batman duel it out with Croc on top of a moving train before the pursuit moves through the forest. (Sidebar: if Croc is going to prison in Gotham, where is this train taking him? Levitz Prison is, incidentally, named for Paul Levitz, a significant writer and editor at DC Comics, but how far away is it?) Moreover, the whole sequence takes place in daylight, a difficult strategy for a Batman story, but director Boyd Kirkland accomplishes a riveting chase.

There’s something to be said for the strong voice cast on display; Kincaid gives his best performance as Croc, it’s true, but the circus performers are equally notable performers in their own right. Kenneth Mars quotes Shakespeare like a pro (a weakness of mine, I confess), and Brad Garrett shows up just ahead of his expertly cast turn on Superman: The Animated Series as the space biker Lobo. The animation on these characters is exceptional, too, acknowledging their abnormalities without reducing them to the same.

Continuity wonks will also note that Killer Croc attempts to kill Batman by – you guessed it – throwing a rock at him. It’s a quick and cute nod to “Almost Got ’Im” and a line Croc never actually said, a nice wink to how great this show has been and a rewarding treat for devotees like yours truly. “Sideshow” is ultimately a really well-made episode, perhaps not among the best, but solidly inhabiting that comfortable space of successful second-tier episodes that fill out the hefty middle range of BtAS’s bell curve of quality. As Croc episodes go, though, it’s scaly chomping gold.

Original Air Date: May 3, 1994

Writers: Michael Reaves and Brynne Stephens

Director: Boyd Kirkland

Villain: Killer Croc (Aron Kincaid)

Next episode: “A Bullet for Bullock,” in which someone’s got it in for Gotham’s most reluctant team-up.

🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇

Batman: The Animated Series - "The Worry Men"

“Tell me, Alfred, what’s an ancient Mayan witch doctor doing on a Gotham skyscraper?”

Gotham socialite Veronica Vreeland (Marilu Henner) returns from South America and hosts a gala fundraiser to save the rainforest and celebrate her homecoming. She introduces Bruce Wayne to her latest find, a “Worry Man” – a tiny doll placed under one’s pillow to absorb stress and anxiety. In spite of Bruce’s skepticism, Alfred smuggles the doll into his master’s bed (“Every little bit helps.”), but the next morning, Bruce Wayne robs himself of $20 million. Is the worry man to blame for this unwitting heist? And what of the aforementioned witch doctor, spotted prowling near Veronica’s party?

I always feel I should put up a disclaimer for episodes that are structured as a mystery, and so if you don’t want to be spoiled on the secret of the worry men, we’ll see you next week. My big surprise was that this episode was written by Paul Dini. (I should have known it was Dini – he still finds a way to sneak in Joker and Harley!) It’s not a bad episode by any stretch, but nor is it one of Dini’s best. It’s an episode that I really didn’t remember, which is surprising, given my wearying refrain that Dini’s episodes are the best.

To be sure, there is much about “The Worry Men” that works. Though I remembered the truth about the worry men, I had entirely forgotten about the witch doctor, who presents a very compelling visual and who features prominently in several very rousing action scenes with Batman. Then there’s the episode’s climax, in which Batman faces down mammoth murderous marionettes of his greatest enemies, their rosy cheeks and goliath grins like something out of a grotesque Babes in Toyland. These are the moments when Dini’s great love of Batman really shines, and the episode does some pretty special and somewhat unique things with the character.

In isolation, “The Worry Men” is probably a very solid episode, but it stands in the shadows of two greater ones. First, Veronica Vreeland returns from “Birds of a Feather,” a truly first-rate Penguin episode which gave us a Vreeland who was as complex as she was contemptible; here, though, she’s a party girl through and through, burning through daddy’s trust fund like that other Veronica from Archie Comics. Then – I can delay the spoiler no longer – “The Worry Men” marks the first appearance of Jervis Tetch, the Mad Hatter, since “Perchance to Dream.” The plain fact is that “Perchance” is arguably the best Mad Hatter story that’s ever been told (including, I daresay, the Lewis Carroll story that inspired him), and this episode ends up being a little like trying to follow up “Heart of Ice.” (We’ll get there, though, in the penultimate episode of the series.)

What redeems the episode, aside from the animatronic ballet of death that runs Batman through a garish gauntlet (Dini’s dark humor on full display, to boot), is the self-aware nature of the episode’s paling in comparison to “Perchance.” Batman is almost disappointed to hear that the whole scheme was just about money, as if he expects better of a twisted mind like Tetch. But the Mad Hatter gloats about his impending retirement and then makes an attempt to steal Batman’s cowl (itself a kind of hat) before sending him off to a guillotine. The mania of the episode’s third act whirls with all the grandeur of Roddy McDowall’s voice – and a more perfect Hatter I could not imagine. It is not “Perchance to Dream,” though both episodes withheld the Hatter until the third act, nor do I expect you’d see it on a “Top 10 Dini Episodes” list, but it is a suitably odd feature with enough good material to lead me to question why it was that I didn’t remember much of it.

(Oh, and if you’re still wondering about that witch doctor, did you notice he’s wearing a hat?)

Original Air Date: September 16, 1993

Writer: Paul Dini

Director: Frank Paur

Villain: The Mad Hatter (Roddy McDowall)

Next episode: “Sideshow,” in which a croc runs away and joins the circus.

🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇