On the Death of Kevin Conroy

I haven’t posted in this blog in more than a year. It’s the longest by far in twenty years, outside of reviewing collections at Goodreads, I’ve gone without talking comics. This post won’t do that, either. Instead it acknowledges the death of the voice of Batman.

Kevin Conroy, folks.

Kevin voiced Batman starting in Batman: The Animated Series, which celebrated its thirtieth anniversary this year. When it began, Tim Burton’s cinematic revival had already cleansed the camp reputation of Batman from the popular consciousness, after the 1960s live action TV show had set the standard. Comic book fans had already had Batman redefined in the pages of The Dark Knight Returns in the 80s, but perceptions still feared the combination of Burton and Michael Keaton would revert the character back to Adam West.

The cartoon followed Burton’s moody take, even adapted its theme music from Danny Elfman, to the point where there were probably kids watching who just assumed it originated there. It tackled and redefined the Gotham landscape, even introducing new elements like Renee Montoya and Harley Quinn that would become permanent along the way. Its Joker was voiced by Mark Hamill, a realization that didn’t sink in right away, but would eventually totally redefine him, too.

Watching as a kid, I was always impressed at how Kevin gave separate voices to Batman and Bruce Wayne. It was the first time I was really aware that there might be a difference between them, and in the three decades since it’s still the clearest example that there probably ought to be, in any medium.

Kevin kept voicing Batman over the years, whether in material directly associated with the cartoon or in various other projects. He finally got to play a live action Batman in the Arrowverse’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover in 2019.

Over the years, I lost interest in the cartoon. The more it ended up codified as a defining version of Batman (in many eyes, the defining one, the same way fans assumed John Stewart is the only acceptable Green Lantern, because he was the version in this shared universe), the more I struggled to remember why I had been a fan, too. Watching it now, it’s very clearly a kid’s show. The villains all have voices that would not be out of place in the 60s show. Forget that how they were used, such as Mr. Freeze, gave them new depth: how they sounded is harsh on an adult’s ears without the filter of nostalgia.

That being said, Kevin gave a star performance. He was impeccable, and you could listen to his Batman now as then without doubting for a moment that this guy should be Batman. Out of all the actors who have played Batman over the years, and this is not to say any of them were bad, it’s still a great argument that Kevin sounded like the most perfect fit. 

So: rest in peace, Kevin. Your legacy in the role is assured. You made it your own, and in doing so you defined the character for generations. 

Reading Comics 232 "Titans Season One"

I finally caught up with the first season of Titans from late last year.  It was pretty great.  Titans is one of those online streaming series, in this instance available via DC Universe.  This release method probably explains why the "f" word is spoken roughly every other line of dialogue (I wasn't overly bothered by it).

Eleven episodes explain how Dick Grayson (Robin), Rachel Roth (Raven), Kory Anders (Starfire) and Gar Logan (Beast Boy) end up becoming a team.  The arc is similar to the first season of Heroes, following each character as their journeys converge, with a central problem being Rachel's powers and where they come from (her dad, the demon Trigan), and Kory's mysterious past, not to mention her powers.  Most of it, though, is following Dick as he reconciles life post-Batman.  He's become concerned about his increasingly violent tendencies, believing that he's become too much like the Dark Knight, so he's gone off on his own.  We meet him as a detective in Detroit, where he meets Rachel after she's been brought in following the mysterious death of the woman who turns out to be her foster mother.  She's being hunted by agents of a shadowy conspiracy, and Dick turns out to be her best option for safety and sympathy, though at first Dick is reluctant to commit.  Kory has amnesia, but feels she's better than the circumstances in which she finds herself, and eventually she joins up with Dick and Rachel, and is the first person who really seems to understand the latter.  They find shelter with Gar's family, the Doom Patrol, but then strike out on their own, hoping to find Rachel's birth mother, who turns out to be secretly in cahoots with Trigon.  Then Kory gets her memory back and briefly tries to kill Rachel, but eventually realizes that Trigon's the real problem.  The season actually ends on a cliffhanger, Trigon left undefeated.

Part of the journey also incorporates tangents with Hawk & Dove, who in this iteration have no superpowers but are rather vigilantes inspired by Batman and Robin.  Dove was an old flame of Dick's, but now is committed to Hawk, and both are anticipating retiring from the superhero game.  Dick also reunites with Donna Troy, who likewise has stepped away from her role as Wonder Girl, and unexpectedly meets Jason Todd, who has inherited the role of Robin since Dick left Gotham.  Honestly, this is probably the best material of the season, with Donna Troy and Dove providing standout performances from Conor Leslie (Donna Troy) and Minka Kelly (Dove).  Alan Ritchson's Hawk is likewise inspired acting.

The show's depiction of Batman (never seen directly) is significantly less sympathetic than other depictions, which makes things all the more interesting.  The focus on Robin, meanwhile, is the character's biggest live action spotlight ever, putting the focus almost totally on him even in a team setting (the season's final episode depicts Trigon's efforts to traumatize him by giving him a perfect life and then viciously taking it away), which trumps his appearances in the later Burton/Schumacher films, in which he has prominent roles.  This version effectively exists on his own and is not reliant on Batman to explain his significance. 

The second season has already gotten underway, so I look forward to catching it later (likely on home video, like I did with this one).

Review: Arrow

Marc Guggenheim and company have done what many others, including geek apostle Kevin Smith, have failed to do:  make Green Arrow cool.  In the comic book world Green Arrow was kind of like Aquaman in a character who's been around for a while but wasn't all that highly regarded and only sporadically was able to keep his own comic book title.  He's the kind of character who'd show up for a Justice League comic or two but wasn't really part of the first-string team most of the time.  In the '70s he was actually attached to the Green Lantern title as sort of a foil for the square Hal Jordan.  He was largely known for having a variety of trick arrows like a boxing glove one and so forth.

With "Arrow" the Robin Hood-esque character gets the Christopher Nolan treatment.  After 5 years on a deserted island, billionaire playboy Oliver Queen returns to Starling City on a mission to take out a group of rich jerks who've been screwing over the little people.  He of course does this in flamboyant, impractical fashion by running around in a green hooded costume and shooting arrows at people who are armed with guns.  When not dealing with "the list," he tries to reconnect with his mother, sister, and friends.

That's how it starts but gradually more comic book elements are introduced into the storyline.  As well what seems at first like a simple Robinson Crusoe story on the island turns into a Lost-esque saga.  And like Spider-Man he keeps revealing himself to people.  It starts with his bodyguard John Diggle and then a nerdy IT girl named Felicity and then his best friend.

Really by halfway through the first season the original concept of the show--killing people on "the list"--gradually takes a backseat to more superhero-type fare like going after drug dealers and arms dealers and the like, which made the intro to every episode increasingly irrelevant.  I don't find that all that bad of a thing as the evolution of the story is fairly natural.  It's a lot less jarring than say this fifth season of "Archer" where the creator of the series decided to burn everything down and turn the whole thing into "Breaking Bad."  It seems only natural that eventually Oliver would have to branch out because when you set yourself up as the city's protector you can't be so narrowly focused as to miss all the terrible "normal" crime going on under your nose.

The problem with the show is something that I complained about with my Scarlet Knight series of books.  It's that the series is picking up too many characters, which makes some like Diggle increasingly irrelevant as new people are brought in.  Oliver's best friend Tommy became so irrelevant in the first season he had to be dealt with--perhaps permanently.  Plus you end up with all these loose plot threads all over the place as you have all these different villains, some of whom aren't seen for weeks.  It can be hard to keep track of everything.

In a way the show is a victim of its own success as DC has seen it as a way to springboard other new series like a Flash series due out next fall.  In some ways I preferred the simplicity of the early first season episodes, but as I have learned it's hard to keep a series that simple.  Especially with a weekly series you have to have twists and turns to keep viewers interested.

There are sometimes some logical problems, like I'm pretty sure an 18-year-old can't operate a nightclub that serves alcohol.  I mean by all rights they shouldn't even be able to admit her.  Plus you have Oliver's indiscriminate boner; by now he's screwed (or wanted to) every woman on the show except his mom and sister--there's something for next season!  I mean it starts out he loves Laurel, but oh wait he loves her sister Sara too and really he could love Felicity but he doesn't want to screw up their friendship and just for fun let's have a quickie with Summer Glau.  I don't know how he gets any crime fighting done at all!

Even though there are more comic book elements being introduced, so far they've done a good job keeping with the "hyperrealism" of the Nolan Batman movies.  Oliver does have trick arrows but instead of a boxing glove he has ones with explosives or listening devices, or ropes, stuff that's not all that inconceivable.  It definitely provides the superhero action people were probably hoping for with "Agents of SHIELD."  I really wish though they could wrap up the whole island thing soon because it's been dragging on for two years now.  I wish they could have kept that part simple where he lands on the island meets Friday who teaches him how to survive and eventually gets rescued.  Then there's more time to focus on the present.

I keep mentioning the Nolan Batman movies and in fact the series doesn't shy away from the Batman comparisons, especially now that they've included a notable Batman villain featured in the first and third Nolan movies.  Besides that there's the whole idea that he's a billionaire playboy who owns a big company and in public pretends to be a dumbass while at night he dresses up in a costume to beat up criminals but eschews guns and killing people--the latter in the second season at least.  Now he's even got a sidekick!  All he needs is a spotlight with an arrow on it.

Perhaps the highest praise I can give is that the show has managed to crack my TV watching schedule.  Only a handful of current shows can say that.

That is all.

Review: Kick-Ass 2

When the original "Kick-Ass" was released in movie theaters it was savaged by some critics for violence against its young protagonists.  Rogert Ebert was especially harsh and it's just as well he wasn't alive to watch the sequel because it takes things up a notch.  Really I'd say this is the darkest superhero movie ever put on film.

It's really more of a horror movie in all the gruesome ways characters die, including death by lawnmower on the back of a police cruiser.  Though as with some horror movies there's a lot of black comedy involved.  For instance when the evil "Motherf**ker" tries to rape Kick-Ass's superhero girlfriend but can't get it up.  Insert your own Viagra joke.

Like "The Dark Knight" the plot revolves around the idea of escalation.  In the original movie a dorky kid named Dave puts on a wetsuit and gets a couple of batons and decides to be a superhero--with predictably bad results.  Meanwhile a disgruntled former cop and his young daughter have been doing real costumed vigilante work as Big Daddy and Hit Girl.  (Spoiler:  Big Daddy dies and Hit Girl is remanded into the custody of his ex-partner on the police force.)  In the climactic last battle, Kick-Ass blows up a mobster with a missile launcher.

A year or two later, Dave is getting antsy to put the wetsuit back on, so he meets up with Hit Girl to undergo some training.  But when her foster dad guilts her into putting away the costume and being a "real girl" Dave hooks up with some other wanna-be heroes, starting with "Dr. Gravity" (Donald Faison of "Scrubs" fame) and ultimately a group led by "Colonel America" (Jim Carrey), who used to be a mob enforcer until he was born again.

They conveniently write out the love of Dave's life from the last movie in one scene to free him up to start dating "Night Bitch," whose fate I've referenced above.  For while Dave and the heroes are gathering, the son of the mobster he blew up who used to go by the heroic moniker "Red Mist" has decided to become a supervillain called "Motherf**ker" and starts gathering his own personal Legion of Doom.  In particular he wants to bring Kick-Ass down.

After a string of grisly murders and an almost rape, there's finally a titanic clash between good and evil.

Whether you like the movie or not depends on which side of the "Won't someone please think of the children?!" argument you come down on.  Me, I know it's a movie, so I know the kids are never in any real danger.  Also in scenes like when Hit Girl is fighting bad guys on top of a van the CGI/green screen effects are just so awful there's no way you can mistake them for being real.  While it's dark and graphic it does a good job of depicting what a "real" costumed vigilante universe would be like.  It's not all upside-down rain kisses and heroic Hans Zimmer scores.  And it depicts perfectly why when I wrote a column called "Practical Superheroism" on my old blog I always urged people to never, EVER try it at home, because really you're more likely to get your ass kicked than to kick any ass.

In case you're wondering, there are all the pieces in place for a sequel.  "Kick-Ass 3" is currently on its 6th of 8 issues at your local comic book store.  This second movie didn't do great at the box office so without a bunch of foreign or DVD sales I'm not sure that will ever get made.

Anyway, because of where I come down on this argument, I'd give it a solid 2.5/5, which is my grade for competent, but not spectacular movies.  I'm a Hard-Ass like that.  Though my superhero name would probably be Fat-Ass because they already used The Blob.

That is all.