Batman: TAS, episode #30: Tyger, Tyger

Speaking of mad scientists, this episode is a complete Island of Dr. Moreau pastiche, including island. I'm OK with that, given that they were aiming for a younger audience who would be both unaware of and attracted to the idea of what is essentially just a ripoff. Also, it doesn't stray too far from the general concept of The Batman resembling Man-Bat. In this case, it's Catwoman becoming more Catwoman-like. One thing I'm less OK with is the general discordancy of the relationship between The Batman and Catwoman. We've already seen Catwoman and this episode continues with the "general knowledge" theme, assuming that viewers don't need to be told the origins of our hero's major opponents. But we've also seen Catwoman get arrested by The Batman for her various crimes in her earlier appearance and yet here Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle are back on the social circuit together, as if he has no idea who and what she is. This is DC Comics in a nutshell up to the mid-1970s, where they finally started following Marvel's lead. It's disappointing that this series, which extends credit to the knowledge and awareness of its viewers in so many ways up to this point, decided to partially abandon that courtesy here. It's not even ham-handed. It's just poor storytelling, since you're not extending credit to your viewer. You're suggesting that they ignore what they already know. In another discordant moment, Bruce Wayne simply brushes off the cops when investigating what happened at the zoo, despite them pointedly informing him that "This is police business." We know he can kinda do this because he's The Batman, but it makes no sense within the story for playboy Bruce Wayne to ignore the cops.

When we make it to the island, we're introduced to the main villain, Dr. Emil Dorian, who is bog-standard mad scientist, unlike Hugo Strange. And the main opposition is his perfect creation, Tygrus. The only real problem with him is that name, which sounds like "tigress", which is not exactly the audible image one wants to create for the aggressively male character that the mad scientist is using Selina Kyle as a potential mate to breed with. So we're already running into multiple odd style choices within act I. That pattern continues when we find The Batman going to Kirk Langstrom for help in identifying the combination knockout drug/genetic transformation serum used on Selina. Again, it's great that we're hearkening back to earlier episodes and creating a timeline within the series. But this is the same problem as before, since it would help to remember that this version of Langstrom, in a deviation from the comics, was criminally motivated in becoming Man-Bat, instead of inadvertently transforming as the original version does. And, yet, just like with Selina, The Batman is fine consulting with a criminal who's remarkably out of jail, despite arresting him the first time they encountered each other.

Another positive in this mixed bag is that the episode is filled with action, but it's not boring or confusing action, since much of the fisticuffs involves the "genetically-superior" Tygrus; a proper challenge for our master combatant hero. Despite the story not really involving what one would consider our preferred noir elements, since it's the Darknight Detective on a tropical island fighting mutant animals, it's at least paced well enough and in scenarios that involve The Batman trying to save his own life and that of Selina Kyle, while not trying to treat Tygrus as just any thug to be waved away or an opponent to truly be beat down, like most of his other villains. So the tragic aspect is played well, even if the genuine opposition in Dorian is fairly routine. Also in yet another upside of continuation and respect for the viewers, the effect of the first encounter with Tygrus is visually carried throughout, as the slashes on The Batman's chest never go away, which is a level of animation sequencing and continuance that was uncommon for cartoons of the time and hasn't even regularly been used in earlier BTAS episodes. We also take a slight deviation from our Island of Dr. Moreau retelling to also include elements of The Most Dangerous Game, which is fine because, again, we have to include our younger viewers who may not have seen something like this before, despite it being pretty old hat for those of us who've been around longer. On the other hand, I'm not sure why you'd include the line "Search your feelings, Tygrus (Luke.)" since viewers young and old will automatically associate that with the Star Wars franchise and be jarred out of any story you're trying to tell. And, perhaps appropriately for our discordant tale, the best line in the episode comes from a throwaway character, when the security guard at the zoo mentions that "Her taste in boyfriends lacks severely! Guy looked like an ape!" when talking about Garth, the substandard gorilla servant (in story and in action within the story.) Fittingly, Garth doesn't even get a voice credit(!)

So, a very mixed bag as an episode, for any number of strange plot and style choices. But the final product isn't horrible. Credit has to be extended for using the William Blake poem (even if Bruce Timm fumbled the pronunciation of the last line (symmetrI, not symmetree) and it was appropriate to wrap the episode with a return to the title card image. Again, it's a nice snippet of tragedy. It just doesn't particularly stand out, plot-wise, for only our second appearance of Catwoman. But next up is our third appearance of The Scarecrow in Dreams in Darkness.

Batman: TAS, episode #2: On Leather Wings

This was the first episode produced but the second to be released and was done so in prime time to make the biggest splash. You can tell it was definitely an intro episode from its basic structure, which is high action and drama from the very beginning and introduces a number of characters at a rapid pace. One of the more intelligent moves made by the producers with this series was that they essentially assumed that the audience was aware of who and what The Batman is from the beginning. They further that assumption with most of the major characters. Most people whom are aware of the lead character are also familiar with Commissioner Gordon, for example, and around that period of time, many would also be familiar with the two Harveys: Bullock and Dent, the latter of whom makes the briefest of cameos, highlighted mostly by his almost off-camera flipping of his famous coin, in true noir style.

But Bullock gets the full intro, not only of his lust to take down Gotham City's acknowledged hero, but also his willingness to defy direct superiors in order to do it. Bullock was created by Doug Moench in the early 80s (there is some debate about that based on a character seen for three panels in Archie Goodwin's run on Detective in the early 70s) as a corrupt cop trying to undermine Gordon. That's a noir character if I've ever seen one, so it seems perfectly natural that the producers would ensure that he was a presence in this version of the Batman. As with his Moench origin, Bullock tends to follow the lead of the mayor, rather than the commissioner. But the real star of the episode is, as usual, the villain of the piece: Man-Bat.

In the comics, Kirk Langstrom was a good-intentioned scientist who let his own confidence in his work carry him into danger. A similar example in the comics world is Spider-Man's friend, Dr. Curtis Connors, also known as The Lizard. Obsessed by the benefit that he thinks his formula will bring to humanity, Langstrom tests it on himself and goes through a horrible transformation until The Batman is able to save him. Why Kirk felt that it was urgent for humans to develop a sonar sense like bats, as compared to Connors' attempt to regrow lost limbs like many lizards, is for your editor to decide, but this has always struck me as one of those very DC (irrational device for character) vs Marvel (semi-rational device for character) comparisons. In BTAS, however, Kirk is both ambitious and quite aggressive about it, suggesting that his colleague, Dr. March, was too weak to do what he'd done... which is transform into a monster to rob drug companies. I mean, I'm all about knocking down Big Pharma, too, but there are better ways to go about it. But in this series, they seemed determined to portray Man-Bat as an actual villain; the "beastly" side of what The Batman is. One dresses up like a bat to terrorize criminals, while the other transforms into one to terrorize everyone. It's a "there but for the grace of the bat-god go I" kind of element which would probably work much better in a story told at a somewhat slower pace.

And that's because there's a questionable plot/timing issue with this episode, as well, given that they set up the "Dr. March is lying and must be the bad guy!" angle, with the big switch supposed to be revealed when we discover it's actually Langstrom who's the villain. But that story isn't given enough room to breathe while we're also meeting Harvey Bullock and the police are suspecting The Batman of being a menace. Clearly, these are intro episode problems, where you try to cram in as much story and characters as possible and one angle of that story kind of suffers for it. In that respect, Dr. March seems somewhat irrelevant, other than that he's the weird, antisocial guy who works in the strangest chiroptera lab ever (How many are actually in caves?) It also means that Francine Langstrom (who stops to point out that she's also to be referred to as "Dr." (Like the new First Lady)) is basically just scenery, unfortunately. She gets the Oh, No!-girl role as the story circles around her criminal husband, about whom she can only wail in anguish. Sigh...

On the upside (literally), we get one of our police airships right out of the gate, which is pertinent because a lot of the action in the second half takes place in the air. We're also introduced to a few of the legendary gadgets of our hero's repertoire, with gas bombs employed to foil security guards and the "huthuthuthut" zealotry of Bullock's tactical squad, as well as a pair of goggles that let The Batman see day-old footprints and hairs among debris. From an animation perspective, we also get a bit more anime style in this episode with the closeup to the transforming Man-Bat's teeth to fangs and with Bullock's disheveled appearance (hair, tie, shirt, coat) constantly in motion. The teeth-to-fangs scene had me flashing back to things like Legend of the Overfiend for a moment. They also dropped the reaction shots (e.g. no Batman standing in menacing pose for a moment), even though this was directed by the same person, Kevin Altieri. Again, that may be a factor of how much story they were trying to squeeze into one intro episode, while the previous story had been spread across two.

Also, a note about the title cards, since this one was particularly emblematic of the style. One of the other inspirations for this series was the Fleischer Studios Superman cartoons from the 1940s. In that period, many presentations, live action and animated, would use title cards like the one above just like the title page for a book. The one for Cat and the Claw was perfectly good, but this one has that grainier, black-and-white cast to it that really evokes those old-timey films. The attention to details like those are what make BTAS the classic that it's become. That said, like many intended pilots, I think this one suffered from the usual issues, which is why both Fox (and now HBO) decided to start with another episode.

Next up, we drop the temperature but raise the story level with Heart of Ice.