“Jilted madman stalks crazy clown girl – film at 11!”While reporting on Gotham’s villains, Jack Ryder (Jeff Bennett) finds himself on the wrong side of The Joker (Mark Hamill) and his famous temper. Joker douses Ryder with the chemicals that made him the clown prince of crime seven years ago, but Ryder emerges as The Creeper, a bright yellow ludic goblin whose fractured sanity leads him on a mad chaotic spree across Gotham – and into a deep infatuation with Harley Quinn (Arleen Sorkin).
When Steve Ditko passed away in June 2018, he was rightly remembered as the co-creator of Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, and Squirrel Girl. His creations for DC Comics were somewhat less widely remembered, though chief among them was The Question – inarguably the spiritual father of Watchmen’s Rorschach. Forgotten by all but the diehard DC heads was The Creeper, the madcap alter ego of Gotham television reporter Jack Ryder. The Creeper isn’t exactly an obscure character, but he’s a pretty deep cut; I’d wager that most comics fans (this one included) can’t quote his origin story, even if they know the central Jekyll-and-Hyde conceit of the character.
Bruce Timm is on record saying that his crew made several attempts to work The Creeper into the animated series but never found a story that made good use of the character. In the show’s eleventh hour, it isn’t clear whether Timm and company finally found the right notes or if they just threw their hands up and deployed The Creeper before it was too late. I’d like to think it was the former, especially because the show gave Jack Ryder the Harvey Dent treatment and used him throughout The New Batman Adventures before finally giving him the Christmas colors of The Creeper. Writers Rich Fogel and Steve Gerber (the latter having made his mark on weird comics by creating Howard the Duck) are so enamored of the character that Batman is largely a guest star on his own show, which is oddly appropriate for a show that has risen and fallen on the strength of its villains and supporting cast. (And when the show’s star, Kevin Conroy, is as steady and consistent as ever, it can afford to lean on its villains.) This shift in focus also lends credence to my theory that The New Batman Adventures was headed toward a “brave and bold” team-up model.
“Beware the Creeper” marks the final appearance of The Joker, so it’s fitting that the show turns on its head for its greatest ne’er-do-well, a theatrical scene-stealer of the first order. In this topsy-turvy episode, Joker becomes the hero, with The Creeper dogging his every move and trying to steal his girl; at the episode’s climax, Joker begs for Batman’s help, retreating in sheer terror at the lunacy of The Creeper. It’s a laugh riot, especially as the episode operates under a kind of Looney Tunes approach to physics, with an absurdist domino chain leading to Jack Ryder’s initial transformation. Acid, fireworks, cigars, and chemical explosions all conspire to reshape Ryder’s reality before he’s presumed dead in a send-up of the most readily accepted version of The Joker’s own origin. (The episode also includes a nod to Joker’s role in the flashbacks from Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, a nice little wink for the penultimate episode.) In short, this episode is a hoot, and it knows it.
As the last Joker episode, it’s also the last episode for Harley Quinn, too. While “Mad Love” is an impossible act to follow, this episode takes the interesting approach of reminding us why we love a loon like Harley, even when she’s acting against her own best interests. Despite seeing firsthand how incidental she is for her beloved Mistah J – in a meringue-coated spoof of Marilyn Monroe, which provides a delightful excuse for Arleen Sorkin to sing for us one last time – we still feel some degree of safety with him as opposed to the daft courtship of The Creeper. Creeper’s amorous intentions are never without a whopper of comedic intent, but there is something a little scary about his irrational and relentless pursuit. Put another way, maybe we’d all get back together with our worst exes if the rebound looked like The Creeper. No matter what, though, we’re always rooting for Harley – and I think we always will.
I had said back when The New Batman Adventures began, with “Holiday Knights,” that the Joker redesign was more than a little reminiscent of contemporary cartoon Freakazoid!, and with “Beware the Creeper” we come full circle. Freakazoid, the Deadpool of his day, took great postmodern delight in deconstructing what a kid’s cartoon could look like, with a powerful metafictional bent and a visual style that was more Chuck Jones than Jack Kirby. While I never watched much Freakazoid as a kid, I’ve always been aware that this incarnation of The Creeper owes a little bit to that offbeat sensibility. Case in point, the inspired use of Billy West as Joker’s three goons Mo, Lar, and Cur – doubtless a gag built around West’s spot-on Larry Fine impression (at a time when Larry was the “forgotten Stooge,” seldom imitated). It’s a joke that works because it makes perfect sense that Joker would hire goons for their resemblance to bygone comedians, the same way Two-Face would hire sets of twins. But it’s also a joke that only works because the audience recognizes the telling, a joke told as much for the benefit of its tellers, who layer in the reference with reverence. It’s one last reminder that the creators of the show have always given their viewers credit for being smart enough to follow along, even in an episode as deliberately mindless – and ultimately, richly entertaining – as this one.
Writers: Rich Fogel and Steve Gerber
Director: Dan Riba
Villains: The Joker (Mark Hamill) and Harley Quinn (Arleen Sorkin)
Next episode: “Judgment Day,” in which it all wraps up when The Judge delivers his final verdict.
🦇For the full list of The New Batman Adventures reviews, click here.🦇
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