Batman: Keeping Up the Good Fight
It’s almost like a parallel-earth sci-fi series. There are these two Batman movie and TV worlds, one live-action and one animated. The live-action world is best known for silly comedy, deliberate and otherwise. This reputation was started with the 1966-68 comedic Batman TV series with Adam West and Burt Ward. Although the first two theatrical features (Batman, 1989; Batman Returns, 1992) went a long way to restoring the image of the Dark Knight as a seriously dramatic hero (thank you, Tim Burton!), the third and fourth (Batman Forever, 1995; Batman & Robin, 1997) dragged the franchise back down into the gutter of campy humor that embarrassed all real Batman fans.
The animated world has always been true to the original suspense melodrama nature of Batman as conceived by Bob Kane and Bill Finger in 1939. DC Comics, the publisher of Batman’s comic-book adventures, had to struggle to maintain this image from the mid-1950s through the early 1980s due to the strictures of censorship to keep comic books “safe” for children. The TV cartoon versions of Batman and Robin by Filmation in the 1960s and ‘70s may have had quality problems, but at least they tried to treat the characters seriously. The juvenile public image created by the campy ‘60s TV series evolved back to the somber vigilante thanks to Frank Miller’s well-publicized The Dark Knight Returns graphic novel in 1986.
By 1990 Warner Bros. (the new owner of DC Comics and Batman) had revitalized its TV animation studio with Steven Spielberg’s Tiny Toon Adventures and was looking for new TV animation concepts that would capture an audience ranging from kids to teens and adults — something with the look of the rediscovered (thanks to home video) Fleischer Studio Superman cartoons of the early 1940s and the newly popular “anime style.”
Batman: The Animated Series debuted on the Fox network in September 1992. Its trademark “Dark Deco” look and mood made it so popular that it ran for 85 episodes until September 1995, with one episode winning an Emmy Award in 1993. It was followed on the small screen by Batman: Gotham Knights from 1997 to 1999, and by both The New Batman/Superman Adventures from 1997 to 2000 and the futuristic Batman Beyond from 1999 to 2001.
On what once would have been “the big screen,” it was also followed by the theatrically released movie Batman: Mask of the Phantasm in December 1993 as well as two direct-to-video feature-length Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero in March 1998, and Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker in December 2000. Now there is a fourth: Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman, released this October 21, 2003. Mystery of the Batwoman was previewed on a theatrical-sized screen at the Comic-Con International in July and at several later publicity previews around Hollywood such as the September monthly Los Angeles Comic Book Convention, to enthusiastic response from the fans.
Each Batman movie focuses upon one or more of the well-known cast of villains and sidekicks, plus introducing some new characters. In Batwoman it is a team-up of costumed villains The Penguin and Bane with traditional crime bosses Rupert Thorne and Carleton Duquesne. Batwoman is both old and new. Batman had a Batwoman partner in the comic books in the 1950s and 60s, but the character has been completely “reinvented” for this movie.
Gotham City has a new masked vigilante crimefighter who calls herself Batwoman. But she is more callous about avoiding injury to bystanders, and she uses deadlier scientific gimmicks than Batman does. Because of the similarity of their names and costumes, the public assumes that Batman and Batwoman are partners and that Batman condones her brutal violence. The Dark Knight and the four villains find themselves fighting each other as they all seek to unmask their female foe, whom they (and the audience) are led to suspect is one of three young daredevil women: Duquesne’s disaffected daughter Kathy; technical researcher Dr. Roxanne (Rocky) Ballantine; and Police Detective Harvey Bullock’s new partner, Sonia Alcana.
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