Batman: 02 Christmas with the Joker

Batman is a DC Comics character, and Batman: The Animated Series is owned by Warner Home Video. If you'd like to purchase this episode, you may do so here; if you'd like to buy the DVD box set, you may do so here. This episode was written by Eddie Gorodetsky and directed by Kent Butterworth.

The Joker is hunched in a derelict Santa suit, his yellow eyes and equally yellow teeth beaming in the near dark of the night before Christmas. The cheerful Christmas anthem that plays is underscored by greasy brass notes, like aural pollution.

Arkham Asylum at Christmas, where the inmates butcher carols and the guards give suggestive glances above perfectly trimmed mustaches.

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Coming Friday - The Joker!

Much like the popular films by Christopher Nolan, Batman: The Animated Series uses its first installment to introduce the flawed double - Ra’s al-Ghul/Man-Bat - and its second installment to introduce The Joker, arguably Batman’s shadow archetype. Regardless of whether you agree with that interpretation or not, you have to ask yourself one question:

(P.S. More fiction coming soon. I’ve got quite a lot of it. I just have to figure, which first?)

Batman: 01 On Leather Wings

Batman is a DC Comics character, and Batman: The Animated Series is owned by Warner Home Video. If you'd like to purchase this episode, you may do so here; if you'd like to buy the DVD box set, you may do so here. This episode was written by Mitch Brian and directed by Kevin Altieri.

Opening

Moody strains of Danny Elfman's score play as the Warner Brothers logo fades out into the front of a police zeppelin, its yellow searchlights burning like eyes in a vaguely bat shaped face. Six seconds in, and we already have more foreshadowing than some programs achieve in six seasons.

More searchlights cut through the skyline of an art deco concrete jungle, before we settle in front of a bank. Unfortunately for the executives of BANK bank, the aggressive older brothers of the silhouette from the Mad Men opening credits are doing textbook surreptitious glances outside. 

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