Comics Scene Vol. 2 #31 (February 1993)
“The Joker's Keepr” by Bob Miller
Full transcription below.
When it comes to killing people with laughter, no one does it better than the Joker. But, who writes his material? On Batman: The Animated Series, it's Paul Dini.
For more than a decade, Dini has written scripts for TV animation, serving as story editor on The Ewoks/ Droids Adventure Hour (which he discussed in STARLOG YEARBOOK #3), John Kricfalusi's version of Beany & Cecil (CS #5) and Tiny Toon Adventures (CS #15), for which he won two Emmy Awards.
On Batman, Dini story-edits along with Alan Burnett (CS #29), Michael Reaves and Martin Pasko. He has written 10 scripts-most starring the Joker-plus a few episodes in collaboration with other writers. His solo stories include "Heart of Ice" (the acclaimed Mr. Freeze story), "Joker's Favor," "Joker's Wild," "Zatanna", "Mad as a Hatter," "The Laughing Fish," "The Man Who Killed Batman", "Harley & Ivy," "Almost Got 'Im" (featuring all the major villains) and "The Worry Men."
In live-action, Dini wrote two Monsters episodes, plus Double Dragon, an action-adventure feature to be lensed by Imperial Entertainment.
One Dini story will be drawn by series co-producer Bruce Timm for a DC Batman Adventures graphic novel, which deals with how Harley Quinn came to be the Joker's "hench-wench." He's also co-writing the new 70-minute animated Batman video.
COMICS SCENE: What accounts for the animated Batman's success?
PAUL DINI: It's the coolest-looking world on television. Even if nobody listens to the dialogue, you turn it on because it's a great-looking show. You can't look at the version of Gotham City that Eric Radomski and Bruce Timm created and just not love it.
CS: How did the show's writers translate Batman from comics?
DINI: From a writer's point-of-view, we wanted to transpose classic elements of the Batman stories into animation. In some cases, we adapted [six] stories that existed before, and in and of themselves were classic Batman stories-such as the Ra's al Ghul stories, which were adapted by Denny O'Neil (who created that character) and Len Wein. Bruce Timm and I adapted two stories, "The Laughing Fish" and "The Joker's Five-Way Revenge," into one. Those stories were by O'Neil and Steve Englehart, and we chose some of the more dramatic elements and combined them into one story. Len Wein adapted a story of his own called "Moon of the Wolf," where Batman fights a chemically-created werewolf.
We went mostly for a certain type of tone that we liked in the early Batman stories, where Batman was a grim, avenging creature of the night. In his early appearances, we don't know that much about Batman. He doesn't speak much. He'll help people in trouble, but he's more like this force of nature that comes in and makes a situation right, then vanishes.
We did not use the Batman who speaks out every action he's planning, or gives long-winded dialogue when he's in a fight. We thought that weakened the character. When Batman's in a fight, he throws a punch and that's it.
CS: Isn't that unusual for a TV cartoon?
DINI: One of the challenges that we faced as writers was to tell the story and move the plot visually, not necessarily with much dialogue. Batman's world is very visual. In our show, it's a stunning and unique visual. If you spend a lot of time with Batman talk- ing and explaining things, that dilutes both him and the power of that world.
CS: In what ways does the animated Batman differ from the comics?
DINI: Batman comics make a wonderful springboard to start from for developing the animated series. We wanted to present a classic vision of Batman, a sort of archetypal Batman.
In the animated series, Batman is an amalgam of all his different personas. He's more akin to the Batman of the early '40s and then, more toward the Dark Knight version.
He lives in the shadow of his parents' deaths. Something that we may never really touch on in the TV show is Bruce Wayne's transformation into Batman as a catharsis to deal with his parents' deaths.
CS: What approach was taken in adapting the comic-book villains?
DINI: In some cases, we reinvented the characters from what they were in the comics, such as Mad Hatter, Two-Face, Poison Ivy. They're still recognizable from their comic book incarnations, but we shaped the origins in a special way to serve the needs of our series a little bit better. In the case of Two- Face, Mad Hatter and Mr. Freeze, we infused a good bit of pathos into the characters to make them more human. more believable. The villains were played pretty much for laughs in the 1960s TV show. They had their affectations and there were some great actors performing them. But in our series, we looked beyond the bizarre costumes to find out, "What's unique about the Mad Hatter that's compelling? What's the story behind the Riddler? Why is Poison Ivy a murderess? What prompts them to do these things?" We uncovered great things about the characters. They're as much a part of Batman's world as Robin, Alfred and Commissioner Gordon.
CS: Most of your scripts feature the Joker. What's so appealing about him?
DINI: I happen to like him a lot. He has this perverse, sadistic side, but it's counter-balanced by the veneer of being a funny clown. He's somebody who could be your best friend, you know, like [unctuously], "Oh, I'm so glad to see you. Ooooh, look, I've got a balloon animal for you. How are ya?" Pulling funny jokes and being your best pal, and then as soon as you're not looking, he shoves you in a pit of hyenas who rip you to shreds.
One new villain we've created is Harley Quinn, the Joker's henchgirl. She's the willing helper in all of his antics and takes good care of him while he plots his crimes against Batman. She adores him and would love to one day settle down with him, but he barely even notices her.
I created her because-specifically, in one episode, the Joker had a plot where he needed a girl accomplice. He just had to have a pretty girl bring a cake into the room like a showgirl, and then leave [in "Joker's Favor"]. And we thought, well, in the TV shows, the villain usually had a moll with him. Why don't we make this character into something more?
At recording sessions, the actors really get into it. Mark Hamill does the Joker, and Arleen Sorkin, Harley Quinn. Mark, when he plays the Joker, is unique in that he doesn't sit down to record his lines. He stands up and acts out the character with his whole body. He's throwing his arms out and snarling and smiling and grinning and acting really frantic, and he is the Joker. And Arleen will be in her booth sitting next to him and look up and go, "Wow." But their back-and-forth banter is very nice. It's kind of a warped Punch-and-Judy show.
When we were feeling our way with the earlier scripts, the Joker had a group of henchmen and he would be very hyperactive, very funny, but in some stories he was sort of infantile. which we didn't like. We discovered when we put Harley in the story, it gave the Joker a bit of stature. Harley could be silly and goofy and overanxious to please, and the Joker could be a little bit more restrained, a little bit meaner, more psychotic- more demonic, actually.
As we worked with the Joker, his sadistic side came out. Batman knows that his own image can spark fear in criminals. In our series, the Joker realizes that his image sparks fear in innocent people. The threat of what the Joker can do to you is worse than him actually pulling out a gun and shooting you. People live in terror of the Joker, and he knows this. And he willingly exploits that.
CS: The relationship between Batman and the Joker is always interesting.
DINI: He views Batman as his equal. Batman is his property. The Joker really believes that Batman exists to give him new challenges. He looks forward to their duels.
In fact, in "The Man Who Killed Batman," Batman's involved in a fight and falls to his death. And the person who killed him is this little drippy guy who works as a mob underling. When the Joker hears of it, he's furious. It's the ultimate irony. Somebody killed Batman and it wasn't him. Even worse than it being Penguin or Two-Face, it's this little nothing guy. And for awhile, the Joker is really grief-stricken. He misses Batman. He mourns him. And then, to make himself feel better, he tries to kill the guy who killed Batman. That's the capper on the joke.
Batman made the Joker what he is today. And the Joker has always been looking to thank Batman for that in his own sick, sinister way.
CS: What about the Mr. Freeze show?
DINI: The way I wrote "Heart of Ice" is, I worked backwards from the visual. What if you had a man sitting in this refrigerated room and as he wept, his tears turned into snow? What would cause him to cry?
It's basically a story of a good man who suffers an accident and it snaps him. It transforms him into this pathetic creature who can't live outside a sub-zero environment. It also turns him vengeful, because he lost somebody very close to him in the same accident. His story is really a vendetta. He has come back almost from the grave, as it were, to settle the score with a guy who ruined his life [corporate exec Ferris Boyle, voiced by Mark Hamill]. That puts Batman in an interesting position where he's not unsympathetic to Mr. Freeze, but he can't let him commit murder, either. So, Batman goes in to fight him, and you can tell although he has to stop this guy from murdering a roomful of people, he's not unsympathetic to the man's pain.
I regret we did only one show with Mr. Freeze. I'm sorry we never brought him back, now that we've done the first 65. Alan Burnett, one of our producers, kept saying, "How about another Mr. Freeze story?" I would sit down to write one and somehow, I would end up, "Well, the Joker's funnier. Let me write another Joker story." To a degree, I didn't want to write another Mr. Freeze story. I thought his story was so sad and it comes to such an emotional ending that I didn't want to bring him back if he was just going to be a stock villain. I probably will write another Mr. Freeze story, but it has to be tied in with emotions, because that's the great paradox about him. He's someone who claims all emotions have been frozen in him, but on the other hand, he's the most passionate one because his pain is so deep.
CS: So, the villains are written to be more sympathetic?
DINI: With some of the villains, Batman has a more human side. Mr. Freeze is one of them. Two-Face is definitely one of them. We have a fairly new character from the comics named Maxie Zeus, a rich Greek shipping magnate who believes he's the reincarnation of the god Zeus. That story is almost like a Greek tragedy, where Batman works with Maxie's girl friend to try and save him from slipping deeper into madness, and it all kind of sucks them down in the end. It's a tragic story of a guy whose fantasies take him too far.
CS: There seems to be a continuity between the episodes.
DINI: We do have a continuity. It's a loose continuity, but when you watch the show from the beginning, you'll be able to pick up certain developments with the characters. A couple of early episodes feature Harvey Dent as Gotham City's district attorney and also Bruce Wayne's best friend. If you know about Harvey Dent in the comics, he suffers a tragic accident and becomes one of Batman's worst enemies, Two-Face. So, "Two-Face" is two of our most heartfelt episodes, where Bruce Wayne loses a friend and gains a deadly enemy.
Richard Moll plays Two-Face and Harvey Dent. He's great. When he's Harvey Dent, you really like him. I'm just sorry we didn't do half the series with Harvey Dent, because he's a very likable character. When he becomes Two-Face, he becomes frightening, and that makes his transformation all the more tragic.
We do refer to things that happen in other stories. In the story that introduces Poison Ivy, she's actually romancing Harvey Dent, whom she's trying to murder because she believes he was instrumental in a rare plant's extinction. Later, after he becomes Two-Face, he encounters Poison Ivy again ["Almost Got 'Im"]. It's a funny scene when they meet: Now, he's this freakish creature, she's a villain. They get to know each other again in these circumstances, and they don't particularly like each other.
Diane Pershing voices Poison Ivy, and she's great. She came in and did this great voice, just sexy, but it was also nasty and had this undercurrent of hatefulness. It was everything that character should be.
In "Harley and Ivy," the Joker calls it quits with Harley and throws her out. She decides to become a crook on her own and forms an alliance with Poison Ivy, where they become far more successful criminals on their own than the Joker ever was. He's furious at this, and they have it out. Batman is in that story, too, someplace [chuckles]. Not so you would notice.
CS: The Joker is celebrating the holidays with his own special.
DINI: Oh yes, I worked with a very talented writer named Eddie Gorodetsky on a show where, during the holidays, the Joker preempts television and puts on his own special, "Christmas with the Joker." He's dressed up as Perry Como, with a roaring fire, he has some victims to terrorize and he's waiting for the stroke of midnight for Batman to find him. If he doesn't, well, his victims aren't going to have a very merry Christmas. That turned out to be one of the funnier ones.
CS: What other DC characters appear?
DINI: Zatanna, a sexy, talented showgirl, and a young magician. In the comics, she's the daughter of Zatarra, a classic Golden Age character. In our version, when Bruce Wayne was traveling around the world at age 16, he studied with her father and learned how to be an escape artist. After he met Zatanna, he had to leave to study martial arts. Years later, they meet after he becomes Batman, and they share an adventure, where he clears her of a crime for which she has been framed.
Julie Brown-the funny one from Earth Girls Are Easy-does Zatanna as comical. Vincent Schiavelli, who was in Batman Returns and Ghost [see STARLOG #187], plays Zatarra.
I would say that with our cast of characters, doing 65 half-hours, there's a chance to spotlight each throughout the show's run. There are some episodes they're barely involved in at all. In other episodes, they're really spotlighted.
CS: What about Batgirl?
DINI: Batgirl makes an appearance for two episodes. Everybody gets their chance in the spotlight. That's great. These things add richness and color to Batman's world, and I don't think you would want to see Batman going against freak-of-the-day villains. That would get old pretty quick.
If this was just Batman brooding over his parents dying, again, you would get tired of that, quick. Also, if you're just doing stories where the Joker is running crazy over every episode, why bother calling the show Batman? But, in the run of 65, we've done shows exactly like that. You get an even mix of what's going on, and a lot to choose from.
In their way, they're all integral parts of Batman's world. They're all the things that make up his mythos.
We did a very good story by Michael Reaves called "I Am the Night," where Commissioner Gordon gets shot when a stakeout goes bad, and Batman blames himself: "Oh, I got there too late. I could have prevented it. It's not worth it anymore." What good has being Batman accomplished? The city's still just as bad off. He takes off the mask and cape and throws it into a crevice in the Batcave, and he gives it up.
That's a tremendous part. Kevin Conroy as Batman does a hell of an acting job. So does Bob Hastings as Commissioner Gordon, because at the end, when he comes out of the coma, he makes a speech about never giving up the fight; the work goes on; what they do is important. Although it's one of our grimmer episodes, it's a very good one. It very much affirms. Batman's place in Gotham City. Although the battle is a hard one, there are triumphs.
