I’ve been watching a lot of Batman: The Animated Series on DVD the past few weeks, and I noticed a few patterns.
It may surprise you to know that I don’t think I’ve ever drawn the BTAS model for Batman. Never ever! I think I started doodling animation-style Batman with The New Batman Adventures, after they’d redesigned him to look Super Awesomer. That Batman just really wants to be drawn. I can’t help it. Drawing the original animated Batman for this strip was a lot harder than I thought it’d be… I have the later version etched into my brain. I had to forget I was drawing Batman and pretend I was drawing something totally new.
DoA Batman is completely the opposite of awesome?!? D=
Just curious, any specific reason for the DOA banner at the bottom? As far as I can see, it really has no relation to the (actually quite funny) comic.
For only today, it replaces the “Dumbing of Age” banner that had been directly under the banner for the past few months. If to this you respond, “what DoA banner?” then my reasoning for adding it into the actual comic image is made apparent.
It’s the “meanwhile, in an alternate dimension” one with Ethan, Mike, Amber, Leslie and Roz on it, right?
Save that the clicking doesn’t do the going to…
I STILL didn’t notice it still someone pointed it out.
What was so great about Penguin anyways?
He hated Bruce Wayne for being the wealthy, good looking, popular rich guy he was, and that the Penguin thought he was
Nothing is great about the Penguin, unless we’re talking about The Batman’s Penguin.
But…Burgess Meredith!
Yes! Penguin in The Batman is quite badass!
He’s basically a mob boss, and a very dangerous one. The difficulty with him is always getting any evidence to put him away. He runs enough legitimate businesses as covers that figuring out what illegal pies he has his fingers in is fairly hard.
And he’s insane and sadistic. Check out BoP. He’s starting to show up in there(#8 is his first appearance), and Gail Simone gets him.
Burgess Meredith.
I don’t get the huge honkin’ add for DoA at the bottom. I already read it!
Waugh, Waugh, Waugh.
Penguin always worked best for me when he was a semi-legitimate businessman running the Iceberg Lounge, who Batman tolerated because all he had to do was loom over him menacingly, and Penguin would spill his guts about every criminal activity in a 20 mile radius.
Shoulda’ changed his moniker to the Stool Pigeon.
For me, that makes him even LESS interesting. At least before he was using all those nifty umbrellas to steal, like, ceramic eggs or whatever. He was at least proactive. Take that away and he’s just a short fat dude.
Problem with mob boss Penguin is he never DOES anything. In BTAS, there were mob boss characters who had legions of goons, and who Batman could never pin anything on, and were constantly a thorn in his side. Penguin, when he gets the mob boss role, though, usually ends up ineffectual. And he never seems to DO anything, never tries to make a power play.
Only time I saw that version be any good was in the old No Man’s Land comics.
That’s sort of why he worked for me. Because for once, he actually made sense.
He IS just a short fat dude. And he has the most random gimmick ever; birds and bumbershoots. He’s not a super genius, none of his umbrellas were any more useful than the mundane stuff they contained (a guy with a gun concealed in a parasol is no more impressive than a guy with a gun), and he wasn’t even insane.
Only reason he’s still around is (A) he dates back to the 40s, which automatically qualifies him as “classic” and (B), Burgess Meredith and Danny DeVito gave him mainstream recognition. In a more realistic story, giving him connections and an army of goons is the only way to make him formidable. Otherwise you need to do like the comic above and cripple Batman.
That’s not entirely fair. There WERE some Bronze Age stories where Goldfinger-esque Penguin was a big threat to Batman. Penguin used to be an A-List rogue, back when some slightly more crazy things were acceptable. He’s been downgraded since, but lots of people still remember him for his old status. That’s why he’s still around.
I liked him in Joker’s Asylum, where he (spoiler?) used his influence and money to destroy a man’s life and drive him to suicide, just because he laughed at the wrong time.
There’s also always the oldschool Penguin, who was more along the lines of a Goldfinger-esque Bond villain. Fabulously wealthy, only really committed crimes out of either greed or just for the thrill of it. He, at least, was sometimes a legitimate threat to Batman. Mob boss Penguin, while a good take on the character in its own right, leaves him as kind of a wimp.
I was always a fan of the episode where Penguin started dating that wealthy socialite who was just using him as a party trick.
…
Come to think of it, BTAS had a good couple’a episodes about villains that would have reformed, except some random straight decided to be a douche to them.
Of course, for Clayface that random douche was Batman.
In Smallville, that douche was Clark Kent.
That’s because Douche is Smallville Clark’s defult personality. I kid.
Say, Batman’s best at everything, so he must have trained to be a Master Douchebag. I wonder if Smallville Clark was his teacher.
That was always one of my favourite BTAS episodes. “Almost Got ‘Im” was also a good one.
batman is having a bad day…(this comic reminded me of a weird comic i saw on 4chan that started with that phrase)
I had the same experience as you, Willis. After watching so much JLU then going back to B:TAS, it seems crazy to watch Batman be in situations where he’s not, y’know, God in a batsuit. I mean, what the hell is up with that Baby Doll episode? He nearly gets beat up by a woman trapped in a 5 year old’s body! Get it together, Bats!
Thank goodness for power creep, I guess.
The Clock King episodes is one of my favorites because of this. Suddenly Batman sort of klutzes around like the grandest of doofuses as soon as he’s within fifty feet of an old man in a suit whose only advantage is his excellent knowledge of train schedules.
Knowledge of train schedules renders Batman unable to fight. It’s all there in the comics (that only exist in my mind with all the other evidence that my insane fanon theories are actually true).
“I don’t know what to tell you, Willis, except perhaps that the 9:15 is always six minutes early.”
B:TAS is my favorite, I suspect mostly because that’s what I watched as a kid. I didn’t see anything else of the DCAU until years later. I still prefer the original character designs, even if they did lead to some wonky, off-model animation.
The explanation that Clock King has watched videoes of Batman and learned to perfectly time his moves was especially ridiculous. In a wonderful way.
One wonders where he got video of Batman. Is there a Batman jazzercise tape?
NEVER underestimate the power of Train Schedules!!!
Weird, it seems like everyone was getting reacquainted with the Diniverse this month. Me, my friends, their friends, David Willis…
Hooooooooly crap. I’m up to date. that was it. That was the WHOLE archive. I started reading DOA because I clicked on an ad of Jeph Jacques’s Questionable Content. Then I read Roomies! / It’s Walky! / Joyce and Walky and loved it. And now Shortpacked! Your comics are great, and you are great, David Willis.
Also, on a Batman related note, is anyone else here totally gay for “The Batman”? With straightjacket Joker, Marilyn Manson Riddler, and Kabuki-Twins Penguin?
Hell yes! The Batman was awesome….rrrrrriiiight up until Batgirl debuted. I couldn’t make it through that season. So freaking annoying.
I liked that version of Batgirl. Interesting costume and something a little different about her, which pretty much summed up the whole ‘The Batman’ series.
Not that the character was perfect, but I rather enjoyed the way she was portraed.
I just hope at some point we get a Stephaine Brown Batgirl showing up in Young Justice for an episode.
I’m the exact opposite, actually. I didn’t like the series until after Batgirl showed up (other than The Batman vs. Dracula) Season 5 was especially good.
I disagree as well. I was disappointed that when Robin showed up, Batgirl got put on the back burner.
That episode where she single-handedly takes out Maxie Zeus’s giant ship is awesome.
Watching it right now, as a matter of fact.
My primary experience with Batman is the old live action series, so Penguin was never really any less threatening than the other villains.
Not to say he was threatening. Just that the old live action series lowered all the villains to Penguin’s level. And it worked, because back then, Batman had no real detective skills and no real fighting prowess – all he had going for him was the utility belt. So an umbrella that can shoot fireworks was actually pretty nifty. Penguin looked harmless at first glance, but then suddenly his trick umbrella was just as versatile as Batman’s utility belt, so they were like equals.
I’ve actually been watching some of the old ’68 Batman show lately and Penguin has proven to be one of my favorite characters on the show. The characters that did best on that show are the ones that modern comics seem to have trouble with like Penguin and Riddler. Penguin’s schtick in my mind is that there’s a certain shrewdness about him. As they said in the ’68 Batman, he was a “cagey bird”. He takes advantage of opportunities that other super-criminals don’t. Though it seems that the above cartoon would be a strike against Penguin, it’s not. He’s exactly the kind of villian who would take advantage of a situation like that. He’s not interested in a fair fight. He’s ruthless enough and opportunistic enough that he’d use this to his advantage.
I can’t think of Burgess Meredith without remembering a story told by Larry Hagman some years ago on Conan O’Brien’s show. Not sure if this link will work, but here’s the synopsis: http://www.anecdotage.com/index.php?aid=7902
Warning: Google has declared the above link to be unsafe.
Wait, you HAVENT drawn BtAS Batman? Then which Batman was the one from the DDR comic?
That was TNBA Batman.
That was the design from ‘The New Batman Adventures’/'Gotham Knights’/Whatever the last few seasons of the show were called.
After the first few seasons of TAS, the art style changed. Everything became blockier and pointier, and the Joker started to look like some kind of bug man.
The New Batman Adventures. Everybody got redesigned for that. Generally for the better, though Riddler kinda got screwed.
Blame the 90′s live action movies. In BTAS, They made Catwoman a blond and Penguin a deformed circus freak to match the way Michelle Pfeiffer and Danny DeVito looked as those characters in Batman Returns. Then, by the time of the Batman Adventures redesigns, it was decided to make Riddler look like Jim Carrey’s Riddler from Batman Forever.
I’ll admit, the only Batman animated series I ever really got into was Batman Beyond. Mostly because old!Bruce was such a raging badass. I always loved how his solution to being too old to be Batman anymore was to shove some random teenager into what amounted to a remote-controlled batsuit. And then sending the poor bastard into hundreds of dangerous situations while constantly bitching about how much more shit got done when *he* was Batman. I mean come on that show got Batman’s twilight years exactly right, it was beautiful.
That’s actually a pretty good summary of why I love that series.
When I pass that light through the filter of memory, that does make it a pretty good show!
Played for added awesome in ‘The Once and Future Thing,’ the Justice League Unlimited episode where several leaguers end up timelost, and JLU Batman meets Terry and old!Bruce.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PETk8eBbfN0
Chris Sims summed the show up best.
“What if Batman was also Spider-Man? In the future!” That is why it is awesome.
This was something I always noticed about Batman. I can think of maybe two episode where he wasn’t obviously weakened somehow while fighting Penguin, and that was only when Batman barely appeared in the episode as a primary character. The first was “Almost Got Him”, and the other I believe it was the one during where Veronica Vreeland made Penguin her “project” for rich-people amusement, and he fell in love with her.
Its not surprising though. Despite being a well known villain, he’s not exactly very effective villain-villain. You can only do umbrella weapons and bird-related thefts so many times before it becomes tedius. The best thing they ever did was turn him in a weapons dealer/mob boss, who hid behind the mask of a legitimate business man and club owner.
“Team Penguin” would have been successful if he hadn’t went after a stupid bird caper or gotten Killer Moth involved.
That one doesn’t count, due to the fact its from “THE BATMAN.” That version of the Penguin is a completely different version. I’m talking the Bruce Timm series, which sticks with her normal roots of being a dignified villain.
Willis, no matter which version of Batman you draw, I always read his dialogue in Kevin Conroy’s voice.
I also.
unless it’s Beyond.
In which case he sounds like Ron Stoppable.
I don’t see how Batman could have any other voice, personally.
Ah, the first series, when Batman could be reasonably threatened by mooks with tommy guns…
There is one storyline that Brian Azzarello did that actually made the Penguin seem like a credible threat. I’d give Broken City a try if you haven’t read it before.
I agree… Penguin was kinda lame after he has “gone straight”. He even lost most of his bird and umbrella motifs. That said, he remains the least developed Batman TAS villains. We would have needed more episodes like “Birds of a feather” that really let us see into the guy’s psyche – that deep down, he just wanted to be accepted into (high) society.
But yeah… I have watched and re-watched Batman TAS episodes ad nauseam, all except “I have got Batman in my Basement”. That, and “The Mechanic” are some of the worst two episodes of the show.
http://leethomson.myzen.co.uk/Batman/Batman_Writers'_Guidelines.pdf
I’m not Batman. And I can’t breathe in space.
But my shoulders hurt!
That one time Penguin sic’d cassowaries and POISONED HUMMINGBIRDS on Bats, I was legitimately afraid of him.. but that’s it. Well, that and the Danny DeVito version.. creepy little freak..
If I was writing some development for Pengy, I’d make him the uber snob, characterized by complete disregard for people’s lives. he’d just casually murder like some kind of waddling Alex from Clockwork Orange.
This is why these comments need a like button.
First: Great job on the BTAS Bats David!
While he’s more competent in the JLA episodes, I love the animation in TAS, its just so fluid and there’s a style and atmosphere that most of the latter series seem to lack. To me the closest balance between style and writing is probably Batman Beyond.
As for Penguin… maybe someday someone will come along and give him the Killer Moth treatment.
I’m Batman.