THE MOUSE ROARS:
THE LITTLE VILLAINS MADE BIG
Okay, how many of us can honestly say we knew ANYTHING about most Batman villains before the Animated Series. I was as big a comic fan as any, but all I knew were the Joker, Catwoman, the Penguin, the Riddler, and Mr. Freeze. And not much about them, either.
Batman, of course, ruined all THAT for me. Not only did they serve up spicy helpings of steamy Catwoman, delicious Joker, poached Penguin, and peppery Riddler, they took the 'little' villains and made them into big stars on the small screen.
Take "On Leather Wings"...a fan-favorite character from the Seventies, turned into a heart- stopping, rampagin shrieking Man-Bat! What a way to kick things off! Who can forget the now-legendary "Heart of Ice", where we put an origin and a
curse to the man called Freeze.
And it just got better! It became a game with my brother and I to guess the villain from the title. Over the months, we met new friends like the sultry Poison Ivy and the slithering Scarecrow. I became re-acquianted with Killer Croc and learned about
the key madness of The Ventriloquist. The Joker gained a new dimension and a new girlfriend, Harley Quinn. The Mad Hatter got a tender intro in our world, and the Riddler showed up after teasing us with snippets for months and months.
I was extremely happy that the writers took decent source material and made magic with it. The spark wasn't quite the same when we met Calendar Girl and Firefly...maybe it was the animation style. The old one made it seem like we were riding on Batman's back
in a phantom nightmare from the Fourties...and the new one was today, shiny and new. Hard to say.
I look back on those Saturday mornings in 1992 as some of the happiest times in my life. Great television, sure...but something more. A spark ignited in my imagination, a spark which will one day burn as a raging fire. And for that, my eternal thanks.
* * * * *
PUZZLING
by Kelly Tindall
Has ANYBODY ever got the Riddler right?
I was thinking about this as I drove hastily across the 14th Street bridge this afternoon. I mean, there have been so many incarnations that his true persona seems hopelessly lost.
I think the best passage about the quandary, the puzzle, that is the Riddler came from Paul Dini in the excellent (you should own this!) Batman: Animated. He detailed how frustrating it was to write a 'gimmick' villain like lil' Eddie. Make the puzzles too
smart, you alienate the crowd, but make 'em too stupid and you lose Riddler's edge.
Chuck Dixon, late of Nightwing and Birds of (ha ha ha) Prey, did perhaps my favorite Riddler story in RIDDLER: YEAR ONE (DETECTIVE COMICS ANNUAL #8) right about the time the BATMAN FOREVER "film" came out in 1995. It was a funny, sexy, violent, and SMART play about a man
who just couldn't cut it in the real world. He needed control. So, he snapped, turned to crime, and we follow his progress as his delusional mind is met with opposition from not only the police and Batman, but even his partners in crime! Great stuff.
There have been SO MANY VERSIONS, though! I like Frank Gorshin's manic Riddler, which was so good that most Riddler stories are wrote like they star him; Jim Carrey's Riddler is good, but hardly iconic...although the whole cane thing is a welcome addition.
The first animated Riddler was good...suave, cocky, and always always always right, right to a fault. His three appearances were good, but none of them were particularly standout. No moving psychodramas like those for Two-Face or Harley.
And then the new one...
Well, I liked the return to the skintight look, although I always fantasized about some sort of computer effect that would allow the animators to put a question-mark pattern over the cels to make him look like the comics. The dark eyes, bowler hat, and new cane
(great cane design by Timm, I believe) all screamed "Clockwork Orange", but we never saw a complete Riddler story so we never got to see how complete and full the transformation was. I guess they thought they were done with him, sorta, after "Riddler's Reform".
(TWO-FACE'S DIVINE INTERVENTION: There WAS a full Riddler story in GOTHAM ADVENTURES #11, by Ty Templeton).
Most recently, hardcore Batfans are enjoying Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's Peter Lorre-esque Riddler, a cowardly stoolie, in "Batman: Dark Victory". It's all so much to think about...what is the Riddler? Who really is Edward Nygma? He's gone
through so many incarnations, from muscle-bound he-man to slick smarmy genius to spandex-clad wildman, to thin-built stooge, to sinister escape artist. That's the riddle, right there...is there a real Riddler at all?
____________________
AND THAT'S THE FACTS
(by "Reliable Source")
(Yes, I understand that the title is grammatically incorrect. So sue us. Actually, nix that. Don't sue us.)
(DISCLAIMER: For those of you who are not yet familiar, Reliable Source is an anonymous character who first surfaced on Batman: The Animated Message Boards, spewing forth ridiculous predictions about the future of Batman Beyond under the guise of spoiler warnings.
His controversial posts created quite a buzz, and have landed him a temporary column with this newsletter. The thoughts and ideas expressed by this shady character are in no way officially connected to Kids WB, Batman Beyond, this newsletter, or anything that is decent or holy.
That said, on with the show.)
The hot buzz around Hollywood lately has been about a little comic-book based movie that you may have heard of. It's called X-Men. There hasn't been this much hype over a comic book movie since 1989's Batman movie. You know, the first one, the good
one, with Keaton and Nicholson. "Ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?" This X-Men thing is gonna be big, folks, and if it does well, we could see a new age of comic book related cinema being ushered in. This could be what gets Superman, Spider-Man,
The Hulk, and all the other fanboy dreams off the shelves, out of the cobwebs, and into the limelight.
Because of the renewed comic book movie hype, Warner Bros. has some renewed interest in the ailing Batman franchise. Ever since Joel Schumacher ran it into the ground with "Batman and Robin," the WB has been understandably cautious about giving another
Bat-flick the green light. The solution? Go back and fix past mistakes.
"We were having this board meeting," explained WB executive J.W. Radford. "And all of a sudden, Tim Burton storms into the room and lays down two huge stacks of paper. One's a revised version of the Batman Forever script, the other's a revised
version of Batman and Robin. He then proceeded to give us all the finger and walk back out, never saying a word."
Plans were recently leaked from the WB of releasing a special Batman four-pack, with all of the big budget Bat films together for one low price. However, these new scripts have thrown a curve on the project... the last two films will be reworked to Burton's
vision.
"We're not re-shooting the whole movie," explained another WB executive. "Just re-touching it, let's say." Plans for this re-touching involve replacing Kilmer and Clooney with fan favorite Keaton. "There's enough stock footage
from the first two that we can just splice in scenes of Mike over the old scenes with Val and George," he went on. "And Bruce Wayne isn't even in the movies that much anyway. When he's Batman, we can still leave it as Val Kilmer if we need to, you can't really tell
the difference. They both have the same lip thing going on. You know..." He then proceeded to make a sort of fish-face with his lips. "They got da wipth wike dith, the cutie widdwe wipth wike dith, wike a widdwe fishee!"
Other changes involve digitally imposing half of Billy Dee Williams' face over Tommy Lee Jones' face in "Batman Forever," since Burton never did approve of the cast change.
"You've got Lando Calrissian as Harvey Dent in the first movie, and then the friggin U.S. Marshall, Sam Gerard from the Fugitive, in another," said spokesman I.C. Hugh. "Hello? Who made THAT casting call? It's Two-Face, not Two-Race."
Other, more radical changes involve the complete omissions of Robin and Batgirl, a more intelligent Bane, and a few Catwoman cameos. "That, and Batman gets a lot more action, if you know what I mean," added one exec who had read the new scripts.
"He makes James Bond look like a good boy when it comes to wowin' the ladies!"
That's it for this week, be here next time for some more news on the upcoming Batman TV series. You can e-mail me at
Reliable_S@hotmail.com, and, as always, more as I hear it.
____________________
SPECIAL IN THIS ISSUE #1
(SPECIAL REPORT FROM THX1138)
"INSIDER OVERHEARD: CLOONEY FAULTS STORY [AND SELF] FOR BATMAN FIASCO
Cinescape's Cindy Pearlman recently shared the inside scoop on George Clooney and his feelings about Batman and Robin for the May/June issue of the magazine. The Insider snagged some advance quotes for the benefit of my e-mail readers:
While continuing a prior theme of crediting himself with "possibly sinking the entire Batman franchise", Clooney commented that the death of the Dark Knight may have bolstered his own career. "I think Batman & Robin not doing so well was a real
awakening for me. That was the turning point where I said 'O.K., I'm just going to do projects and scripts that I like,'" Clooney explains. "I sat down with my business manager and he said, 'You can [afford] to do that.'"
Clooney, however, insists that his lack of box-office success is somewhat exaggerated. "Only one movie was designated to make a ton of money and that was Batman & Robin," he says. "It didn't make that ton because it wasn't a very good movie.
Period. I take some responsibility. I basically buried a franchise. I'll take the heat, but not all the heat. They should have stayed with a Dark Knight story, but they didn't. Peacemaker was a different story. Some people nailed it because it was DreamWorks' first film. Whe you don't know
is that it was a $50 million movie that earned $120 million.
____________________
