I think editors get a bad rap; they tend to take the blame for a project’s failure, but rarely receive any of the praise for their successes. Obviously, “executive meddling” has become infamous for a reason, and the list of decisions made by editors, producers, and executives that have hurt, or even killed, projects is practically endless, but I also think that projects need somebody from the outside to look them over, give suggestions, and occasionally hand down a difficult, but necessary, “no.”
This is especially apparent when you come across creators who have become “too big to edit,” a.k.a. too famous and lucrative for anybody to dare tell them no. This term makes me think of Geoff Johns, once my favorite comic book writer, whose work became more bloated, scattered, and sporadic after he ascended to the heights of DC Comics’ corporate ladder. I think of Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima, who, yes, is a genius, but who really needed somebody reining him in a bit on Death Stranding. Just this week, leaks of The Last of Us 2* revealed a nightmare of behind-the-scenes drama and terrible decisions that have turned a much hyped video game sequel into a likely multi-million dollar disaster for Sony that could’ve been adverted if someone had just stepped in at any point and said “this is a bad idea.”
*I’m not going to go into too much detail about this here, partially because it deserves its own article, partially because I got most of my information about it from an incensed friend who called me to vent about it for two hours, and partially because I don’t want to spoil a game that hasn’t even come out yet in my newsletter, but if any of you were thinking of buying The Last of Us 2, I highly implore you to do some research on the leaks and the plot before throwing down your $60, cause there’s some real unsettling, problematic stuff going on, both in game and behind-the-scenes.
I’ve always admired the way Bruce Timm and his staff handled executive and editorial notes. Timm is the man behind Batman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, Justice League, and all the other interconnected animated DC Comics superhero shows that aired on Fox, Kid’s WB, and Cartoon Network throughout the nineties and early 2000s. Although these various series have always appealed just as much to adults as they have kids, they still aired on children’s networks, and were thus particularly susceptible to censoring — yet, Timm and company generally found a way to take these notes and make them into something good, maybe even better than what they originally had planned. They never felt too big to be edited.
The most famous example of this comes from Robin’s Reckoning, a two-part episode devoted to the origin story of Batman’s sidekick, Robin, a.k.a. Dick Grayson. Originally, the shot of Dick’s parents falling to their deaths from the trapeze was more explicit, but after a talking to from standards and practices, they changed it to just a silhouette of the trapeze — and Dick’s parents — flying off screen, but only the shadow of a broken rope swinging back. The writers and producers have more than once said that this note forced them to be creative, and that the final result was much more powerful than the original scene. Executive meddling is also the only reason Batman Beyond exists at all, as it was Kid’s WB who wanted a series about a teenaged Batman. Timm’s crew wisely ignored notes that didn’t work — resisting requests to give Terry a toyetic secret Batcave in his bedroom, for example — while embracing ones that did, such as moving away from the corporate kind of villains that dominated Season One to more varied, often younger ones. When (the non-Timm produced) The Batman eventually started airing it meant that Timm’s Justice League lost access to all Batman-related characters besides Batman himself in a move that’s come to be known as “The Batman Embargo.” The writers and producers took it as a challenge to explore and flesh out lesser known villains and heroes instead.
It was Timm’s first series, though, the classic Batman: The Animated Series, that seemed more hurt than helped by executive meddling, at least at first. Originally released around the same time as Batman Returns, the character designs were forced to reflect the movie despite being in no way connected, leading to a deformed Penguin (despite the show playing him as a sophisticated snob, not Danny Devito’s feral beast), a blonde Catwoman, and a Joker with an origin story to match Jack Nicholson. There were also some oddly forced and preachy environmental messages in the early going that seemed to be editorially decreed; these were phased out about half-way through the first volume, and the Catwoman and Penguin designs fixed when the series moved from Fox to Kid’s WB, leading to a streak of excellent episodes, the show in its prime.
A different editorial edict struck when a second season of the show was ordered, though; Fox demanded that Robin be in every episode. The final fifteen episodes even found the show renamed The Adventures of Batman and Robin and given a tacky new clip show theme song (replacing the iconic original theme, which is blasphemy, pure and simple).
Now, in its 65 episode first season Robin had only been a sporadic presence. At this point in Batman and Robin’s career Dick Grayson had gone off to college*, giving the writers a good excuse to only include Robin in episodes where Batman needed someone to bounce off of or where Robin’s particular personality or background were needed for the plot. Most of the season two episodes weren’t hurt by Robin’s inclusion — he was actually vital for a twist in what is probably Poison Ivy’s best episode of the series — but the creators were, understandably, frustrated by the imposition. Infamously, a proposed episode that would have featured a Catwoman and Black Canary team-up was stuck down because “where’s Robin?” The episode was eventually reworked into the Batgirl/Catwoman spotlight “Batgirl Returns,” but despite Batman’s complete absence from the episode, Robin still had to put in a token appearance
*Despite Batman: The Animated Series’ college-aged Robin, he was depicted as a prepubescent child in his origin story, meaning that Batman had been active for around ten years before the start of the series. Yet, the only member of his Rogue’s Gallery who was already in operation before the first episode of BTAS was the Joker. Did Batman…just fight the mob for ten years?
Why did Fox pass this Robin edict? The general consensus is that the network didn’t think kids could relate to Batman, and wanted Robin around as a viewpoint character/audience surrogate for the kids — which, interestingly enough, is the reason Robin was created in the first place back in 1940. I think the wild success of BTAS up to that point proves them wrong, but the idea isn’t entirely without merit; comic sales doubled when Robin was originally introduced, and while I can’t speak for anybody else, I know I always preferred the Robin episodes when I was a kid.
Maybe I was just a weird kid — I did prefer to be Robin when playing Batman with my friends, and who does that? — but the general train of thought that originally went into creating Robin was that kids could imagine growing up to be Batman, but they could imagine they were Robin, and that was me to a “T.” Still, perhaps I didn’t prefer the Robin episodes simply because Robin was in them; the early, Robin-less episodes tended to be a bit more cerebral and slower paced, often featuring mob bosses and corporate types as villains, while the later Robin episodes were more likely to feature big action set-pieces and supervillains, and the latter certainly appealed more to me as a kid.
Regardless, when BTAS was rebooted for a final season as The New Batman Adventures on Kid’s WB (complete with a new animation style to to match Superman: The Animated Series), they were freed from the “Robin edict,” but seemed to be facing a new one. TNBA found Batman working with a team of three younger heroes: Batgirl, now his primary partner, Dick Grayson, reimagined as the adult Nightwing, and a new, young Robin named Tim Drake. I’m not sure whether this was because of an actual editorial edict or a desire to explore new ideas, but either way, all but two episodes* of the series featured at least one of these sidekicks.
*One of those episodes was a Batman/Catwoman team-up — so if there was a rule that Batman had to have a partner in every episode, she filled that role — while the other was a close adaptation of a comic storyline where Batman worked alone.
In behind the scenes material for their Justice League animated series, which aired on Cartoon Network with an all adult roster and far less notes from the censors, Timm and company talk about how, when they originally pitched the series to Kid’s WB, they included a few younger heroes on their roster (Robin, Impulse, the Natasha Irons version of Steel) because they knew Kid’s WB would want younger characters and didn’t feel like waiting for the notes. I, personally, think the same is true when it comes to TNBA’s “Batman Family,” that they were likely a self-imposed challenge the creators thought would please the network rather than a hard-and-fast rule from them. That certainly provides them with some more flexibility than season two’s Robin Edict, but even so, I think the challenge of including a sidekick in every story ended up benefiting the series more than hurting it. Often their inclusion opened up new perspectives and possibilities to the stories, and that’s especially true when it comes to Robin, who gets his best episodes in that final TNBA season.
There are two episodes in particular that comes to mind. The first, “Never Fear,” involves the Scarecrow creating a new fear toxin that, rather than causing fear, removes it from the target, making them the victims of their own worst impulses. Admittedly, this episode is best known for introducing TNBA’s best redesign, transforming the Scarecrow from a scrawny, cheesy looking Halloween costume who sounds like a whiny professor
to a truly terrifying corpse-like figure voiced by the Re-Animator himself, Jeffrey Combs. We never even see this Scarecrow’s true face.
Is he even alive? The writers themselves wonder.
When Bruce Wayne goes undercover to find more about this “Never Fear” gas, he himself is dosed with it, leading to a reckless, daredevil Batman who nearly flies his plane into a building and is no longer concerned about his moral code, nearly killing a thug until Robin steps in. Robin takes up the role of Batman’s conscience, eventually tying Batman up and taking on the Scarecrow alone because Batman can no longer be trusted. Though Batman (after finally treating himself) has to step in at the end to assist Robin, he praises his partner for stopping him from killing someone, a move he would have forever hated himself for. When Robin admits that he was scared to do it, Batman imparts the episode’s moral, “sometimes a little fear is a good thing,” a lesson that really stuck with me.
While this episode was certainly a good spotlight for this new Robin, giving him a chance to really show his bravery, Robin’s role also helped to explore and enrich Batman and his arc as well. When Batman had forgotten his moral code because he was no longer scared to kill, he saw that same code reflected back at him in the eyes of Robin, the young man he had trained to cherish and uphold the same values as him. It reinforces what Batman stands for while also justifying Robin’s role as a character, a smart juggling act.
The other episode, “Growing Pains,” is a more straight-up Robin spotlight, but that allows for a kind of story BTAS ordinarily wouldn’t have been able to tell. Robin helps rescue a young homeless, amnesiac girl he names “Annie,” who he falls in love with on first sight. While the episode doesn’t avoid the humor of the situation — Jim Gordon can’t help but wistfully roll his eyes at the obviously infatuated Robin — it also takes Tim’s feelings as seriously as Tim himself does. It may be an adolescent crush to Robin, but adolescent crushes are everything to adolescents.
Things turn tragic by the episode’s end, as Annie is revealed to be a piece of the shapeshifter Clayface, given sentience by the wounded villain and sent out as a scout, but who lost her memory and mission when faced with the harsh lights and crowds of Gotham City. Annie eventually sacrifices herself to save Robin, and is reabsorbed by Clayface, effectively killing her. When Clayface is being booked by the cops afterwards they list off his crimes — “breaking and entering, destruction of property,” etc. — and ask if there’s anything else they should add. Robin has a suggestion: “Yeah. Murder.”
It’s an ending that broke my little heart back when I first saw it, and has always stuck with me. Having a young Robin allows BTAS to tell an adolescent love story it never could have otherwise, but it also allows it to create one of its harshest tragic endings ever because it involves a child, a move that hits not just its target demographic harder, but perhaps any parents watching along as well. It also revitalized Clayface, a character who hadn’t had a good episode since his introduction, making him more ruthless and terrifying than ever.
So while the Dick Grayson incarnation of Robin felt like a bit of an afterthought in the original, solo-adventure focused Batman the Animated Series, giving real consideration to the network’s desire for a focus on younger characters allowed The New Batman Adventures to create more fleshed out supporting characters for Batman, which in turn, both enriched Batman as a character and broadened the scope of the stories the writers could tell with him. Turns out that, even 70 years after his introduction, Robin still has an important place in the Batman mythos — and that, for all the rightfully negative examples of executive meddling and editorial notes, smart writers can take ideas that seem restrictive at first and find a way to use them to tell better stories.
CHECK OUT
Nearly twenty years after its debut it almost feels redundant to recommend Batman: The Animated Series (in all its forms), as it’s become a classic, the iconic take on the character for an entire generation, but it bears repeating that the series is fantastic — and was recently released as a full series box set on Blu-Ray! I own all the individual seasons on DVD and I’m still tempted to buy it again. Likewise, lists of classic, must-see episodes — the Two-Face and Clayface two-parters, “Almost Got Em,” “Joker’s Favor,” “Mad Love,” “The Clock King,” etc. — are easy to find and accurate, so I’m not going to waste time repeating them.
Instead, here’s a few episodes that might not be on that list, but that I consider personal favorites. “Never Fear” and “Growing Pains” are obviously on the top of that list, but the TNBA season includes a few more gems, including the farcical “Joker’s Millions,” the heart-pounding thrill ride that is “Over the Edge,” and wild card pick “Mean Seasons,” an otherwise standard episode that becomes memorable because of its truly sad ending and the social message said ending packs in. The best Poison Ivy episode I mentioned earlier is “House and Garden,” which explores what happens when Ivy tries to reform and start a family. “Read My Lips” and “Double Talk,” the series’ take on Scarface and the Ventriloquist, are some of its best and most underrated episodes. I’m also very, very fond of an episode called “Trial,” which finds Batman captured in Arkham and put on trial by his own villains as they try to argue that he’s responsible for creating every last one of them. Not only is it blisteringly paced and full of fun character interactions (as Batman’s entire Rogues Gallery bounce off each other), but it also refutes one of my least favorite hot takes about Batman, that he’s just as bad as the criminals he puts behind bars.
If you are somehow thinking of watching Batman: The Animated Series for the first time, I feel like it bears repeating that it took until halfway through the first volume for the series to find its feet. Out of the first fourteen episodes, I’d just check out “On Leather Wings,” “Two-Face Parts 1 and 2,” and “Heart of Ice” on first watch. While there’s a couple legitimate clunkers in there (“I’ve Got Batman in My Basement” is a peek at the juvenile version of this series that could have been, and thankfully wasn’t), most of those other early episodes are just sub-average outings that aren’t indicative of what the series would eventually become, and I wouldn’t want them influencing anyone too much as they’re discovering the joys of BTAS.
For longtime BTAS fans, it’s also worth looking into the Harley Quinn animated series now streaming on the DC Universe platform. It largely plays as a loving parody of BTAS, and though it’s occasionally a bit too profane and gory for profanity and goriness’s sake, it’s smarter, funnier, and occasionally even more heartfelt than I ever expected it to be.
RETRACTION
In a previous installment of this newsletter, I claimed that a “pre-Chandler Luke Perry” had appeared in a few episodes of Growing Pains. Obviously I meant Matthew Perry. I can’t make changes to these emails once they’ve been sent out, but the version of the article on this website has been corrected.
ABOUT
“Do You Know What I Love the Most?” is a newsletter from Spencer Irwin. Spencer is an enthusiast and writer from Newark, Delaware, who likes punk rock, comic books, working out, breakfast, and most of all, stories. His previous work appeared on Retcon Punch, One Week One Band, and Crisis on Infinite Chords, and he can be found on Twitter at @ThatSpenceGuy. If you like this newsletter, please subscribe and share with your friends!