The New Batman Adventures - "Chemistry"

“Relationships aren’t supposed to be easy. Even I know that, and I’m a vegetable.”

At Veronica Vreeland’s fourth wedding, Bruce Wayne meets Susan Maguire (Linda Hamilton), who sweeps our billionaire off his feet. The relationship moves fast – fast enough for Bruce to propose marriage and resign the mantle of the Bat – but Robin and Batgirl are suspicious, especially when Veronica’s new husband Michael starts displaying murderous intent.

As the clock winds down on The New Batman Adventures, “Chemistry” is an unexpectedly appropriate antepenultimate note. For a show that has been nominally about family (albeit a family that squabbles, bickers, and at times flirts inappropriately), “Chemistry” is an episode that asks what it would take for the patriarch to leave the family. It’s been a long-standing precept of the Batman universe that Batman is a foster father to the Robins, Nightwings, and Batgirls who have found their way into his fold, with stalwart Alfred as his own surrogate father; in short, Batman creates for himself a family to replace the one he lost in Crime Alley.

For Susan Maguire to come along and destabilize all of that suggests that she must be a very special lady. This episode very smartly invokes some of the most powerful moments of Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, in which a young Bruce Wayne was already considering abandoning his nascent vow of justice in favor of a life with Andrea Beaumont; in “Chemistry,” it’s the cave scene in particular, framed and scored like that Phantasm moment, that helps to land the notion that this might be Batman’s swan song. However, one never really gets the impression that this is permanent, even if this were the final episode of the Batman animated project. Like Robin and Batgirl, we recognize that this is all moving a little too quickly, and Kevin Conroy smartly keeps his Bruce voice a little too dispassionate for a man on the verge of wedded bliss. I might have liked a little more convincing that Susan was the woman of Bruce’s dreams, but perhaps writer Stan Berkowitz is more interested in the detective work of Batman’s juniors and the horror derived from the truth about Susan.

The episode begins to destabilize (in a good way) when we learn the truth about Veronica Vreeland’s fourth husband. Veronica has been a fun addition to Gotham’s supporting cast, a useful reminder of what everyone else thinks Bruce Wayne is – a vapid, shallow, and self-absorbed heir to a fortune of ungodly size. She has the early weavings of a moral fiber, having learned half a lesson from abusing Penguin in “Birds of a Feather,” but she’s hardly an altruist. Still, our investment in her, even if only as a consequence of continuity, means that “Chemistry” wrings a successful amount of horror from her husband’s monstrous transformation into – and spoilers, all – a venomous plant creature born in Poison Ivy’s lab. Michael’s shambolic lurch toward Veronica, cowering in a closet, reminds one of the better moments in “Heart of Steel,” though I wonder if I’m the only one who wishes we might have gotten one more good H.A.R.D.A.C. episode out of TNBA.

As the final Poison Ivy episode, “Chemistry” keeps its main antagonist off-screen for a while, building suspense but sadly relegating a major Bat-foe to the periphery. There’s a lot that could have been done with this character – a happier ending with the besotted Harley Quinn, perhaps, or a seed of the long-running redemption plot the comics have entertained for her. Creating plant spouses to take over global industry is perfectly of a piece with Ivy’s ecoterrorist sentiments, but her emphasis on controlling their fortunes seems a little petty for a villain who always tried to do a little good for her planet. (Say, why hasn’t Ivy ever teamed with Ra’s al Ghul to save Mother Earth?)

“Chemistry” is a kind of cold inversion of “House & Garden”; where Ivy found herself incapable of forming a family, even a synthetic one, she’s here ready to dispense with the artifice and take full advantage of her powers of photosynthetic simulation. Years later, the tie-in comics would claim/reveal that every appearance of Ivy since “Holiday Knights” was actually a plant-based doppelganger that Pamela Isley used to escape Gotham and join Alec “Swamp Thing” Holland in his botanical research; as I recall, she even washed up from the watery climax of this episode. It’s an interesting footnote for a character who’s more often than not received a fair shake from this show. 

Original Air Date: October 24, 1998

Writer: Stan Berkowitz

Director: Butch Lukic

Villains: Poison Ivy (Diane Pershing) and Susan Maguire (Linda Hamilton)

Next episode: “Beware the Creeper,” in which a clown prince is plagiarized, and three stooges take a day off.

🦇For the full list of The New Batman Adventures reviews, click here.🦇

Aquaman (2018)

I don’t think any of us could have expected that we’d get an Aquaman movie before, say, The Flash or another of DC’s heavy-hitters that hasn’t labored under decades of “talks to fish” jokes. (Thank credited writer Geoff Johns, who spent years recently doing yeoman’s work to boost the profile of Aquaman comics after the character languished following Peter David’s seminal 1990s run.) But here we are, in the wake of a disappointingly passable Justice League and a DC cinematic universe that looks to be more standalone than unified – which is actually smart. Instead of chasing the Marvel method, DC appears to be organizing its universe around its unique and resonant characters, even if they (Wonder Woman, Harley Quinn, Aquaman) aren’t the ones you’d expect. 

Enter, then, Jason Momoa as Arthur Curry, rightful heir to the Atlantean throne currently held by his half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson), who wants to unite the seven kingdoms of the sea in an offensive against the surface world. Drafted into the conflict by princess Mera (Amber Heard) and royal advisor Vulko (Willem Dafoe), the man who would be Aquaman sets off on a quest to reclaim his birthright and his destiny.

As a piece of big-screen spectacle – placed at Christmastime, it feels a bit out of place, but so too does its land-and-sea protagonist – Aquaman is a real popcorn movie. Looking like an underwater Tron: Legacy, with a narrative that feels like a cross between Thor and Indiana Jones (and a Rupert Gregson-Williams score that’s part Vangelis, part Henry Jackman, and part Junkie XL), there is something contagious about Aquaman’s gee-whiz enthusiasm for bright lights, big setpieces, and wild monstrous creatures. From merpeople to colossal crabs, from talking krakens to zombie fishmen, director James Wan is clearly having a ball inventing and adapting the daftest denizens of the deep. Moreover, the film carries with it a sense that any mad adventure could be just around the corner – par for the course are a tidal wave or jumping out of a plane without a parachute. Don’t worry too much, the film seems to say; just have fun.

And for the most part, Aquaman is quite fun, thanks in large part to Momoa’s seafaring swagger. When we last saw him in Justice League, he was the surfer bro monarch, howling with glee and cackling “My man!” while spearing parademons. Here he’s lost none of that cockiness, overconfident and scrapping for a fight. His headstrong nature is countered by Amber Heard’s steady Mera, always cautious and deductive but a strong hand in a fight as she defies her father (Dolph Lundrgren, astride a seahorse) and his alliance with Orm.

Poor Heard, though, is saddled with scores of expositional dialogue, as are most of the characters in the film. Atlantis and its rival kingdoms are dense in mythology, and there’s a lot of ground/water to cover, but the film does pack in a lot, including Aquaman’s three biggest villains. On that count, despite the film threatening to buckle under its own weight, it is possibly the most straight-faced comics-accurate superhero film in recent memory, with Mera, Orm, and Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) looking as if they’ve stepped directly off the printed page without any self-conscious jokes. In fact, it’s easy to overlook a lot of the film’s flaws – choppy exposition, cartoonish filters on the visuals and the audio – because of how earnestly it emulates its source material; when Orm puts on that Ocean Master helmet, it’s like looking into the eyes of an Ivan Reis page. Indeed, from Zack Snyder we sense that James Wan has inherited that widescreen approach to the cinematic frame as a comic book panel, slowing down key action beats to give us a fist-pumping rah-rah pose before revving back up.

There are moments in Aquaman that are difficult to engage, moments that take you out of the film because of how ludic and unserious it can be; for me, it was the moments when some of the dialogue, already leaden with exposition, was muffled by an underwater filter that sounds like a kid in a bathtub (Tom Hardy, eat your heart out). But the film is buoyed by its relentless exuberance and my own predisposition to like this sort of movie when it doesn’t step grotesquely out of line. Between a comics-accurate Black Manta and Nicole Kidman wearing a sequined amphibious skeleton, the geeks have well and truly won.

Aquaman is rated PG-13 for “sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and for some language.” Directed by James Wan. Written by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, Will Beall, Geoff Johns, and James Wan. Based on the DC Comics. Starring Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Willem Dafoe, Patrick Wilson, Dolph Lundgren, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Temuera Morrison, and Nicole Kidman.

The New Batman Adventures - "Mad Love"

“Face it, Harl, this stinks. You’re a certified nutso wanted in twelve states, and you’re hopelessly in love with a psychopathic clown! At what point did my life go Looney Tunes?”

Smarting from his latest thwarted attempt to kill Commissioner Gordon, The Joker (Mark Hamill) rebuffs Harley’s advances, pushing the clown princess (Arleen Sorkin) to remember how it all began. In flashbacks, we see how she met The Joker as his psychiatrist in Arkham Asylum, before she fell in love and broke him out as his new henchgirl. As Harley remembers her past, she plans her future with her puddin’, plotting a way to rework Mr. J’s old schemes to kill Batman once and for all.

“Mad Love” is, as memory serves, the last great episode of the animated Batman project, which is really fitting in a number of ways. It’s the last episode by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm, adapting one of their seminal comic book works, and it remains the definitive statement on Harley Quinn. (We’ll see her once more, in two weeks, for a zany sideplot.) It’s a brisk twenty minutes, giving us a pair of fully-realized villains whose ambitions are clear, and it features Batman cleverly dodging his way out of danger with his trademark sense of black humor. (“She came a lot closer than you ever did... Puddin’.”) Put another way, it’s at once a high note and a mic drop for Paul Dini and Bruce Timm.

Reviewing this episode is a little like reviewing Citizen Kane – even if you haven’t seen it, you know its reputation is titanic, and the central concept is so culturally ingrained that it’s seeped into the culture by four-color osmosis. Everyone knows the story, and you’ll be unsurprised to see it crack the Top Five of my “Best Paul Dini Episodes” when all is said and done. It’s such a tight and engaging exercise in precision, with a wonderful showcase for Arleen Sorkin, who plays Harley as a multifaceted bundle of mess. She’s romantic, lovestruck, tragic, determined, afraid, clever, infatuated, obsessed, angry, and often a mix of most of them at once. What Kevin Conroy can do with the word “Go” pales in comparison to what Sorkin can do with a well-timed “Puddin’.”

Giving a villain like Harley such a complex psychological and emotional profile is a bit brave, but it’s long been the hallmark of this show that the villains are almost more the star of an episode than Batman is. Joker, too, gets his convolutions, obsessed as he is with marshalling all the strength of his comedic genius against Batman’s vast toyetic arsenal. He’s aware of the theatricality of it all, and it’s been this self-aware mania that has marked Hamill’s Joker tenure as indisputably definitive. He’s genuinely funny – on more than one level, as when he gags, “May the floss be with you!” – and yet frighteningly manipulative. This danger is something that Suicide Squad started to get right, this interpretation of The Joker as emotionally abusive and psychologically controlling, with Harley’s true tragedy being her inability to learn from her own mistakes.

Of course, in the comics, she’s long since learned her lesson, but in “Mad Love” she’s incorrigible, swooning over her Mistah J despite his endless violence. Yet at her core, she’s real; we recognize her cheery optimism and believe in her abiding capacity for love. We can’t help but admire her spirited determination to get back up and try again, even if that is the very definition of madness. In this way, she’s become a kind of accidental feminist icon, representing the capacity for strength and growth in the face of astonishing cruelty. No matter what happens to Harley, regardless of how warped her perceptions can be, she’s determined to continue to try to make the world in her own madcap image, whether that involves a shellacking of whiteface or a good thwack of her oversized mallet. 

We’ve seen throughout that this series often lives or dies on the strength of a particular voiceover artist – Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, Michael Ansara, even Paul Williams as The Penguin. Here, though, Sorkin makes the case (if she hadn’t already) that she belongs on the Mount Rushmore of Bat-voices – indeed, such that I can’t imagine who a comparable fourth would be opposite Conroy and Hamill. (Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., maybe? Andrea Romano? Sound off in the comments.) “Mad Love” is then a kind of farewell gift; though Harley Quinn will appear once more, this episode is the treasure by which we’ll always remember her.

Original Air Date: January 16, 1999

Writers: Paul Dini and Bruce Timm

Director: Butch Lukic

Villains: Harley Quinn (Arleen Sorkin) and The Joker (Mark Hamill)

Next episode: “Chemistry,” in which our Dark Knight finally settles down.

🦇For the full list of The New Batman Adventures reviews, click here.🦇

The Mule (2018)

At 88 years old, it’s a wonder anyone is calling Clint Eastwood a lazy filmmaker. Despite his notoriety for eschewing multiple takes, Eastwood remains a workhorse, turning out two films this year when his contemporaries are browsing leaflets for retirement homes. The Mule is classic late Eastwood, brisk and deliberate without any pretense of political correctness; one can almost hear Eastwood from behind the camera, growling that any young whippersnappers in hearing range ought to take a look and see how it’s done.

Clint Eastwood stars as workaholic horticulturalist Earl Stone, who’s lost his family after years of throwing himself into his work. Short on cash, Earl finds himself a mule for a drug cartel, shuttling contraband across state lines in his dilapidated pick-up truck. The film is complemented by parallel narratives involving a trio of DEA agents (Bradley Cooper, Michael Peña, and Laurence Fishburne) and the cartel’s decadent leader (Andy Garcia). 

There is something quite methodical about Eastwood’s directing here, an unshowy pacing that doesn’t descend into cliché; there’s little cat-and-mouse in the DEA subplot, for example. It’s a little like Heat if the classic showdown were set in a waffle house – we get there when we get there, with a minimum of glamour. Indeed, if memory serves, the only firearms discharged are on Garcia’s skeet-shooting range. Eastwood is more interested in a character sketch than an octogenarian Sicario, and his cantankerous Earl is very much of a piece with The Mule’s spiritual predecessor Gran Torino.

Gran Torino shares screenwriter Nick Schenk with The Mule, and it shows. Though Earl Stone isn’t as extreme in his prejudice as Walt Kowalski was, Eastwood is unafraid to show him as a sympathetic throwback, someone surprised to meet a lesbian biker gang but more interested in helping repair their engines than in talking down to them. Walt might have thrown a few slurs their way, but Earl greets them cheerily. It seems Earl is more perplexed by texting and the internet than by issues of difference, scratching his head at a generation raised by search engines instead of fathers. As cantankerous yet genial, Eastwood shines, a commanding if doddering heart to the film.

As good as Eastwood is and as well-developed as his character is, I couldn’t help but wish the rest of the movie were as thoroughly fleshed-out. We don’t know very much, for example, about the DEA agents on Earl’s trail. There’s a gesture toward a parallel with Earl about putting work before family, but much of that rings shallow when it’s told but not shown. A throwaway line about Peña’s five children, for one, never materializes into something meaningful because the movie is almost wholly disinterested in anyone else’s interiority. Similarly, the cartel plotline doesn’t land as forcefully as it could because, as even the film’s characters readily admit, it’s hard to tell one drug lord from the next. The only criminal with a semblance of a personality is Garcia as Laton, though I wonder how much of that comes from the page and how much comes from Garcia’s own magnetic, underrated capabilities. 

The Mule is a wholly unique flick, resembling others only tangentially. It’s itinerant in scope and methodical in temperament, quirksome and curious. It can’t be a big-budget blank check, but it’s certainly a creative blank check in that the premise is something so curiously specific that it takes the clout of Clint Eastwood to assemble it in this particular fashion. It’s also a healthy indicator that Eastwood in all his peculiar specificity shows no signs of slowing down, which is for this reviewer a very good thing.

The Mule is rated R for “language throughout and brief sexuality/nudity.” Directed by Clint Eastwood. Written by Nick Schenk. Based on a true story. Starring Clint Eastwood, Bradley Cooper, Taissa Farmiga, Michael Peña, Alison Eastwood, Andy Garcia, Laurence Fishburne, and Dianne Wiest.

The New Batman Adventures - "Girl's Night Out"

“An empty mall, an unguarded cash machine – who says life ain’t fair?”

A prisoner transfer from Metropolis goes sideways when Livewire (Lori Petty) escapes confinement and runs loose into Gotham City. Batgirl (Tara Strong) and Supergirl (Nicholle Tom) team up to recapture the electric supervillain, but in her escape Livewire teams up with Poison Ivy (Diane Pershing) and Harley Quinn (Arleen Sorkin) for a criminal shopping spree. 

In the final scene of this episode, it’s not a spoiler to say that Supergirl and Batgirl cap off their night of crimefighting and bonding in slippers and bathrobes, with their own pints of ice cream. If there’s a better analogy for how this episode is the animated equivalent of comfort food, I can’t come up with it. “Girl’s Night Out” (odd apostrophe placement, I know) is a real treat of an episode, fan service in its purest form. Last week’s episode might be a Top 10, and so too do I need to give this one some consideration. (Next week’s is a lock.)

It’s a little surprising for me to discover that Supergirl only appeared in three episodes of Superman: The Animated Series; even more startling is that Livewire only appeared in two. These two women loom so large in my memory of the show’s 54 episodes, possibly as a consequence of this episode, which throws together the best of two animated shows (which, recall, aired for a time as a one-hour block, The New Batman/Superman Adventures, on the Kids WB network). While there is something lightly discriminatory about pitting two women against three women, given the deep bench of villains Batgirl and Supergirl could have fought, I submit that we look at “Girl’s Night Out” as uniting the DC Animated Universe’s two greatest original creations – Livewire and Harley Quinn, both manic pixies with squeaky voices, too good to be bad but too bad to be good. It’s the perfect team-up of two perfect characters, just different enough to get on each other’s nerves.

This episode also revisits the Harley & Ivy dynamic that works so well. We saw a kind of trial run for this episode in “Holiday Knights,” when the pair abducted Bruce Wayne for a holiday shopping spree and murderous nightcap, so it’s a delight to see that the friendship persists, with Ivy as the gently indulgent den mother and Harley as the impulsive ball of energy. “She tries so hard,” Ivy laments as Harley whacks away at a locked door. Sorkin is in rare form as Harley, grunting her way through endless hammer strikes, gleefully acknowledging her own madness, and knocking herself out (whoopsie-daisy!) when she forgets that Supergirl is invulnerable. We have two more Harley episodes to go after this one, and she’s well on her way to going out on a high note.

One thing that ought not go without saying is that “Girl’s Night Out” is to be commended for an episode in which Batgirl and Supergirl’s friendship is assumed as a matter of course; they have no rivalry, no deep-seated resentment, and no hang-ups about working together. Indeed, they’re only jealous of the quotidian differences between them (namely, technology, farm life, and chores). It took Batman and Superman an entire movie to learn how to get along; it’s refreshing to see these two learning from their mentors’ mistake. While Batman is gruff and agitated at needing Superman’s help to take down Livewire, Supergirl is all too happy to step in for her famous cousin and make a night of it. 

In fact, this refreshing optimism is something from which The New Batman Adventures overall could have benefited. I had to keep checking this wasn’t a Paul Dini episode – it’s not, nor was Livewire’s debut – because the infectious brand of enthusiasm is Dini’s trademark approach to a universe as full of delights as this animated one. As dour and uncomfortably romantic as TNBA could be, it was episodes like this one that left us feeling good about the direction of the DCAU. Better, “Girl’s Night Out” is one of a number of episodes, like “Trial,” that feel like an open toybox adventure, dumping all the action figures onto the rug and having a blast. Sadly, this boy never had a Harley Quinn or a Livewire figure (or a Supergirl, come to think of it), but this would have been a dream of a team-up.

Original Air Date: October 17, 1998

Writer: Hilary J. Bader

Director: Curt Geda

Villains: Livewire (Lori Petty), Harley Quinn (Arleen Sorkin), Poison Ivy (Diane Pershing), and The Penguin (Paul Williams)

Next episode: “Mad Love,” in which life goes looney tunes.

🦇For the full list of The New Batman Adventures reviews, click here.🦇

The New Batman Adventures - "Legends of the Dark Knight"

“You guys are both totally clueless. First of all, Batman’s real old – like, about 50. And second, Robin’s a girl.”

While the arsonist Firefly (Mark Rolston) roams the streets of Gotham, four kids (Ryan O’Donohue, Anndi McAfee, Jeremy Foley, and Phillip Van Dyke) argue over what Batman is really like. Is he a giant pterodactyl or a rippling muscle god? Matt (O’Donohue) makes the case for a kinder, gentler Batman, while Carrie (McAfee) pictures the grimmest and grittiest Bat imaginable in this loving tribute to the works of Bill Finger, Dick Sprang, and Frank Miller.

Now that we’re getting down to the wire on the Batman animated project, “Legends of the Dark Knight” marks a number of “last” occasions – it’s the last anthology episode, and it’s the last episode filtered through the eyes of children. It’s definitely the best “kids” episode, handily thrashing “Be a Clown” and “I’ve Got Batman in My Basement.” It’s also a very strong anthology episode, but then we’ve already seen some real winners in that department (“Holiday Knights” and, of course, “Almost Got ’Im”). In other words, “Legends” makes a case for the series ending on a very strong note, and indeed this is the first of three episodes right in a row that I recall as among the strongest of The New Batman Adventures.

The central conceit of the episode – that there is no singular interpretation of Batman, that his value is in the eye of the beholder – is one that speaks very deeply to my beliefs about the value of fiction. Moreover, it’s particularly ingenious to pin the story to a group of children who turn their fandom into a kind of junior detective agency (another advantage over “Batman in My Basement”). It’s even better that this episode wears its creators’ own fandom on its sleeve, adapting two wildly divergent interpretations of Batman into a case study in the art of leaving them wanting more. I’d happily watch more in this vein, and have in fact done so; Batman: Gotham Knight did a segment like this, and an episode of The Brave and the Bold adapted Jiro Kuwata’s Bat-Manga, so it’s become something of a proud tradition for a character as multifaceted as Batman.

In the first segment, we get a cheerful Batman (Gary Owens) preventing a museum heist orchestrated by The Joker (Michael McKean). It’s a throwback to an era when Batman was unburdened of his early pulp roots, with a chest as broad as his smile. The visuals recall Dick Sprang’s 1950s Bat-art, but there’s a handshake with Robin (Brianne Siddall) straight out of Batman ’66, while McKean’s Joker recalls Olan Soule’s version of the Clown Prince from the late Sixties and Seventies. Put another way, it’s a pastiche within a pastiche, and this mash-up quality feels as anachronistic and yet as timeless as the giant props that fill the museum. There’s something very comforting about seeing Joker try to kill the Dynamic Duo by stomping on a giant piano; it’s a far cry from the Nolan and Snyder interpretations of Batman, but it feels right nonetheless, even as the kids reject it. The real star of this segment is McKean, whose Joker makes one wish he’d gotten to do more with the character; his version is rife with puns and cracking himself up, a playful jester with just a dash of sinister menace. “Mother always said I had talent,” he moons, a classic Joker line.

McKean would return to the world of the Bat as Dr. Bartholomew Wolper, Joker’s benighted shrink in the animated adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns. It’s an intriguing coincidence, then, that the next segment of the episode adapts DKR and its gritty 80s aesthetic, boiling its second issue down to a tight sequence storyboarded by the late, great Darwyn Cooke. The great casting continues; Michael Ironside is downright inspired as Batman, his voice gargling gravel over iconic paraphrases like “You don’t get it, son. This isn’t a trash heap. It’s an operating table. And I’m the surgeon.” (Miller’s original, note, was, “You don’t get it, boy. This isn’t a mudhole; it’s an operating table. And I’m the surgeon.”) Ironside would be replaced with Peter Weller for the 2012/2013 adaptation, which is a special kind of shame; though Weller was great, Ironside became a voice for a generation’s reading material. (Don’t cry for Mike, Argentina; he’d get his own day in the sun, though, as the definitive Darkseid over on Superman: The Animated Series and Justice League.)

The Dark Knight Returns segment is moody and expressionistic, capturing Frank Miller’s punchy dialogue and broad cynicism about the dark future. One wonders, with Cooke serving as storyboard artist, whether this segment had any influence or overlap with the similarly futuristic Batman Beyond, whose opening sequence was masterminded by Cooke. Taken on its own, though, this segment is relentlessly cool, with a special thrill for seeing Carrie Kelley – the first female Robin – make a quick jump into animation. The standout visual, though, is the shot of rain washing the mud from Batman’s face as he defeats the Mutant Leader in single combat. It’s enough to make you want a whole show of that world, and I’m sorely tempted to revisit the movies.

Perhaps surprisingly, it is the third segment – the one starring Kevin Conroy – that ends up the weakest of the three, mostly because it can’t help but pale in comparison to two very striking takes on Batman. In this one, Batman chases Firefly and apprehends him for committing arson for hire. Divorced from the #MeToo context I read into him in “Torch Song,” Firefly is little more than a slick costume with a passing interest in lighting children on fire. Despite this part of the episode feeling somewhat compulsory, Conroy manages to hit another career note with a single syllable. When he shouts, “Go!” at the kid detectives as they flee through an opening in the inferno, Conroy packs an unbelievable amount of pathos into the word. Throughout this review series, I have stopped and noted all the wonderful, amazing things Conroy can do with his voice, and perhaps this is his apex moment, distilling an entire character into one syllable. You can hear his sorrow that children have been dragged into this mess, his fear that they will die in the fire, his anger at Firefly for endangering them, and his resilient hope that his nightly war on crime is making a difference. 

“Legends of the Dark Knight” feels like it ought to be a Top 10 episode – and maybe, separated from all the great Dini episodes, it will be – but we must concede that this episode ends up somewhat less than the sum of its parts. It contains two first-rate segments and one a little weaker, and I find it hard to say whether the episode successfully communicates its message or whether I’m already predisposed to hear it. That message – that Batman is for everyone, with all versions being perfectly valid – is somewhat undermined, however, with a particularly mean-spirited joke at the expense of Joel Schumacher, who’s caricatured here as a preening pre-teen with a feather boa and a fetish for rubber-clad muscles. It’s the only sour note in the episode, but it’s pretty sour, reading like an embittered fan thumbing his nose at Schumacher’s Batman & Robin to assert his superiority over that particular interpretation. It’s perfectly legitimate not to like a movie like Batman & Robin, but this short punchline feels like the crankiest axe to grind in an otherwise jubilantly optimistic fable about fandom.

When we talk about Batman, it occurs to me that none of us is really talking about the same guy, and yet we’re all talking about the same elephant from a different vantage point. Some of us will describe Batman as a dark avenger, swooping through the night as a grim specter of obsessive vengeance. Others know him as a jovial square, willing slave to the conservative rules against jaywalking and violence. Still others think of him as a box office icon or a child’s plaything, a personal creed or just one of many in a box of toys. And the truth is, he’s all of those things. At the risk of sounding self-important in my own enlightenment, I think it’s really important for us to look at Batman from a four-dimensional perspective and realize that he’s all of his variations – pulpy, cheery, campy, gritty – a kind of cipher for the ages, telling us how we see ourselves and what sort of hero we need (or deserve). He contains multitudes, and no one interpretation has a monopoly on the character’s tone or history. There’s a part of me that wishes “Legends” were sequenced as the last episode of the series; it’s an effective series finale in the sense that it encompasses everything the show has been able to accomplish, uniting sixty years of history into as close to a unified statement as possible. And it’s a fine farewell to Batman in that it’s not an ending at all; it’s a renewal, a beginning, a reminder that he’s still out there, in all his forms, inspiring us by his example.

Original Air Date: October 10, 1998

Writers: Robert Goodman and Bruce Timm

Director: Dan Riba

Villains: The Joker (Michael McKean), The Mutant Leader (Kevin Michael Richardson), and Firefly (Mark Rolston)

Next episode: “Girl’s Night Out,” in which the Femme Finest team up against the DCAU’s best villainesses.

🦇For the full list of The New Batman Adventures reviews, click here.🦇