Superman: The Animated Series - "The Demon Reborn"

“Old age, Superman – it truly is a shipwreck. One that I have survived more times than I can remember.”

An art exhibit in Metropolis attracts an army of ninja attackers, who steal a peculiar staff fabled to have mystical healing powers. Batman arrives to help Superman apprehend the ninja, who are working for his old flame Talia (Olivia Hussey). Talia wants the staff to help her ailing father Ra’s al Ghul (David Warner), but Ra’s needs Superman for the final stages of his plan, which will make Batman’s foe more dangerous than ever.

“The Demon Reborn” is a peculiar episode because of its bifurcated identity. Where “Knight Time” did a very good job bringing Superman into Gotham, the attempt to bring Batman into Metropolis is somewhat more overpowering. The character Superman feels very out of place in an episode that wants so desperately to be another Batman episode, revisiting one of his greatest foes in a plot that doesn’t have much use for Superman other than as a demi-MacGuffin for the al Ghul clan to chase. Lois Lane, too, gets the short end of the stick, though she has a charming scene with Batman that builds on their unconventional relationship from “World’s Finest.” It’s a fun moment in which both characters reckon with their strange past and muse on their impossible future – a conversation that’s only possible in this incarnation of the DC Universe, where Lois fell in love with Bruce Wayne but fled from the Batman. (“She likes Bruce Wayne and she likes Superman. It’s the other two guys she’s not crazy about.” / “Too bad we can't mix and match.”)

As a capper to more than two years of reviews, then, “The Demon Reborn” makes the case one last time for Batman as a genre-proof dynamo, able to airdrop into any type of story without any seams. Superman seems out of sorts in a mystical story like this one, and he’s ill-matched for the threat Ra’s poses because all Superman can do is politely accommodate Ra’s and his villainous monologue until it’s time to break free. Superman is vulnerable to magic, yes, but that always seemed to me to be a way to justify putting two divergent cosmologies together. Morality plays, colossal threats, iconic battles of good vs. evil, interrogations of the notion of America – these better suit Superman than an immortal man with a magic stick. (And conversely, Ra’s al Ghul deserves better, I think, than trying to steal Superman’s strength for no particular reason.) In the moments when Batman is doing his detective work, the episode is firing on all cylinders; oddly enough, it’s the Superman parts that drag – though perhaps I’d feel differently if I had just watched the 50 preceding episodes of Superman: The Animated Series.

It’s hard to imagine that Batman: The Animated Series marked the first time that Ra’s al Ghul had been adapted from the comics, but he had a character-defining portrayal there, with David Warner as the irreplaceable voice in my head. We can think of “The Demon Reborn” as the capper to the fine Ra’s episodes – “The Demon’s Quest,” “Avatar,” and “Showdown.” Indeed, in the latter we saw (through a Jonah Hex flashback darkly) Ra’s al Ghul beginning to reflect on his long life and his many regrets, and we see that painful legacy here, with the ecoterrorist’s body failing him as the Lazarus Pits have begun to lose their luster. We also see, for the first time, Ra’s demonstrating some degree of compassion for his daughter; all too often, Talia was treated like a devoted disciple and not a true member of his family. She’s been abandoned, beaten, manipulated, and literally thrown at Batman, but at least here she gets a modicum of respect from her father, who abandons his assault on Superman to save her. (The icky, bizarre conclusion to their strange relationship would come in an episode of Batman Beyond, penned by no less than Paul Dini himself.)

“The Demon Reborn” is in a weird liminal space where it’s not quite a Superman episode, but not quite a Batman one, either. It’s a terrible note on which to end a review series because of the way it resolutely resists finality; when Superman suggests that he and Batman work together more often, Kevin Conroy is given the unsettlingly glib line, “Yeah, right.” Of course, they would work together on a regular basis in the Justice League animated series beginning in 2001, but moreover it’s odd to hear a surfer bro’s response from the mouth of a grim avenger. Conroy sells it, of course, but I wonder if he’d have done better with a terse “We’ll see.” It’s not quite my Batman, not quite my Superman, and not even quite my Ra’s al Ghul – but even so, it’s not quite terrible. It’s silly and fun, and perhaps that’s all we need to ask from a show like this one.

Original Air Date: September 18, 1999

Writer: Rich Fogel

Director: Dan Riba

Villains: Ra’s al Ghul (David Warner) and Talia al Ghul (Olivia Hussey)

Next episode: Once more, we come to the end of a series. Next time we’re together, we’ll begin revisiting the best and worst of the Batman animated project.

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

Superman: The Animated Series - "Knight Time"

“All this sneaking around isn’t exactly my style.”

Superman (Tim Daly) busts up a classic Roxy Rocket heist in Metropolis when he discovers that Batman has gone missing. With crime up in Gotham, Superman offers his help to a reluctant Robin, impersonating Batman in the interim until the Dark Knight can be found. Suspecting mind control, Robin and a disguised Superman scour the city for the Mad Hatter but find Bane, who’s elated to have another chance to break the Batman.

Just in case I never get around to full reviews of Superman: The Animated Series, I should say up front that this is probably my favorite of the show’s 54 episodes – discounting, of course, the three-parter “World’s Finest,” strung together as The Batman/Superman Movie. No slight to Superman, who had plenty of good episodes of his own (“Livewire,” “Mxyzpixilated,” and “Apokolips... Now!” come to mind), but it should come as no surprise that this Bat-fan was tickled pink to see Metropolis and Gotham meet once again. And while some Batman/Superman crossovers get bogged down in the philosophical differences between the two superheroes, occasionally erring on the side of the impossibility of cooperation, “Knight Time” is unapologetic in reveling in the exuberant fun of mixing the two worlds together.

Batman’s absence is the narrative catalyst, forcing Superman to investigate, but the episode is particularly inspired in the moments when Superman disguises himself as Batman, mastering Kevin Conroy’s voice through “precise muscle control” but completely missing the boat on posture, demeanor, and his own invincibility. It’s a comedy of errors, but the joke wisely never targets either hero, acknowledging instead the inherent absurdity of the situation and the irreplaceability of Batman. The episode even sneaks in a clever meta-gag about the darker tone of The New Batman Adventures when Robin notes that a video from Bruce Wayne has to be a forgery because “he’s smiling.” It’s an interesting sideways glance at Gotham, where one man’s disappearance sends an entire city into chaos; the police are stymied by a dangerous uptick in violent crime, while every villain known to man collaborates on a dystopian plot to conquer the city.

Despite its pitch-perfect portrayal of its titanic protagonist, the strength of the Batman animated shows was always its deep bench of villains, and “Knight Time” really packs them in. Even aside from the trio of villains plotting to dominate Gotham – Bane, Mad Hatter, and the criminally underused Riddler – we get appearances from Roxy Rocket and the Penguin, both of whom get compelling face-time with Superman. Roxy is, as ever, flirtatious, but it’s Penguin who gets what might be the best scene of the episode, facing down a Batman who’s suddenly able to kick a table across a room (even if Bat-Superman needs a little nudging from Robin to amp up the aggression). 

“Knight Time” remembers, of course, that it’s a Superman show, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome in Gotham simply because it’d be fun to do so. The reveal of the episode – that Bruce Wayne’s disappearance has been engineered by Brainiac, who needs his considerable resources to build a rocket – fits right in with how Superman: The Animated Series reimagined Brainiac. And it’s always a delight to hear Corey Burton, who was positively iconic in the role of a dispassionate computer willing to sacrifice an entire world to preserve its knowledge. Like its bat-eared predecessor, StAS had a tendency to knock it out of the park on voice casting (shout-out to casting director Andrea Romano); like Mark Hamill as The Joker, Clancy Brown is to this day getting work as Lex Luthor, while Gilbert Gottfried and Dana Delaney really captured something quintessential about Mr. Mxyzptlk and Lois Lane, respectively. But Corey Burton’s clipped precision as Brainiac is dollars-to-donuts in that legendary status, and he’s a rival befitting Tim Daly’s note-perfect boy scout Superman.

“Knight Time” is an interesting coda to these animated Batman reviews because it’s an episode that celebrates the best of Batman’s 109 episodes – its madcap characters, its funhouse mirror of a setting, and its flexible accommodation of nearly any conceivable plot. It’s both a return (of sorts) to Gotham and a fun frolic through a new setting for Superman. And it’s a fine example of the best kinds of episodes the DC Animated Universe could churn out, the kind of candy you eat every so often without getting bored of it. It feels mildly sacrilegious to say, but “Knight Time” is probably the episode of StAS I’ve watched the most; it’s in a league with the best of Batman.

Original Air Date: October 10, 1998

Writer: Robert Goodman

Director: Curt Geda

Villains: Brainiac (Corey Burton), Bane (Henry Silva), Roxy Rocket (Charity James), The Penguin (Paul Williams), The Mad Hatter (Roddy McDowall), and The Riddler (John Glover)

Next episode: “The Demon Reborn,” in which Superman meets one of Batman’s exes.

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