DCAU Timeline

BRUCE TIMM INTRODUCED A WHOLE NEW LOOK TO BATMAN AND A SMALL SCREEN SUPERHERO NEVER LOOKED SO GOOD!

"It was summer of 1990 when Eric [Radomski] and I put together the Batman promo," recalls Bruce W. Timm. "It's a two-minute short. I storyboarded it and did character designs. We had somebody design the backgrounds, and then Eric actually painted all the backgrounds himself. We timed it and sent it off to a little studio in Canada called Lightbox Animation and they animated it. I went up there to kind of supervise the shadow process (because they did this weird video shadowing treatment on it, rather than having painted shadows), and then carried the film back with me. We did sound here in Los Angeles. There's no dialog in it, just grunts and oofs and stuff, so basically it's Eric and I. I think I'm Batman and he's the thugs, like hitting each other. We did full sound effects. The music was just library music from the Batman film. After we finished the promo, we basically got the job to do Batman right away. I think it was September of 1990 when we actually started doing preproduction on the series and by January we were up and running."

Timm, who was born in Oklahoma and grew up in Ohio, is completely self- taught. His animation career began in 1981 with his duties as a layout artist at Filmation on Blackstar and The Lone Ranger. He joined Don Bluth Productions in 1982 as assistant animator on The Secret of N.I.M.H. He subsequently worked on The He- Man Show, Space Ace and Dragonsalyer II. Timm then joined Marvel Productions in 1984 where he spent one year as a character designer and background designer on G.I. Joe. After heading back to Filmation for She-Ra Princess of Power, he took several years off from animation. He freelanced briefly at Mattel Toys where he illustrated six or seven He-Man comics which were packaged with figures. Timm returned to animation in 1986 to work on Spiral Zone, then as a character designer/layout artist on The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse. The Beany and Cecil Show followed the next year, and he directed some of these episodes (only one aired before the series was canceled). Timm joined Warner Bros. Animation in 1989, working as a storyboard artist and character designer on Tiny Toon Adventures.

In addition to developing the initial promo for Batman: The Animated Series, Timm is one of three producers for B: TAS (along with Alan Burnett and Eric Radomski). Timm has storyboarded episodes and approves all character designs. In fact, many characters appear on the series as completely envisioned by Timm, including Batman, Bruce Wayne, Commissioner Gordon, Detective Bullock, Mayor Hamilton Hill, Harvey Dent, Two-Face, Batgirl, Penguin, Catwoman, Ra's Al Ghul, Talia, Clayface, Red Claw, and Harley Quinn. The final look of some others was actually a collaborative effort (Joker, Poison Ivy, and Summer Gleeson). Riddler and Mr. Freeze were based on Mike Mignola designs.

Timm is currently involved with post-production on Batman: The Animated movie which is due to be released this Christmas. He is also working on 20 new series episodes for the second season. He is scheduled to illustrate a Batman Adventures graphic novel for DC Comics which will be written by B: TAS story editor Paul Dini.

Few heroes in our society, comic book or otherwise, conjure such distinct images as Batman: the familiar logo, the dark brooding character, the unmistakable silhouette.

By retaining those trademark qualities, history has showed that Bob Kane's original Batman is open to a variety of interpretations. From Tim Burton's shadowy protagonist in the Batman blockbuster films to the twisted and dorky Batman spoof pulled off by Adam West in the 1960's, the Dark Knight has always managed to retain his intrinsic identity.

Batman: The Animated Series continues that tradition, but adds a depth and style that has quickly made it one of the most appealing Batman versions of all.

"Run With It" In 1992, a new interpretation exploded on the scene in the form of Batman: The Animated Series. One year and a bevy of critical acclaim later (including Emmy awards), this version of Batman has been thoroughly embraced by both traditional Batman fans and mainstream America.

The series began development when Warner Bros. Animation Studios executive producer Jean MacCurdy approached the Tiny Toons Adventures duo of Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski about doing a Batman animated series. "The only criteria Jean gave us was that they wanted something reminiscent of the Fleischer brothers Superman cartoons," Timm recalls.

Inspired by the unusual amount of freedom, Timm, Radomski, producer Alan Burnett, story editor Paul Dini, and a growing creative team began developing the series. Propelled by an uncommon synergy between animators and writers, they began modeling the show after what they considered to be the best animation and comic art styles.

The Shape of a Bat "I've been a Batman fan since I was a kid," Timm continues. "The first thing that got me into the character was the live-action TV show. I was only six and I didn't realize it was a spoof. I took it seriously and was a Batman fan from then on. I had the Batman lunchbox, a thermos and all that.

As I grew older and started reading comics I learned who Batman really was. The comic books are our biggest influence on which version of Batman we consider to be the definitive Batman."

"Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers comics from the 1970's are the quintessential Batman comics. The stuff Frank Miller did with the Dark Knight in 1986 is also a real big influence on our Batman."

"I think I liked Batman because he was mortal, without super powers, so he was readily identifiable on a human level. We have retained that aspect solidly in the series," Burnett added.

Another major influence on Batman: TAS's nouveau-classical style is the work of comic book illustrator and animator Alex Toth. "What's great about his art is that it's both ultra dynamic and illustrative but at the same time it's ultra simplified." Timm said. "When I was a kid, I actually didn't even like his comics, because I thought they looked like coloring books. But as I got older I began to see how deceptively complex his artwork actually is."

"The Sleeping Beauty cartoon that Disney did in the 1950's was another influence on Batman: TAS. "It was the first Disney film that got away from the real rounded cartoon characters and introduced more sharp, angular characters," Timm revealed.

"There's many ways of doing Batman, as long as they're cool, like the Frank Miller version or the Neil Adams interpretation. We feel Batman: TAS is one right way to do Batman," Timm said.

"My opinion on the Batman movies has gone back and forth. The first time I saw the movie I didn't like it. I went and saw it again and thought it's really neat. The mood is really good but I have some problems with Tim Burton's vision.

On one hand, parts of them work really great but the biggest problem is that they're action films and there's very little action in them. They also took some liberties with the characters that I just wouldn't have done. My biggest problem is that they're just not much fun. The mood and mystery is great, but it's a little too dark and unpleasant," Timm stated.

Bat Technique In an attempt to combine classic elements of the Fleischer cartoons with a cutting edge Japanese anime style, the team fused techniques from seemingly opposite ends of the animation spectrum. "We were trying to do something that had never been done before in TV: a feature film quality look on a Saturday morning budget and time frame," Timm said.

"At first, we had some great ideas, such as Eric Rodomski's idea for black backgrounds. We didn't know who was going to animate the series overseas, so we sent out a few sequences and the first one that came back was really awful - it looked like a typically bad Saturday morning cartoon show - just what we didn't want," Timm remembers. "It was really choppy. They didn't follow our background styling or character designs very closely. It really looked very standard and we were crushed wondering, 'Maybe it's going to look like typical stuff after all.""

Bummed but not unbowed, Timm and his team tried other studios. "It took us a year before we got our first full cartoon back, which was the On Leather Wings show featuring Man Bat. After seeing it, we knew the series was going to work. Everything we laid out, they did. They followed our plans faithfully and we said 'Wow, it does work!""

One reason the show works so well is that it incorporates virtually any and every animation trick in existence, in addition to a few original ideas.

Radomski's idea for using black backgrounds, for example, was at first scoffed at by tradition-minded animators who never used anything but white backgrounds. To create a heavier mood, the basic design for the series called for large patches of black in almost every frame.

After seeing the amount of time it took to fill in all the black areas, Radomski came up with the ingeniously simple idea of beginning with a black background and painting the scene over it. The effect worked perfectly.

But incorporating a dazzling array of tricks does not necessarily mean a desired effect will work. "All the tricks we use have been used before," Timm said. "But it's all in how you use them knowing when to use the right trick at the right time. The imitated camera movements that simulate a live-action camera panning across an accident scene have been used for years by the Japanese."

In another departure from the helter skelter flow of typical Saturday morning fare, Batman: TAS has a much more deliberate pace." There's been a lot of other cartoons that I've worked on where they've tried to employ the same techniques," Timm recalls, "But for some reason or another, whether it was budget or timing constraints or whatever, it did not work."

"Timing is a very important part of our show. It's not like most other adventure cartoons where everything is moving at the same speed. In them, when two characters are speaking, the lines are falling on top of each other - there's no dramatic pauses. It's something our directors are very conscious of. They try to give our series a real-time, live action pace.

"The biggest lie of animation is that you don't need writers for an animated story," Dini attests. The Emmy awards won by the writers for the Heart of Ice episode vindicate that statement.

Good Guys Turning from the show's style to its substance, the cast is made up of a collection of engaging, if not complex, characters.

Of course, Batman himself is the most important good guy. The Dark Knight is driven by a single, devastating personal event in his life - the murder of his parents. This wanton act of violence brought him to the iron-clad decision to devote the remainder of his life to the eradication of criminal activities. Obsessed with this mission, he can never truly rest.

Batman has no personal desire to inflict harm, even on his enemies. Bound by a code which forbids killing, his sole desire is to thwart crime and protect innocents.

Young Dick Grayson (a.k.a. Robin) was orphaned when his aerialist family, The Flying Graysons, fell to their death in a trapeze accident. Soon thereafter, the boy became the ward of Bruce Wayne who provided him with a home and solid financial support, and also allowed him to enter the secret world of Batman.

As the boy grew, Batman taught Robin excellent new skills which supplemented his gymnastic abilities. During his early teenage years, Grayson, as Robin, ventured forth into the night with his caped mentor.

"Personally, I like Batman alone the mysterious dark avenger of the night," Timm said. But I'm kind of like Joe Q. Public in that on one hand I really like Batman just as a loner, but on the other hand, there's just something classic about it when he and Robin team up."

In the second season, Robin will be a more common element, appear- ing in 13 of the 20 episodes.

Other than Robin, Bruce's butler Alfred is the only other person to know his employer's secret identity.

Alfred covers for his millionaire boss in many ways, deflecting every possible suspicion that Wayne might actually be the Dark Knight. He'll even go so far as to don a Batman costume on occasion.

World-weary and politically incorruptible, Gordon is loved by the law- abiding citizens of Gotham City and hated by its criminal elements. Although he cannot publicly condone the actions of Batman, the noble Commissioner is occasionally contacted by him and attends clandestine meetings with the Dark Knight.

Crass, scruffy and genuinely obnoxious, toothpick-chewing Harry Bullock is a rogue detective who, like Batman, gets results. Bullock feels threatened by the unsanctioned presence of Batman in police affairs.

The attractive, red-haired daughter of the Police Commissioner, Barbara Gordon, is a high-school student who has taken her idol worship of Batman a step too far. In a misguided attempt to meet the Dark Knight, she has donned a look-alike costume and prowls the night as Batgirl looking for, and invariably finding, trouble.

Other characters who occasionally appear in the series on the side of fighting for truth, justice, and the Animated way are stylish attorney Harvey Dent, cynical cop Rene Montoya, weak-willed Mayor Hamilton Hill, and sensationalistic TV anchor Summer Gleeson.

Bad Guys Viciously funny, cruel and sardonic, the Joker first encountered Batman during a botched robbery at the Monarch Playing Card Factory. Escaping by leaping into a drainage vat of chemical waste, he later discovered that the toxins had bleached his skin white, dyed his hair fluorescent green, and stretched his lips into a hideous, permanent grin.

Despite his clownish appearance, The Joker is one of Batman's most deadly enemies. Intelligent, theatrical and ever the showman, his arsenal of toys is second only to Batman's and includes joybuzzers, gas-squirting flowers and exploding whoopie cushions. Ouch!

A mutant bird-like man with a mys- terious past, the Penguin resides in the underbelly of Gotham. He's a ruthless, flamboyant, grandiose character, spouting bad Shakespeare with dreams of riches and status.

Well known for her large donations to animal rights organizations, Selina Kyle leads a double life. She is also the Queen of Crime who carries a cat-o'-nine-tails.

There is an undeniable attraction between Batman and Catwoman, and the Dark Knight sometimes finds himself torn between his feelings for her and seeing justice done.

A sharp-witted genius whose cryptograms befuddle Gotham police, Eddie Ashton (a.k.a E. Nigma, a.k.a. The Riddler) made a fortune inventing puzzles.

Tiring of the challenge, Nigma began masterminding crimes on a grand scale. When Batman deciphered one of his puzzles and sent The Riddler to jail, the analytical wizard swore to engineer a crime that even Batman couldn't solve.

Surprise, that handsome, charismatic D.A. Harvey Dent has another face. One of the most tragic figures in Batman's rogues gallery, Dent fell victim to an explosion which scarred half his face and twisted his psyche in the process. Two-Face carries a silver dollar which he flips to determine if he'll perform a good, or evil, deed.

As a child, Pamela Isley's only friends were the plants she tended in the family's greenhouse. But her life took a tragic turn when a large corporation forced her parents off their land. Vowing revenge, Pamela used her botanical skills to devise a love potion extracted from rare plants to bend evil men to her will. Adopting the name Poison Ivy, she began a life of crime, and subsequently leaves her victims screaming for calamine lotion.

During a fight, a freeze tank exploded, covering Mr. Freeze with cryogenic chemicals. After nearly freezing to death, Freeze recovered but learned that he must permanently live in sub-zero temperatures. Now, Freeze seeks revenge in a special helmet and suit that maintains his body temperature at an even 50 degrees below zero.

The Mad Hatter is a psychotic genius who commits crimes based on Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland theme and controls peoples minds. Other villains include the lanky Scarecrow, the deceptively dangerous Ventriloquist, the shape-shifting Clayface, the warped Dr. Hugo Strange, the brutish Killer Croc, and the rampaging but fascinating Man-Bat.

Ugly Guys: Censors "The worst thing about the censors, BS&P (a.k.a. Broadcast Standards & Practices), is that we never really know what they're going to say," Timm frets. "The rules change on every single show. Some shows we can have people getting hit in the face and other shows we can't."

"It's frustrating because we'll do something we've done in a previous show and they'll say 'Oh, you can't do that.' And we can't justify it by saying we've done it before."

"We always get tons and tons of censor notes on every show such as 'Get rid of those alcoholic beverages.' That's a big no no. But it's also a real touchy one because every time we have a party scene such as a big charity ball, what are the people drinking? So we've always had to make glass tumblers and put water in them. I guess everyone is drinking Perrier."

"In the upcoming season, we have an episode named Harlequin-aid, where there's this whole scene that takes place in a speakeasy and, well, people drink in a speakeasy. BS&P said we can't have any glass- es, none at all. It becomes a game after a while."

"On the other hand," Timm concedes, "The BS&P people serve a really good purpose. If we were allowed to go crazy, we might make some kids out there psychotic or something."

Despite such behind-the-scenes obstacles, "The BS&P people have never ruined a show. They've never taken the guts out of a show so completely that it ruined the episode."

The Second Season To reflect its comic book roots, and in honor of Batman #500, Timm disclosed the team was working on an episode featuring Bane. "It's going to be a bit different than the comics. We're not going to be able to break Batman in two, so we've come up with a slightly different take on it."

"It won't be anywhere near the depth of the comic version, because we're trying to do in one episode what the comic series has covered over several issues. There's no wheelchair, no Azrael, no angst. It's going to be more of a fun knock- about half hour."

"Most of the other changes for the second season are reflective of what Fox feels. They do market research and survey kids and pass it on to us."

"The show is going to be a little less grim than the first season. Less of Batman being tortured by the death of his parents. I think the second season is going to be just as good as the first; it's just a little bit more fun. Fox definitely wants more super villains. Apparently kids would rather see Batman fighting the Joker rather than some thug with a trench coat and a big hat."

"That's fine, we've done enough of those kinds of shows. We don't need to keep using gangsters. There will also be more emphasis on larger- than-life action and more humor, but that doesn't mean it will ever be that campy Adam West style."

"There are still things I don't want to do with Batman. We'll never send him into outer space or anything. But the personality of the villain he confronts in a particular episode helps dictate the story. Batman wouldn't be in the same situations if he was fighting the Joker or Poison Ivy.

We're very aware of not repeating ourselves. During the course of the first 65 episodes, we kind of fell into a sort of formula such as: Batman does this, then he fires his grappling hook, then he flies away. So we're always trying to come up with new things for him to do and the villains."

"There's not going to be a whole lot of new villains in the second season, basically just more of the rogues gallery including the Joker, Penguin, Riddler, etc.

Paul Dini and I did create a new character called Baby Doll. She's a former child star, TV actress (a la Shirley Temple). She kind of has that Gary Coleman syndrome. Now she's 33 years old, but she still looks like a 6-year- old. Of course she's psychotic and she has a disgusting speech pattern that Paul came up with.

There will be one more Batgirl show in the second season. "I really like the Batgirl character and what the writers have done with her," Timm said. "Rather than making her this goofy young girl when they first introduced her in the Heart of Steel show, they established her alter-ego Barbara Gordon as being very intelligent, resourceful, and capable. So when she became Batgirl, it was almost logical. But she's also a fun character like Robin. A Batgirl/Robin team-up is actually planned where Batman appears very little. She'll appear in the fall.

There's been some talk about Sandman, but I don't know; it doesn't really seem to fit our show. Paul and the writers would like to do an episode with Neil Gaimon's metaphysical hero, but the Sandman comics are pretty talk-oriented and not very action oriented, and I don't see it working in our format.

Animation is about fluidity and movement, and Sandman stories don't have much of that."

Other episodes include: a three- part series dubbed The Trial- where the inmates of Arkham Asylum act as judge and jury; A Bullet for Bullock-loosely based on a Chuck Dixon detective story; House & Garden - Poison Ivy appears to have retired from crime; Harlequin-aid-Batman embarks on a 48 Hours style romp to defuse a nuclear bomb; The Terrible Trio- featuring the Fox, the Shark and the Vulture; and a Batman crossover with Jonah Hex.

The Movie Outlook "The current plan is to use the computer generated Gotham City from the movie," Timm said.

The map itself is a technological triumph. An upcoming feature film, it will eventually be used for the series. "The map is amazing," Timm said, "Gotham City exists. All we have to do is tell the computer where we want to start and where we want to end and we can zoom anywhere."

As far as the movie goes, it's basically being animated as we speak," Timm said. "Our end of it is done, pre-production was done months ago, and we're just now starting to get sequences back from overseas. We're starting the post-production process such as editing. The computer generated title sequence is being rendered on a machine in France."

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.

So you claim to be the world's biggest Batman Beyond fan, huh?

You know that this super series stars teen crime fighter Terry McGinnis. And that in addition to dealing with normal teenager stuff - like juggling school and home-work with a social life - Terry also has a secret part-time job ...as Batman!

But do you know what it takes to bring Terry's animated adventures to your TV screen every week? Well, after spending some time behind the scenes of the hit Kids' WB! series, we've learned that bringing Terry to life is just as hectic - and exciting - as, well, his life!

It takes four producers - Bruce Timm, Paul Dini, Alan Burnett and Glen Murakami - to supervise the creation of each "Batman Beyond" episode. Their team includes directors, writers, artists, actors and musicians who work on each episode for almost eight months!

"We all work together as a team." Bruce explains. "It takes a long time, and there's a lot that has to happen as each show is produced."

Is there ever! Before a single episode aired, the team spent a lot of time designing the "look" of the show. This includes all the backgrounds, buildings, cars and characters you see each week, including Batman's futuristic costume.

"In the end, it took 10 to 15 sketches to come up with the Batsuit," says Bruce, who designed Terry's disguise. "I decided to cover up the face, and I didn't want a cape, so I came up with retractable wings."

After they knew what Batman's world would look like, it was time to think up a story and write the script - something the team does over and over again for each episode.

They start with a "brain-storming" session, where everyone gets together and talks about story ideas. "Since 'Batman Beyond' takes place in the near future, we'll look at new situations and technology that are just starting to be accepted into society and project what they will be like 40 years from now." Paul Dini explains. "For example, in one meeting, we were thinking about the current tattoo craze. We put a futuristic spin on that and came up with the 'Splicers' a teen gang that uses animal DNA to enhance their bodies."

Once they decide on a cool idea, like the Splicers storyline, a staff writer is assigned to the story. "The writer comes up with 10 pages that touch on the story's main points," Bruce explains. "Then we give the writer notes [feedback] and the first draft of the script is written."

After the script is finished, actors hit the studio to record the characters' voices. They do this before a single scene is sketched sso that the animation will match their voices. "And sometimes, when we rehearse a new script with the actors, they might give us an idea for a new line or interpretation on a character," Paul says.

Will Friedle ["Boy Meets World"] stars as the voice of Terry McGinnis/Batman. Other voice actors include Kevin Conroy as Bruce wayne, Lauren Tom as Dana Tan, Seth Green ["Buffy the Vampire Slayer"] as Nelson Nash, Stockard Channing as Commissioner Barbara Gordon, Teri Garr as Mary McGinnis, and Ryan O'Donahue as Matt McGinnis. Once the dialogue is recorded, artists draw a storyboard - a sort of "cartoon map" - of all the action. "It's like a comic book," Bruce Timm explains. "The storyboard artist reads the script and listens to all the recorded voices so the action and characters are drawn correctly."

From the storyboards, professional artists create the actual animation artwork. They hand-draw, ink and color individual scenes [called "cels"] of artwork that, when run together in order, create a moving picture. Special effects, like explosions, are also created at this point - all by hand!

When the animation is all done, the director cuts the episode down to the correct amount of time, takes out scenes that don't work, and oversees the addition of sound effects and music to complete the show.

Then you come in! As the world's biggest "Batman Beyond" fan, it's now your job to kick back and enjoy all the hard work that goes into bringing your fave super hero to life as each brand-new episode hits the Kids' WB! It's a tough job...but we think you can handle it!

Bruce Timm & Glen Murakami

It's not often that you get to speak with a legend in your own time. And in some ways, a legend is just what Bruce Timm is. He and Eric Radomski pretty much co-created Batman: The Animated Series in the wake of the early-90s Batman pop culture revival, but what was remarkable was that, for what seemed to be the first time ever, the Dark Knight survived the transition intact. Tim Burton's Batman was more or less true to the comic's dark roots, to be sure, but it still broke some of the basic rules. (How little time did it take for Bruce Wayne to reveal his identity to Vicki Vale?) It was close, but not quite.

When Batman aired on Fox in 1992, here at last was a faithful adaptation. Timm, really, had reached the level that many aspire to: he was the comic book fan who got to make a comic-book series his way. As such, the Joker's fiendish traps were grand, but not garish; Penguin was every bit as deadly as he was funny-looking; Catwoman was misunderstood, a temptress, noble, sexy, elusive. Visually, Gotham City -- another important character -- was the very model of a film-noir locale.

Glen Murakami had a lot to do with that, as time went on. Eric Radomski defined the look of Batman, but Murakami -- who nominally started out as a storyboarder -- found himself covering the full range of artistic tasks to execute that look. When The New Batman Adventures went into production and Radomski departed, Murakami filled in as a producer and redesigned the show's look, making the characters and the city even more streamlined and, at times, ominous.

Batman has been through three TV series since 1992, as well as a theatrical feature (Mask of the Phantasm) and a direct-to-video feature (Sub-Zero). Along the way, there was a Superman series, which features many appearances by other DC universe characters (which has whet many a fan's appetite). New to the TV ranks is Batman Beyond, which puts the young Terry McGinnis in the Batman's boots some decades into the future. By all accounts, we'll be hearing a lot more from this pair for the next few years. Here's what they had to say abuot their past, their present, and a little bit of the future.

Emru Townsend: Just to make sure I've got everything clarified as to who does what: I know you guys are both producers, but... Actually, let's run this down from the different shows: the original Batman series, the new one, Batman Beyond, and Superman. Bruce, you've been a producer all the way through, right?

Bruce Timm: Yes.

As  well as co-creator of the series.

BT: Right.

So that's pretty easy. Glen, how did you start out in this?

Glen Murakami: I started on the first Batman series as a character designer, and a storyboard cleanup artist, and a...

BT: Jack of all trades.

GM: Yeah, I did a little bit of everything. And then on Superman I was the art director. On the new Batman show I was the art director, and now on Batman Beyond I'm a producer.

Bruce, I find it funny you say "Jack of all trades", considering that in overseeing everything, you do a little of everything. You came up with the series idea, obviously, and a lot of the look of it. You do storyboarding, you've directed some, you've written some, you even do a voice on Batman Beyond, right?

BT: Right.

Which voice do you do again?

BT: Kind of by default, I became the Jokerz leader, from the pilot. We had an actor cast who wasn't manic enough, so I just kind of stepped in and did it. Everyone said "Oh yeah, that's pretty good, we'll just keep you," and I went, "Oh, okay." So by default I'm now the leader of the Jokerz.

I already have a slight idea of how you got into this Bruce, so I'll start with Glen. Glen, how did you get into this crazy business?

GM: I started on the first Batman series. Interviewed, and got the job, and...

BT: He showed up one day with his portfolio. He'd never done anything in animation before, but he'd heard that we were in production and doing the show, and he thought he'd give it a try. He had all kinds of interesting styles in there, and we just saw a real natural drawing ability. We gave him a storyboard test, which he failed.

GM: It was really crappy.

BT: It was really crappy, he failed it miserably. We said, well, you know what, we know you can draw, so we'll hire you and we'll figure out what we'll do with you afterwards. So we just hired him, and he started out doing character designs and a little bit of storyboard cleanup, basically just a little bit of everything. Around the time that we did the Superman show--actually, he had left.

GM: I was gone for a year and a half.

BT: He was gone for a year and a half, and for the Superman show I asked him back, and was confident enough that he had absorbed enough of my design theories that we made him the art director of the Superman show to help me out. He did such a good job on that [and] did the same thing on Batman Beyond, and halfway through the season we said, you know what, he's doing the work of a full producer, so let's make him a producer, so that's that.

GM: I had to fill Eric Radomski's shoes.

BT: Right. Eric Radomski was my co-producer on the first Batman series.

What was your background before coming to Batman, then?

GM: No experience. I was a big comic book fan, and just drew a lot. I was trying to get work as a comic book artist, but I wasn't really sure, and then I saw an article on the new Batman series. And actually, a friend of mine from high school got a job working on the show as a background designer so, um... I just drew a lot. No experience. I drew what they liked.

So what you're saying is, if I'd gotten a portfolio together, I could have been working on Batman.

GM: I don't know if I could say that. [everyone laughs]

Well, I did the same thing, I was just drawing a lot. Should've thought of it. Oh, well.

GM: I was just at the right place at the right time.

Well, that worked out pretty well. Bruce, I've seen some of your fan art from before Batman. I can't remember where... some magazine somewhere, I guess.

BT: Oh my.

So you clearly were doing a lot of drawing beforehand.

BT: Oh, yes.

In a lot of different comic book styles and such. I can see some of the Kirby influence in what you were doing, but what else would you say influenced your drawing style? This is prior to Batman.

BT: A little bit of everybody. I mean, when I was a teenager, John Buscema was by favorite artist, so I just copied all the John Buscema comics I could get my hands on. Later I got into Alex Toth and Frank Frazetta, and for the longest time I wanted to draw just like Frank Frazetta. Finally, I realized that I would just never be able to draw that well, so I kind of adapted my style to what it ultimately became--I played off of the fact that I'm not really a good draftsman. [I] made my stuff designier and designier, and the style just evolved.

My story is very similar to Glen's, I got into animation kind of--I kind of backed into it. I wanted to be a comic book artist as well, and I'd show my work around at the conventions, to all the comic book people, and never really got any bites. One day I was watching some really crummy cartoon on TV, and I said, well, I may not be able to draw comic books, but I can certainly draw as well as these crappy cartoons that are on TV. I submitted my portfolio at one of the local animation studios--Filmation--got hired, kind of bounced around all the different places in the industry, and eventually wound up here at Warner Bros. working on the Tiny Toons show, and that's what I was working on when they announced that they were going to be doing a Batman cartoon. So I did a whole bunch of designs for Batman and showed them at the next production meeting, and kind of on the basis of these designs, got the gig as the producer of the series. So just like Glen, I was in the right place at the right time.

Glen, when you were doing comic book art before, was there anyone in particular who influenced your style?

GM: Jack Kirby. Alex Toth.

BT: John Byrne. [laughs]

GM: John Byrne. A little bit of everybody. The Hernandez brothers, Dave Stevens. Everybody.

The common thread through everyone I've asked seems to be Alex Toth, who comes up with everyone, and Jack Kirby a close second.

BT: Yeah, that's pretty universal throughout most comic book/animation artists. Alex Toth is way up there in the pantheon. He and Kirby are neck and neck.

It's funny because looking at some of the drawings, especially in the comic books, like in Mad Love, where you're using more static designs to convey motion, I see in Bruce's work more of a Harvey Kurtzman thing, a kind of rubbery, manic thing.

BT: Yeah, Kurtzman is somebody that I've always really admired, and it wasn’t until I did Mad Love that I realized how much he directly influenced my style. Again, I think that's just the storytelling more than anything else. I don't really see a whole lot of him in my figure work or anything like that, but yeah, the way he paces stories, the way he stages things, I picked up a lot from Kurtzman. Probably more so than anybody.

I didn't even really notice it until I saw the reproduction of a page out of Mad Love in Batman Animated, the shot of Joker bursting through the door screaming "HARLEY!", and I went, that's a Kurtzman drawing.

BT: Yeah, when I was a kid. Mad magazine was a really big influence on me as well.

Emru Townsend: Japanese animation? Opinions?  Any?

Bruce Timm: What about it?

Influences. No, not necessarily influences, but one of the questions I get asked a lot from animation fans is, does Japanese animation have any impact whatsoever on the North American TV and movie industry? Impact can mean anything.

BT: A lot of guys in our crew and some of the directors that worked on the first series of Batman that we did way back when--very, very heavily influenced by Japanese animation. It's probably not as much of a direct influence on what we do. It’s not like when we sit down to do a Batman episode we say, let's sit down and watch a whole bunch of Japanese cartoons and figure out what they did and try to do it. We have done that, we actually do that a lot for the effects, they're geniuses with effects, so we've actually sat down and frame-by-frame, tried to figure out how they do some effect.

For the most part, Japanese animation is--that's a big thing, Japanese animation, there's so many different kinds of Japanese animation. There's stuff that's practically fully animated like Akira, and there's stuff that's more simplified and stylized like Ghost in the Shell, where they make real creative use of limited animation.

So we try to do a lot of their tricks that they do, but we've always had as a mandate from the corporate headquarters to not do any of that quote-unquote "limited animation crap". So what we've always tried to do is [as much] quote-unquote "full animation" as possible, so a lot of the stuff the Japanese do doesn't really apply. But especially on Batman Beyond, a lot of people say, oh yeah, it definitely has an anime-inspired look. Yes and no, it kind of does and it doesn't; if anything, it's probably something that's more subliminal. It's more of a subliminal influence than a direct influence.

To be honest, I don't really see it.

BT: That's good. [everyone laughs] Because a lot of people see it and I don't really see what they're talking about.

I think it's largely because it's futuristic.

BT: I think the [aesthetic] is a big part of it. You know, the futuristic city with a lot of foreign language, Japanese and Korean characters on the buildings, and a lot of it neon. That's very much something that the Japanese have been doing for quite a while in their science fiction anime.

Yeah, they seized on some of the images of cyberpunk and such a lot earlier.

BT: Well, yeah. We came up with a fairly successful formula for how to design characters for animation, and on that aspect of it, it's not really anything like Japanese animation. Going back to when I first started working on that style in the original Batman series, I would say it's a combination of Alex Toth and Sleeping Beauty. It's like Alex Toth's designs for Hanna-Barbera in the '60s and the really, really strongly graphic design that the Disney artists did on Sleeping Beauty, that's kind of the quote-unquote "Batman style".

With a little bit of the Fleischers thrown in.

BT: Well, the Fleischers... that was definitely an influence on us on the first series of Batman--

Glen Murakami: The look and the feel is very Fleischers, but it's more stylized.

BT: Yeah, the actual drawing style is more stylized. If you look at the Fleischers, everything is very round, very quote-unquote "classical" animation, very Disney-oriented and very rounded, where the specific stuff we're aping from Sleeping Beauty is sharp straights against rounded curves. It's actually something I picked up on when I was working at Don Bluth, then I was really heavily influenced by that style.

But the Fleischers, I think they were an influence on the original Batman series, but again, it wasn't like we sat down and said, let's do that shot, let's do that, let's do this. The way we shadowed the characters was probably, again, subliminal. You know, we've seen the cartoons so many times we can't help but think, that works, we'll kind of do that. It's not like we're sitting down and literally watching a Superman cartoon and drawing a Batman cartoon. It's [just] a common influence.

I'd like to pursue the Japanese animation thing a bit further, just because of one thing. In a recent episode of Batman Beyond, in the "Spellbinder" episode, you had a shot there which looked like it was straight out of Nausicaä.

BT: Oh, the big bug.

Yeah.

BT: Yeah. Well, that sequence was actually boarded by one of our board guys, named Adam Van Wyk. He is probably the biggest Japanese animation fan on our staff.

GM: We're big Miyazaki fans. I'd say we're more influenced by Miyazaki than probably any other [anime artist].

That was going to be my next question. What is it in particular about his style that you like?

GM: The simplification in the way he breaks down the animation is very smart and economical. Because we're doing a TV show we don't have a feature budget. We use the Japanese animation more for the technical and mechanical reasons rather than stylistic reasons.

BT: But also I think what we really like about Miyazaki is that his stuff is actually more fluid and more filmic than most of the other anime directors. You know what I'm talking about when I say the limited animation thing? It's like when I think of Ghost in the Shell I think of these ultra-rendered heads which don't actually animate but they really just animate the hair and they just slide the background behind it, and hold on it for a really long time.

Sure. And they manage to redirect your attention by the dialogue or something else so you don't really pay attention to that fact.

BT: Right. Whereas Miyazaki doesn't do a whole lot of that. His animation isn't quite as full as, say, Disney animation, but his characters go from pose to pose, they go from a real naturalistic pose to another naturalistic pose, and he tries to keep it fluid when the characters are moving. But just his storytelling sense also, is just unbelievable.

GM: He's very clear.

BT: Very clear. That's always my big thing. When you mentioned the Kurtzman thing, when I think of Kurtzman staging, I think everything is just clarity. He's a real meat and potatoes artist in the way he stages things. It's not tricky. It's just, he shows you the right angle and the right pose at the right time. And Miyazaki's kind of the same way.

GM: Most Japanese cartoons have just a lot of detail and a lot of explosions and a lot of things going on at one time, and that's very difficult to do on a TV show's budget and schedule. So I think we use Japanese animation techniques, but we try to make them look like American drawings.

Which I think is a pretty good blend, when it's done well.

BT: It's what we try to do.

GM: It's not that we don't like Japanese animation, it's just that it's apples and oranges. Some of the rules don't apply.

Sure. You take what works. There are a bunch of directions we could go with that, but because you mentioned the clarity--one of the things that I like about Batman--from the first series through to Batman Beyond--overall is simplicity. It's got a certain simple, elegant design. You don't have anything more than you need.

BT: Well, that's we try. That's exactly what we're aiming for.

GM: A lot of people confuse simplifying with dumbing down.

Whereas you use simplification and you don't talk down.

BT: That's one thing that we did do a little bit differently in Batman Beyond, because the show is set in the future. Up until that point we'd constantly been taking away detail. The last batch of Batmans we did for the WB, that was as spare and simple a style as we've ever done. If you compare those episodes to the first ones we ever did, the first ones have a lot more detail. A lot more wrinkles on the clothes, a lot more lumps on the figures, on the faces. Partly that's being influenced by Glen, because his style is really spare, compared to mine. But up until that point we were constantly taking away detail, saying, let's see if we can draw an arm with two lines instead of four.

Things got really, really stylized and really flat and graphic on the last go-round with Batman. We did Batman Beyond, and because of the futuristic setting we realized we would have to put a little bit more detail on the characters, and a little bit more detail on the vehicles and the backgrounds, just to give it a different look. But at the same time still trying to eliminate things that aren’t important, like--people don't have buttons on their pants, their pants just magically stay up. We just figure it's something you don’t need to draw. The same thing with heels on the shoes, you don’t actually have to outline the sole of the shoe. That was one of my big sticklers when I was in the business before Batman. Every place where I'd had to design characters, at DIC or Marvel, they were always making me draw all this extra detail on figures, and I'd just think, well, you know, the guys in Korea aren't going to draw it. Or if they do, it's one extra line for them to screw up. So I was always trying to fight that.

I remember when I saw the first publicity still from [the new Batman], and I said, wow, this is radically simplified. Actually, I think the first thing I noticed was that his arm was basically two lines from shoulder to wrist.

GM: We [also] simplified the style with the colors. If you look at Batman, Batman is just black and grey, Robin is just black and red, and Joker is just purple and green. So we even tried to eliminate the amount of color we used too, to push the style.

BT: That's something that we took even further on Batman Beyond. Again, this is directly Glen's influence, because Glen spent a lot of time on the color of Batman Beyond. You might not even be aware of it when you're watching it, but anytime you see Terry and Dana in a crowd scene at school, you'll notice they're the only two characters in the scene that are in full color. Everybody else is all monochrome. It's all the same color in the background, it's like they've got purple hair, and purple pants, and purple shoes. It's kind of a comic book technique, it's something we adapted from comics. It's a way of focusing your attention on the characters that are talking, and trying to let everything else blend into the background.

GM: From EC comics.

What was the reason behind simplifying Batman further for the new one, or for that matter adapting a new look at all?

GM: We wanted to push the style. We had learned so much working on the first series and Superman, we wanted to take it even further.

BT: Not only that, but when they came back at us and said that the WB wanted to do new episodes of Batman, at first I wasn't even really interested, because we'd done so many of them, and we'd done Superman in the meantime, and I didn't want to just go back and do what we did five years before. And like Glen said, we thought we'd learned so much just from analyzing our cartoons about what worked and what didn't. So while I was just thinking about it at home one night, I just said, if I could do Batman again, what would I do different? And I just started sketching Batman again, and I that's when I came up with that really radically angular, flat design, and I thought, wow, that's pretty neat. And even eliminating the highlights on his black areas, which I always thought looked too blue on the screen, too electric blue.

So as soon as I did that, then I moved over to the Joker, I redesigned the Joker and I went, hey, that looks pretty good too. So I showed it to Glen, Glen was all excited, and he said, okay, if we're going to do this, this is the way to go, we can go back in and redo all the characters, make them all fit the style. Of course that meant we had to go back and redo every single character. And sometimes we'd look at a character like Clayface, and we'd say, well, there's nothing wrong with the original Clayface design, but it doesn't quite match the new style, so what are we going to do now? The same thing with Mr. Freeze. We loved the original Mr. Freeze design, but when it came time do him for the new show, it was like, well, we've got to redesign him because it just doesn't match anymore, so it was kind of a challenge.

The new Scarecrow is wonderfully terrifying.

BT: The Scarecrow is one of the characters I was really, really happy that we got a chance to redo, because I was never happy with the old Scarecrow design. To me, for a guy who's big weapon is fear, he just looked so silly in that big orange suit with the big hat and the bag over his head.

In the first series, his design changed two or three times, didn't it?

BT: Yeah. We never did get him right in the first series, so in the redo I was glad we got to do that so that we finally came up with a decent Scarecrow design. That Texas Chainsaw Massacre face.

Emru Townsend: You went to the "Year One" design for Batman's outfit. I don't understand why you changed the outfit. I  understand you had it more angular, you decided to make it more black, but it's strange--most of the fans who watch the show, obviously there's going to be a large portion of fans watching it, are going to realize you're sort of going backward while you're going forward. What led to that decision?

Bruce Timm: You mean continuity-wise?

Yeah, I guess, continuity-wise.

BT: I just said I didn't care. Yeah, people will say that's the Batman: Year One look, but you know, our continuity doesn't really follow the comic book continuity anyway, so... I mean, we never had a Jason Todd [laughs] It just looks better. We thought it might confuse people a little bit, but it's really only going to confuse the real die-hard fans who think that we follow the comic-book continuity, which we don't, so...

Glen Murakami: In contrast, the darker Batman works against the other characters. It makes Batman more serious, and losing the yellow off his chest, it fits the tone. It fits the mood.

And the other two are still a bit brighter. They both have that yellow lining under their capes, which just makes them stand out. Except for Nightwing.

BT: Actually, the yellow in Batgirl's cape, that's just so that her silhouette will read. Because we decided we could make her all black, with not even a rim light on her, because we loved the idea of her moving silhouette, it would be kinda neat. And it does go back to her original look in the comic, which we kinda should have done in the first place. But we realized that if we had her nice little cute shapely form up against the black cape, you wouldn't even see her. So that's why we had to put a yellow lining in the cape.

It almost seems too bad there doesn't seem to be any more new Batman episodes in the pipeline, considering all the effort you put in the redesign.

BT: Yes and no.

GM: You never know.

BT: I would think somewhere along the line they'll probably go back and want to do more. I mean, we never thought that we would even go back and do that new batch for the WB. We thought that Batman was long gone.

GM: Who would have thought it?

BT: We never say never. Chances are it'll come back. I think there's probably a better chance of new episodes of "classic" Batman than, say, Superman. Especially if they ever get the movie franchise up and running again, create new interest in doing episodes. Because the show's been on non-stop since 1992, and it still does really well in the ratings, [and] every now and then they'll come back and say, it would really be nice to freshen up this package with a few more episodes. So it may happen some day.

Is Superman still in production?

BT: Superman is not currently in production. We have three episodes that haven't aired yet, two of which we've gotten back and we're in the middle of doing post-production on. One other episode hasn't come back yet. Those will air in the fall sometime. That actually will be the last appearance of the "classic" Batman. He makes a guest-starring appearance in one of the Superman episodes.

I was going to ask, with the various team-ups that you've done with Aquaman, the Flash, and all the other DC heroes that you've put in, sometimes updating them. The question was going to be, do you figure you're going to be doing more of that with Superman or Batman, but now I wonder about Batman Beyond. You had Mr. Freeze in there, which is kind of nice, to show that he can suffer even years into the future, poor guy. And the Royal Flush Gang, while not exactly the same as the original, who you never really showed, are still an update of classic characters. So do you see anyone coming back? And not even necessarily the people themselves. It doesn't have to be heroes, it doesn't have to be villains. But say, their descendants. I know you've never shown Green Arrow, but would, for instance, Speedy ever show up?

BT: I don't think so, for a number of reasons. The only established DC hero that will probably show up in Batman Beyond is the Huntress, just because we think she's an interesting character and we kind of want to do another female crime-fighter along the lines of Batgirl but we didn't want to just do Batgirl Beyond. We thought the Huntress would be a natural. We're actually working on a story for that right now, so the Huntress will probably be on Batman Beyond, but other than that--you'll notice that we did a lot of superhero team-ups on Superman and not very many on Batman?

Yeah, except for the occasional nod, like Zatanna.

BT: And you notice that Batman's world, strangely enough, was a little bit more realistic that Superman's world. Having a bunch of superheroes running around in Batman's world just didn't really feel true. Whereas, for some reason, if you can accept this guy from another planet running around throwing tanks around, then you can accept a guy with a power ring. But Batman, because he's just a guy, with ultra-competent detective skills and martial arts skills, we tried to limit the number of super-powered characters in his universe. So we're kind of doing the same thing with Batman Beyond.

Even going back to the first series in '92, Batman is an action show, and it's an action show that doesn't talk down, which means that we understand that people actually are in danger here. Which is pretty unusual for most animated shows in North America, especially considering it's handled so intelligently, as a general rule. When we see that someone is threatening someone else, we don't think, oh well, he's just going to get injured. There's a sense of menace. People could get killed, and in some cases they have. In Batman Animated, it's touched on briefly about getting notes back from Business Standards and Practices and such. Given that you're a Batman fan, and I assume Glen is also, from way back, I'd guess you found it something of a challenge trying to do the harder-edged Batman stories, but in a TV medium. Now on the WB, it seems as if you've managed to get some of those limitations removed, you're a little bit freer to some other things.

BT: In retrospect, I have to go back and say that the censors at Fox were actually pretty good to us for the time. For the timeframe that we were doing that series, they were letting us do stuff that they wouldn't let anybody else do, probably just because it was Batman, because Batman was such a big cultural phenomenon, so they gave us a little bit more leeway than they would give other shows. They were actually pretty good to us.

We did find out when we went to the WB that [it was] a whole different set of rules, [things] they weren't even bothered by. So that was kind of nice, yeah. [laughs] There were actually a couple of times where they would let stuff go that we would go back and look at it and say, you know, maybe we should tone that down.

[laughs]

BT: We would actually have to police ourselves because they were so liberal with their restrictions. So it really hasn’t been too much of a problem of trying to slip anything past them. For one reason or another, they had a lot less rigid standards than the Fox network did.

So did you actually try to slip anything past the guys at Fox?

BT: Oh, all the time. Like I said, in retrospect they were really good to us, so I shouldn't complain, but sometimes--I can understand if they say, okay, don't have this character fire his gun right into the camera. I can understand that, that's a basic no-no on almost every any cartoon. But some of their complaints were really creative. They'd have to think really hard to come up with some of the stuff they wouldn't allow us to do. Some of the stuff would just seem so random. We could never say the word "idiot", because that might offend the idiots in the audience.

Ooo-kay.

BT: You know, it's like... huh? [laughs] It was stuff like that! And they had a real hard and fast rule about how you could never endanger children. I can understand that to a degree, but they would take it to an extreme.

Anytime somebody says "don't do this", it makes you work harder to do it. It's just like telling your kid "don't step in that puddle". They're gonna do whatever they can to step in that puddle. So yeah, we would try to get away with stuff on the old show.

We don't do that anymore, we've all grown up.

Why don't I believe you?

BT: [laughs]

Bruce Timm & Glen Murakami

Emru Townsend: Do you see any possibilities for other series that would be animated and yet a bit more serious? Serious doesn't have to be more grim, but just... like Batman was--where you can have action/adventure but have to not necessarily talk down. There was Invasion America, but that was kind of iffy. And Gargoyles was pretty good, but that got subverted toward the end.

Bruce Timm: Yeah, that whole premise of Gargoyles was kind of namby-pamby anyway, with all that Celtic fantasy crap.

Batman has been enduring for a good seven years now, but I wonder, do you see it happening outside that whole franchise.

BT: Well, we do have a couple of things in development that we're working on, and I don't want to say anything about them at this point because I don't want to jinx them or get people's hopes up. But yeah, we're definitely--we're kind of in this business to make reasonably adult cartoons for a general audience. It would be really hard to go backwards now and to do a "kiddie" show. We've been so spoiled by our Batman and Superman experience, it would be really hard to go backwards, as it were.

If you could ever make that fabled Justice League of America cartoon, which every other comic book fan wishes you would make--

BT: You know, I don't really understand why they want  that so badly. I mean, I guess I kinda do, but...

Glen Murakami: It's really hard to do.

BT: It's a hard show to do.

You realize it's partially your fault! I mean, you've successfully put out Batman, you've got Superman, you've done Green Lantern, the Flash--you haven't done Wonder Woman or Hawkman, but you've done them so well.

BT: There's a [number of] reasons we're not going to do The Justice League. There's a real big legal reason, actually. For a while there, we weren't even allowed to even think about it, because of that live-action pilot they made a could of years ago. I'm not sure, that may even still be in effect, so there may be a legal reason why we can't do it. But just from a creative standpoint, it's really hard to have that many characters in a 22-minute show and give them all something interesting to do. We found that even on Batman, that it was hard to have Robin, and Batgirl, and Batman all in the same episode. Just staging a fight scene is really difficult, to keep them all busy. You can't ever have Robin just get knocked out, because then you think, oh, why wasn't Batgirl there to help him?

Right. You've got to choreograph the whole thing.

BT: When you have a show like The Justice League, where you've got not just Batman and Batgirl and Robin, but you've got Superman, and Green Lantern, and the Flash, and all these people who have really extra super powers, and [you're trying] to come up with things for them to do every episode, and to come up with opponents that are strong enough for them to figure logically, it's kind of a hassle. That alone is enough to make me think I don't want to go there.

Not only that, but by having that many main characters in a 22-minute show, it's hard to focus personality-wise on any one character. The beauty of a show like Batman is that you can really get into that one character, into his personality.

I'm not saying it couldn't be done well. I just have no desire to do it.

If you could do a DC superhero, if they said you were free to do any DC superhero you wanted, make a series out of it, what would you do? This is a question for both of you.

BT: Going back to my earlier response, there are a couple of DC characters we're talking about developing for series, and I don’t want to tip it off, I don’t want to jinx it, I don’t want to get rumors started. You're going to have to wait and see.

Keep me in suspense, why don't you?

BT: Yeah, sorry.

Instead of the future, let's go back to the past a little bit. What's your favorite episode that you've worked on?

BT: It's so hard to say. There's so many various reasons. Most of my favorites are recent ones.

GM: "Over the Edge".

BT: "Over the Edge" is a really good episode. It has probably the strongest story, and the hardest emotional punch. And it's beautifully animated. It doesn't hit a sour note all the way through.

GM: The Royal Flush Gang.

BT: The Royal Flush Gang episode of Batman Beyond ["Dead Man's Hand"] is really good. The Curaré episode ["A Touch of Curaré"], the one that just aired here over the weekend, that's a very strong episode.

From the very first series, about the only one that I have any fondness for at all is--well, there's two of them. There's the first Mr. Freeze show ["Heart of Ice"] and the very first episode, the Man-Bat show ["On Leather Wings"]. But other than that, they all kind of blur together. Strangely enough, as time has gone by and we've moved along and redesigned the characters and everything, I find the old episodes really hard to watch. I find them really slow, and I find the animation really clunky and the designs are kinda fat and chubby, and...

GM: We're hard to please.

BT: Yeah. Even episodes that used to be my favorites, like "Robin's Reckoning", I went back and watched it recently, and I went, oh my God, I can't believe I used to love that episode. I can't stand it anymore. So I've kind of been holding off watching the Man-Bat episode again because I don't want to be disappointed. That's because it was the first episode we worked on. First loves die hard, and all that crap.

It's interesting that anyone who I ask, be it fan or animator--Paul Dini as well--all say "Heart of Ice" as a favorite.

BT: Yeah. That's a good one. That's a real strong episode. Again, haven't watched in a couple of years, I'm kind of afraid to. [laughs] Yeah, that one was one of my favorites.

Glen, how about you?

GM: "Heart of Ice", "Over the Edge", "Holiday Knights"... a lot of the early ones I haven't watched in years, so... "World's Finest"... We're so busy moving forward we don't have time to look back.

Well, when it comes to creating them, what are the stories you like working on? What is it that drives them? Bruce, from the sound of it, it sounds more like the interplay between the characters.

BT: I'm a sucker for emotional stories, those are always my favorite. Any show that can make me cry at the end of it usually gets a thumbs-up from me. But like I said though, the Curaré episode that was just on, that show is not a really emotional show, it's just a relentless hard-driving machine. It's just a really exciting episode, so I love the action ones to. That's why I go back to "Over the Edge", because it's got all that real heart-rending melodrama stuff in it.

That's the ultimate, when you can combine the two, if you can combine the really emotional stuff with the great action, that's my favorite stuff.

GM: It's hard for me to enjoy anything because I'm too close to everything. Sometimes I'm jealous of people when they talk about "Mad Love" or some of the [other] cartoons, because I experience it while working on everything, so it doesn't have that newness.

You don't have that distance.

BT: Right.

Of course, if you could just do a crossover with Buffy the Vampire Slayer you'd be in.

BT: [laughs] Funny you should say that...

I'm going to pretend I didn't even say that. Okay, one more favorites question. Favorite characters?

BT: Favorite characters.

Yeah, I know it's a tough one.

BT: It is a tough one.

First person that comes to mind.

BT: Mr. Freeze has always been one of our favorite characters, to the point that every time the writers try to bring him back, Glen and I--especially being huge Mr. Freeze fans, we'll be merciless with our notes on the Mr. Freeze shows, just because we love the character so much, we don’t ever want him to become just another stock villain. So every time we bring him back, we want to make absolutely sure that every story he's in is really special.

So Mr. Freeze is a favorite...

GM: Batgirl.

BT: Batgirl is a great character, I love Batgirl.

I love the new Robin. Strangely enough, that's one of the reasons why I don't like the old series as much. I never really cared much for the Dick Grayson Robin. It's not that he was a bad character, but Robin works better as a kid, rather than almost adult, as a young man. It's much better to have a kid Robin, I think. For some reason he just plays off of Batman better that way. I love the Tim Drake Robin. Actually, I like the Nightwing character, too. As soon as we split Robin up into two characters, suddenly he became interesting.

I think it's the same thing the comic creators found over the years. As Robin gets more adult, there's less of a point of him being with Batman.

BT: Well, exactly. Absolutely, absolutely.

A lot of the stuff keeps coming back to the new show. I like Terry's girlfriend a lot, Dana. Terry himself is a great character, to me just lives and breathes. A lot of that is due to the actor, Will Friedle, he's just so wonderful in that part. He's just totally believable. And Kevin [Conroy]'s Bruce Wayne, too. I love the old man Bruce Wayne. That's one of the reasons why I'm digging the show so much, is getting to do something new with the character, but still staying true to the legend of Bruce Wayne/Batman.

It's strange, because Batman Beyond really should be about Terry, but in some ways Bruce is still the focus.

BT: No, I don't think so. I think Terry's the focus. Let's put it this way: we're trying to make Terry the focus. Sometimes Bruce has a tendency to overshadow, but we're trying to downplay Bruce to a degree, for a number of reasons. Bruce will always be there, but he isn't Luke Skywalker anymore, he's Obi-Wan Kenobi.

In the last couple of episodes, I found that even though Terry's the hero, in, for instance, the "A Touch of Curaré" one, a lot of what drove the episode, what set events in motion, to some degree, was Barbara's relationship with Bruce. If you look at the "Shriek" episode, to some degree that was also about Bruce. They attacked through Bruce, and of course the focus [is really on Bruce]. And there was that lovely comment at the end, where he says "Bruce isn't what I call myself when I'm thinking." So yeah, sometimes it seems as if it's still about him.

BT: Well, he's a pretty interesting character, you know. It's hard to downplay him sometimes. One of the reasons we're going to try to focus a little bit more on Terry and a little bit less on Bruce is purely commercial: teenage kids are watching the show, and with the focus groups we've done with the series, as well as our own instincts, I think kids are much more interested in Terry than in Bruce Wayne. I love that Bruce Wayne character, and he will always be there, but we are really going to try to concentrate on Terry, because it's his show now. You'll see a little bit more of what I'm talking about in the second season.

Closing question: how does it feel to have expanded so much on such a mythic character, one of the icons of American art?

BT: Relieved. I'm relieved that it's a hit, and that most people seem to like it. When we first got this gig, I was quite nervous about it. We've had a reputation over the years of being the guys who did Batman right, and I didn’t want to end my career with Batman being the guy who screwed up the whole franchise.

I'm just relieved that it really worked. When we first got the first episode back in-house, we were all excited about it. Amongst ourselves, we knew that it was a great show, but again, you can never really tell how objective you're being about it, because you're so close to it. But we felt that it was working, and we were just hoping that it would catch on with other people as well, so... just relief.

Batman has never been lucky with his cartoon career. Past trials-by-toon have reduced the grim avenger to a pointy-eared dad playing straight man to the likes of the Wonder Twins, Bat-Mite,even Scooby-Doo.

Warner Bros. Animation is changing all that with Batman: the Animated Series, a captivating cartoon that mixes elements of the hit Bat-films with the comic book, from the Neal Adams '70s to the Norm Breyfogle '90s.

"This Batman is a flesh and blood human being, and you get a stronger sense of his crusade," declares Alan Burnett, the amiable producer of the series. "This is not a cardboard character. He's a man with a cause in his frazzled society. Batman is unremitting in his obsession to rid the streets of crime and save people from the pain he experienced."

Burnett's office looks like the Batcave West. Besides the usual producer bric-a-brac of files and script, he has a well-read copy of The Batman Encyclopedia, stacks of DC Comics, The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told, character sketches, and a leering wind-up Joker.

"We show a character who's mortal," he says of the Dark Knight Detective. "One difference between our Batman and the movie Batman is our guy wears cloth clothes. Ours is much more fluid in motion. The moovie Batman is interesting in his stiff, almost knight-like look. Ours harks back to the classical Batman, who's very vulnerable."

Nonetheless, the cartoon crime-fighter is modeled after his cinematic cousin. "We're trying to stay as close to the movies as we can," says Burnett. "Visually, we'll be in tune with the movies. Our Catwoman and Penguin models are based on drawings Tim Burton made for us. Bruce Timm designed Batman and most of the other characters, but Burton saw and approved everything we did. We had meetings with him to keep the franchise close.

"Burton is a very gracious fellow, full of ideas. He said to us 'Do what you feel needs to be done. This is your series, this is what I'm doing, so take it from there.' We're trying to keep the shows close to the movies--for example, Batman has the film's grappling gun, and Penguin is referred to as a mutant because that's what he's called in Batman Returns. We also wanted to stay close to the comics. The classic Batman with Dick Grayson as his partner emerges in this show and blends with the movie's tone.

"It was difficult developing Catwoman and Penguin without having seen Batman Returns. Our versions had to live on to bother Batman. We were told the story's basic bones, but had no idea how they moved or talked. Our Catwoman is more social than the movie."

Burnett, a comics fan as a kid, enjoyed researching the series. "He was my favorite comic-book hero," the producer remembers. "When I was 10, I loved the first Batman Annual with his origin stories; how he got his suit and car, and how the Bat-Signal was created. I went to DC last year and raided their files! In two days," he laughs, "we literally went through every Batman and Detective comic, starting around the late '40s to today.

"Around 1957-'58 I started recognizing comics I had bought! It was amazing to see and hold those covers again. It's strange that now, 30-odd years later, I'm producing Batman shows for a new generation of kids. It's ironic to me. The project feels special because of that."

Burnett, who also wrote DuckTales: The Movie and won the Humanitas Award for The Smurfs, was summoned by Warners' Bat-Signal. "I had just story-edited the second season of Hanna-Barbera's Dark Water when Jean MacCurdy called up saying, 'You've got to come over to Batman!'

"She showed me the promo clip by co-producers Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski, and I couldn't believe my eyes," he states. "It was the best action/adventure animation I'd had ever seen for television. That promo clip got me here, and I've been jazzed about the show ever since."

He and the other producers have a strong rapport. "Radomski and Timm are good guys who are very dedicated to the show. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for them. Radomski and I are both from Cleveland and Timm's from Ohio. That state's a real hotbed for superhero creativity," he jokes "[Superman creators] Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster and Howard the Duck are also from there!"

The animated Batman which will air weekday afternoons on Fox this fall, has a noir ambience. It seems as if characters from Max & Dave Fleischer's Superman cartoons are wandering through Akira's Neo-Tokyo. "We call the look of the show 'Dark Deco.' Dark Deco is as if there were computer technology in the '40s. The show takes place at night with Batman unseen until he literally steps out of the shadows. With this look, even his cape has a heaviness to it."

Characters move appropriately--with Bruce Wayne's slouchy millionaire gait and the Dark Knight's lithe motion. "Batman wouldn't work if the acting wasn't as well-animated as it is," the producer muses. "I see similarities to Fleischer's Supermans, but our look is softer and more, to use a phrase--cartoony. Those cartoons also had a dark palette, so Fleischer has been an influence on our artists. Batman has the darkest palette I've ever seen for TV animation."

The show, which features some of Danny Elfman's music themes as well as original music by Shirley Walker adheres to Batman's grim tone. "I'm very proud of my story editors," enthuses Burnett. "We've done stories with a lot of depth. We have one ["I am the Night"] where Jim Gordon gets shot. Batman feels responsible, so he throws in the cowl and quits. We have a show called 'It's Never Too Late' about the redemption of a Mafia king. It's strange, because it touches on religious faith--the Mafioso's brother is a priest.

"There are so many good episodes. In 'Perchance to Dream,' Batman wakes up to discover that not only is there no longer a Batcave, but his parents are still alive. They're 20 years older and living in the mansion. He concludes that he dreamt this Batman thing up, and he's now coming out of it," Burnett relates. "I like it because it's not a dream--we don't fake people out!

"'The Man Who Killed Batman' is about a low-level shmuck in the gangster organization who everybody thinks killed Batman. Suddenly, he's king of the mountain, but it becomes a nightmare, as the Joker tries to kill him for killing Batman. In 'What is Reality?', the Riddler traps Batman in a virtual-reality computer game. Some shows are lighter than others. We're doing one where Penguin enters high society, and it has some screwball scenes. The nice aspect of doing 65 episodes is that we can experiment more and try different ideas."

Batman's flight from comics to cartoon incurred "lots of problems, because comics can get away with many things we can't." he says. "For instance, we can't murder people like in comics. We have a certain quota of blood we can use, while comics can bathe in the stuff! It's a problem, because we wanted to find comics stories we could translte to the screen.

"Many of the comic-book stories were based on violent injuries or murders, and if we couldn't find a parallel event to substitute, we couldn't use the story. It was disappointing, because there were great comic stories that we otherwise would have used.

"As it is, we've used several, including 'Moon of the Wolf' [a Neal Adams werewolf classic], 'The Cape and Cowl Conspiracy' and right now, [Batman comics editor] Denny O'Neil is writing a Ra's Al Ghul show based on his stories. It's pronounced 'Raysh all-Ghoul," says Burnett.

Some classic tales were condensed. "We took two stories and slapped them together," he explains. "We took Steve Englehart's 'The Laughing Fish,' where Joker is killing bureaucrats, but in our version, he's putting them into catatonic states. We used the body of that and the ending of a Denny O'Neil story ["Joker's 5-Way Revenge"], where Batman fights a shark, because the story has a fish motif. Denny adapted it.

"When I came on, I started tracking down comics book writers as fast as I could, particularly people who had written Batman. Marty Pasko and Michael Reaves, our story editors, and [writers] Denny O'Neil, Gerry Conway and Elliot Maggin all wrote Batman comics. Many of the original writers adapted their Batman stories. Eric Radomski and Paul Dini know the character pretty well, too. I gathered people who love Batman and they've taken the show places I couldn't have gone without them. The producers, directors and writers are all doing the best we can!"

Certain to be of interest is the slate of our celebrity guest villains: "Our casting director, Andrea Romano, is wonderful--she has gotten us all these high-caliber people. We recently got David Warner to be Ra's Al Ghul," he notes proudly. "Helen [Supergirl] Slater's his daughter, Talia!"

He's very pleased with the rest of the rogues' gallery. "Mark Hamill is the Joker, Michael York's Count Vertigo, Adrienne Barbeau is Catwoman, Brock Peters is [Bruce Wayne's VP] Lucius Fox, Marc Singer's Man-Bat and Meredith McRae is Francine Langstrom and She-Bat. Roddy McDowall's the Mad Hatter and Paul Williams is the Penguin.

"Michael Ansara is Mr. Freeze, John Glover is the Riddler, Harry Hamlin's a werewolf, Treat Williams is Professor Milo and L.A. Law's Alan Rachins is Clock King. We treat it like a radio play, and have the actors do it as straight as they can," he notes. "They always have a good time."

Mark Hamill's role as the Clown Prince of Crime seems odd, as early word said the part had gone to Tim Curry. "We decided to go in a different direction on the Joker's voice," Burnett explains. "So, we recast. It was a hard decision to make, because we really like Tim Curry as an actor, but Mark Hamill filled the bill."

Burnett has nothing but praise for the Batman's voice. "Kevin Conroy is terrific. He does an interesting thing with his voice: As Batman he has an almost harsh, Clint Eastwood resonance, but as Bruce Wayne, his register goes up like an aloof playboy." the producer states. "People can't believe it's the same guy doing the voices."

Among the other regulars, Commissioner Gordon is Bob Hastings, known as Joe Flynn's second banana on McHale's Navy. Lloyd Bochner is weak willed Mayor Hill, "not the strongest leader you've ever seen," and Robert Constanzo is Detective Bullock. Efrem Zimbalist Jr. voices Alfred. Other non-baddie guest voices include Robby Benson, Ed Asner, Dick Gautier, Bud Cort and John Rhys-Davies.

As for villains, "We'll also have Killer Croc, the Scarecrow, Hugo Strange and crime boss Rupert Thornes [voiced by Animal House's John Vernon], our mock-Kingpin who has appeared in several episodes. The joke around the office is that we have everybody but Killer Moth [a lame '50s Bat-villain]." Burnett laughs. "Well, we just haven't come up with a story for him yet!

"Ron Pearlman's great as Clayface. We do several with him--our Clayface outmorphs Terminator 2! We have a great origin and then we do 'Mudslide' where Clayface is disintegrating into an exo-skeleton. It's the third stage of his evolution. I wrote that story, of Clayface trying to save his own life.

Our Clayface is the Matt Hagen ['50s] Clayface, but we included elements from the others. Clayface is an actor used by the mob to set people up. The mob gave him a cream that allows him to change his face's shape. He becomes a problem to the mob, so they stuff the cream down his throat. [A violent act they got on the air by using "a lot of shadows!'] He ODs on it and his body turns to clay."

The series will also introduce new faces: "We've given Joker a girl friend named Harley Quinn. We have a reporter named Summer Gleason, our all-purpose press character, and Officer Montoya, a strong, Hispanic female character. And there's the Ninja, a brand new creation. We have a story where the Ninja comes to Gotham with a vendetta against Bruce.

"In the sequel, Bruce Wayne goes to Japan to fight the Ninja. Batman's summoned there by the man who taught him martial arts. The Ninja has captured one of his students. In that episode, we actually used English subtitles! It was interesting to record that one," he grins.

Batman's car, in the pilot, resembles a rolling shoebox. That design will change. "Paul [Terminator] Winfield builds the Batmobile," he reveals. "He's at a company that's putting out defective cars. He's a whistleblower Batman saves, and Batman tells him, 'I need a car!' We were going to have Batman driving a '40s roadster until he got the Batmobile."

The show will occasionally feature both Batman and Robin. "For the longest time, Warner Bros. wasn't sure if Robin would be in Batman Returns, so we waited. When they finally cut Robin from the movie, we went with Dick Grayson, the one with whom most people are familiar.

"In the series, Robin's 18 years old and goes to Gotham state University, so when we want him in a story, we can bring him in and if we don't, he's 'away at college,'" laughs Burnett. "He's in a third of the stories. We gave Dick Grayson the current [Neal Adams-designed] Robin uniform.

"We're developing a Batgirl story," notes Burnett. "Melissa Gilbert-Brinkman will be Barbara Gordon. We've all introduced her in the show. Like Robin, she's a college student. We haven't done nay stories between Robin and Batgirl yet, but the one we're doing has them at odds."

Batman's faithful butler Alfred will play a major role. "We want to have some moments of lightness and Alfred helps provide that for us," Burnett states. "Next to Batman, Alfred's in the most episodes. He really plays an important part: He's the surrogate father, the one who comments on what the audience is thinking, and he has a wry view of things that's quite amusing.

"Sometimes he sounds a bit like John Gielgud in Arthur, as he's aloof and above it all, with a jaundiced view of things. Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. can turn a phrase so nicely, that you smile listening to comments he makes as Alfred."

Sharp-eared viewers will notice a new Alfred midway through the series. "Efrem is Alfred now, but the first few episodes were done by British actor Clive Revill. He got another job and had to leave, but did such a nice job we didn't feel compelled to [re-dub him]."

Familiar Gotham landmarks like Crime Alley and Arkham Asylum will dot the animated landscape. "We're trying to be faithful!" the producer exclaims. "'Appointment in Crime Alley' explains Leslie Thompkins [Diana Muldaur]. Batman goes to lay roses on the spot where his parents were murdered. Dr. Thompkins [who comforted him after the murders] goes with him every year. That was written by Gerry Conway, based on an O'Neil story.

"We have Arkham Asylum on Gotham City's outskirts," Burnett reveals. "It's where psychotic members of batman's rogues' gallery go. One show begins in Arkham. A doctor goes to a cell door and the inmate says, 'You must listen to me. You've got to get me out of here!' and it's Batman in a straitjacket! That comes from Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, who write science fiction."

Batman will occasionally have brave and bold guests on his missions. "We're trying to develop a story right now with the Creeper," Burnett reveals. "We figure it'll look flashy to have a yellow guy jumping around this Dark Deco City. This morning, we recorded a show starring Zatanna, the magician. Zatanna is Julie [Earth Girls Are Easy] Brown, and Vincent [Batman Returns] Schiavelli is Zatarra, her father."

Burnett, a Cleveland-born USC-grad, began as an NBC intern for Margaret Loesch, then-director of NBC Children's Programming, and her manager, Jean MacCurdy. "Now Loesch is President of Fox Children's Programming, and Jean MacCurdy is my boss here at Warner Bros.," he happily informs. "Both of these women I worked for 15 years ago I'm working for again."

The producer has experience at several studios. "At Hanna-Barbera, I worked as a staff writer. I did Johnny Quest, Super Powers and Super Friends, and I story-edited The Smurfs." He also worked on Martin Short's The Incredibly Mental Adventures of Ed Grimley and wrote for Disney's DuckTales.

On Batman, his tasks include "writing, supervising, and rewriting. I try to help pull the elements together. I even became a Toon on the show," he says incredulously.

Burnett's cartoon self is "a poor shmuck" voiced by Ed Begley Jr. in "The Joker's Favor". "He gets in the Joker's way on the road and thinks he'll be killed, but Joker says 'I'll spare you if you do me a favor one day.' The guy says 'Anything!' Joker says, 'OK, I'll call you when I'm ready!' We cut to the words 'Two years later.' The guy moved out of Gotham, got a new name and has done everything he can to hide. The Joker calls anyway.

"I'm tormented for 20 minutes by the Joker," Burnett chuckles. "I got a big kick out of it. It was amazing how close my [cartoon version] is. After seeing it, I told the other producers, 'Boy, do I have to lose some weight!'"

Besides producing and writing, Burnett will also bring Two-Face to the screen, altering his orign (in lieu of thrown acid, D.A. Harvey Dent is disfigured by a bullet-stricken acid tank), but keeping his scarred visage and bad attitude.

"Two-Face was the first guy I wanted to work on," explains Burnett. "He's so volatile and unpredictable, you can think about him for a long time. You wonder how he flips from one side to another. There's a line I really love where Batman wonders what Two-Face dreams.

"I'm proud of that show because it's the first time that anyone in animation has dealt with a multiple personality. We're doing a different take on the story and because it's Two-Face, we made it a two-parter!

"I was interested in showing his [schizophrenia]. Two-Face makes sense if we understand he was a multiple personality first, and then became Two-Face. His back history [as a guilt-tormented child] came from an example a psychyatrist gave me of the way a split personality can begin. I wrote the story. The script's by staff writer Randy Rogel.

"Harvey Dent is Richard [Night Court] Moll. He has one of the scariest voices in animation. When he first spoke as Two-Face at our recording session, a hush fell over the other actors because it sounded so demonic.

"Two-Face is a tragic horror story of a man losing his soul. Like 'Two-Face,' the 'Mr. Freeze' episode is very sad. For some reason, the sadder the stories, the more I like them. There's a lot of tragedy with Batman.

"I'll tell you something I learned about Batman," Burnett says in a conspiratorial tone. "I always thought he was popular because he was a self-made superhero, but doing this show, I learned what really elevates him to the Hamlet of superheroes is his parents' murders. That's where it all stems from. Every move he makes harks back to that moment, and it's the reason why my staff and I can talk about him for hours.

"Early renditions of their murders in the comics show that he's not sobbing over the bodies, he's glaring at the killer so hard that the killer backs off and runs away. The horror is that his father is trying to get to the killer. It's as if the rest of Bruce Wayne's life is finishing that action."

In his 50-year history, Batman's origin has only been told twice outside the comic. Once in 1989's Batman and earlier, in a special 1985 episode of Super Friends. In "The Fear" (which Burnett wrote), Batman relives his parents' murders. "To this day, I'm not sure how I got that on the air," he admits

"It was written as a pilot for a Batman series, not as part of Super Friends. I went to DC to discuss story ideas, and Paul Levitz said, 'What if the Scarecrow discovered Batman is afraid of Crime Alley?' I thought, 'Wow! That's an interesting idea.' There's no way to tell that story unless you tell about the murders, so I had to tell it obliquely, because I can't show people getting killed on Saturday morning. God forbid!

"I did it by cutting to lightning flashing across the sky during the gunshots. Everybody watching at home has a good idea of what happened, but you don't actually see the murders. That's how I got around it. I enjoyed writing that show," he says. "I tried to push the envelope."

Burnett respects the entire Bat-heritage. "Adam West [STARLOG #114] did Batman's voice on my Super Friends episode, and he was quite wonderful," Burnett states. "He's a very good dramatic actor and had to do scenes where Batman was choking back tears. He pulled it off! He's in an episode of our show, 'Beware the Grey Ghost!'

"The Grey Ghost was Bruce Wayne's favorite TV Superhero as a boy. Now, 20 years later, Batman's investigating a series of bombings and realizes the pattern fits an old Grey Ghost episode. He seeks out the actor who played the Ghost, and they have an adventure together. Adam West plays the actor!"

Batman is more action-packed than any cartoon since Jonny Quest. In the pilot, "On Leather Wings," which features Man-Bat, Batman suffers numerous facial cuts. "That's as bloody as Batman's face will get," Burnett states. "The network started to pull back on the amount of blood, scratches and abrasions we can have. That first episode almost used up our whole quota! Batman will get injured in the series. We have a story where he's blinded, and, in 'Two-Face' we suggest he has broken his leg."

Despite the wall-to-wall thrills, the producer doesn't expect an outcry from parents. "We did a lot of testing with parents and children on the pilot, which has some pretty violent scenes where Batman and Man-Bat both get pretty beat up, and nobody was bothered by it.

"My 10-year-old son Nicholas has helped on Batman by letting me know what he likes in the episodes I've shown him. I've used my children as barometers throughout my animation writing career. It's wise to try and see through their eyes."

He has a unique way of rewarding them. "In every season of animation I've worked, there have been characters named Nicholas, Andrea, and Melanie," he grins. "Usually, if there are kids in the show, I name them after mine. Nicholas is the boy in 'I've got a Batman in my Basement.' Batman's gassed by the Penguin and saved by a 12-year-old-boy."

Batman's greatest foe may be the Broadcast Standards and Practices Department. "Fox's BS&P department is the best I've ever worked with, but they're trying to protect the network from irate parents," Burnett notes. "Nonetheless, we still have arguments . The latest is over the Penguin--they want the cigarette holder out of his mouth!

"I just can't do it--that would be like taking the pipe out of Popeye's mouth! We also had arguments with BS&P over letting Batman and Catwoman kiss. They didn't want them to kiss and we did.

"The biggest battles have been over language. One problem we have to watch out for is when we endanger children on the show. When a character is under 12, we have to look out for child endangerment. Over 12, we can get away with more. We're telling Robin's origin, and he's eight.

"As a child, he goes out to find Tony Zucco, the man who killed his parents, so we had to watch how dangerous the situations we put Robin in were."

Still, it's much easier than Burnett's last superhero assignment. "Let me tell you something," he confides. "When I worked on Super Friends, nobody could throw a punch, even if it didn't connect! We could destroy robots only if they were non-human looking. There were other strange things. It's a wonder to me that an adventure show with any bite to it at all could be done on Saturday morning. The Fox broadcast standards people recognize what we're trying to do with Batman, in trying to make a gritty, realistic, action-adventure show. They've been much more open to ideas than any BS&P department I've ever worked with."

As for Bat-action, "We're allowed a certain leeway in fight scenes, but they don't like punches in the face! We get away with martial arts-type punches, but a real roundhouse punch has been, of late, hard to do--we had a couple early on. Still, we've told the stories we wanted to tell."

Alan Burnett enjoys working in Gotham City. " I tired of The Smurfs after the first year," he admits. "I did a good job, but wearied of them. I am now through 55 shows of Batman and I'm not tired of him at all! Batman is a great character.