The Probably Temporary DC BLog

Support have given me back access to my main DC blog, but I'll be keeping this one around to act as a back-up in case of further shenanigans.

In the mean time, I can be found over here with the same content.

Barbara Gordon in Batman: Caped Crusader is differentiated from many versions of the character in that she works as a public defender, which within the context of the show provides counterpoints to the typically pro-cop kinds of storytelling you'd find in the majority of Batman media.

For example, one episode features Barbara nearly getting into an argument with her father, Commissioner James Gordon, over a young person whom she'd managed to successfully defend in court. Barbara argue that the guy made some bad decisions, but a prison term is a disproportionate response to his actions, while her dad bluntly argues that as the guy broke the law he should serve time for doing so, because that's why laws exist.

The fact that over the course of the first season it is repeatedly shown that both the cops AND the district attorney are both different flavours of corrupt (the cops being willing to break the law for financial gain or for petty grudges, while Harvey Dent is repeatedly shown to let off wealthier defendants with a slap on the wrist, like Selina Kyle, while leaning much harder on people from poorer backgrounds), the show is clearly on Barbara's side in this regard.

In the comics, while Barbara isn't a public defender (lots of alternate versions of her as a cop though), interestingly in the Batman: Murderer storyline, when Bruce is in prison for a crime he didn't commit, she does actually offer to represent him, as she had already done the necessary training and qualifications to do so (whether that's realistic or not with her work schedule is unclear, but that's the fantasy of superhero comics for you).

In the Batman: Caped Crusader episode Nocturne, it featured cameos from several characters who were Robin in the comics, Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Stephanie Brown, and Carrie Keeley from the Dark Knight Returns.

Amusingly, the episode also debuted a fifth person who also wore the Robin costume... Julie Madison (her with the pink outfit).

She first appeared in Detective Comics #31 (September 1939), and has the distinction of being the first reoccurring love interest of Bruce's, although in this capacity she often was there to be in peril, such as being menaced by the Basil Karlo version of Clayface repeated over several issues due to his taking issue with her appearing in the remake of a film he starred in years prior.

It's in this capacity we bring it back around to the issue of Robin, where in her final Golden Age appearance, she actually dressed as Robin as part of a very complicated scheme to capture the villain, in 1941's Detective Comics #49.

Well, that's confusing. After initial reports suggested that Lanterns was being pushed to after Supergirl's movie this summer, not David Zaslav is saying it'll come out early 2026 like it was initially announced?

Via his letter to his shareholders,

"Importantly, with its first theatrical release Superman, DC Studios marked a new era and critical first step on its 10-year journey to deliver fans a fresh and cohesive storyline across film and television, while bringing new heroes and villains to the surface. Building on Superman’s foundation, upcoming DC Studios projects include Lanterns, which will debut on HBO Max in early 2026." "Supergirl and Clayface, which are scheduled for theatrical release in summer and fall 2026, respectively; and Man of Tomorrow, the follow-up to Superman, which James Gunn is currently writing and will again direct. We remain incredibly excited about the momentum at DC Studios and its prospects to re-connect with fans and ignite the next generation of these beloved characters."

Personally I think that having Lanterns go from Spring to Summer, then having the Supergirl movie and finally the Clayface film in the autumn spaces things out while also balancing the various tones so people aren't overloaded with too much at the same time.

In the Batman: Caped Crusader episode Nocturne, Alfred Pennyworth passes the time waiting for Bruce to finish his carnival date by reading the mystery novel Alias The Gray Ghost by Max Grantwell. This is itself a double reference.

The first is that it's a reference to the character the Gray Ghost, a pulp hero character that Bruce Wayne was established as being a fan of as a child in Batman: the Animated Series' episode Beware the Gray Ghost, with details from his show going on to inspire bits of Batman's own career to an extent.

It's from here we start going meta.

The author of the Gray Ghost novel Alfred is reading, is actually a reference to the pen name of several ghost writers on the pulp series the Shadow, Maxwell Grant. This is because the shadow creator, stage magician and author Walter B Gibson, requested to use a pen name while writing the series, to separate his fiction work from the non-fiction work he also wrote.

Thus, the publishers used the name Maxwell Grant at Gibson's request, a name which was a combination of two stage magic dealers Gibson knew: Maxwell Holden and U.F. Grant. The Grant pen name would then be used by four other writers, such as Theodore Tinsley, over the next several decades after Gibson stopped writing for the character.

Why the Shadow connection? Well the character served as one of the big inspirations for Batman when he was first created (to the extent that the first Batman story in 1938's Detective Comics #28 was admittedly plagiarised from a Shadow story by Batman's creators), with the reference of the Gray Ghost's look being more directly based on the pulp character.

So when in Beware the Gray Ghost Batman talks about how the Gray Ghost was an inspiration he means the character was an inspiration in-universe, on a meta level it's an acknowledgement of how the Shadow inspired Batman, AND a reference to how the Gray Ghost's voice actor (Adam West) inspired later generations of Batman fans despite West having allegedly at the time grown jaded by his close association with the role and subsequent typecasting.

In Batman: Caped Crusader, it is somewhat vague when the show is actually based, although the repeated references to new suburbs being built outside of Gotham (and subsequent shift of the middle class out of the city) could be taken as a reference to the construction projects that took place in the US following the Second World War to house both returning veterans and the predicted post-war population boom.

However, according to showrunner Bruce Timm, like with the earlier Batman: the Animated Series show, a deliberate attempt was made to obscure the exact date that the Caped Crusader takes place.

We’re (intentionally) avoiding direct references to ’Real World’ figures and events of the 1940s (World War 2, Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, nuclear weapons, Stalin and the expansion of the Soviet Union, etc) in order to keep the time period somewhat vague. CAPED CRUSADER takes place in a elastic Time Bubble, anywhere from roughly 1939 to 1950.

This would made Caped Crusader (and BTAS) what is called a uchronia, a term that can mean alternate history, but also means a setting that includes disparate elements from multiple time periods to obscure when it actually takes place.

Another famous example of this concept would be the animated show Archer, which while technically being based in the present, was also a parody of 1960s spy fiction stories, such as the James Bond and the Man from UNCLE franchises. Thus leading to the world technically being in the 2000s/2010s while also being a world with Sixties/Seventies fashion and where the Soviet Union still exists.

One of the surprising appearances in the baffling Harley Quinn spin-off Kiteman, Hell Yeah! show (baffling in I'm kind of confused why it exists) is that of the Spoiler, Stephanie Brown, who appears in the premiere to foil a bank robbery by the titular supervillain.

Valestra Associate Skips Town - reference to the mobster Sal Valestra, from the movie Mask of the Phantasm. The associate in this case could refer to either Jack Napier (the Joker in his gangster years, although the picture there doesn't really match his eventual appearance in the season finale) or Andrea Beaumont's father.

Officer Wilkes Suspended - reference to the episode POV, a Rashomon-inspired episode involving Harvey Bullock, Renee Montoya and rookie cop WIlkes getting interviewed by Internal Affairs about a failed drug bust where a drug lord escaped and the $2 million in seed money intended for bait disappeared... Turned out that Wilkes was the one who stole it, which wasn't surprising considering he was the only non-reoccurring character being interviewed.

"Prophet" Exposed As Fraud - reference to the episode Prophecy of Doom, where a conman pretended to be a psychic who could see the future to scam Bruce's rich New Age friends.

Got Bats in Your Basement - reference to the episode I've Got Batman In My Basement, where an incapacitated Batman is protected from the Penguin and his henchmen by a bunch of literal children.

PI Bradley Assaults Judge - Not a reference to BTAS, but to the private detective character Slam Bradley who actually predates even Batman in Detective Comics. Slam was reintroduced to DC prior to the reboot in the comics by the late Darwyn Cooke and Ed Brubaker, with Brubaker going on to be one of the lead writers in Caped Crusader season one.

Stromwell Drug Charges Dropped - Reference to the reoccurring character of Arnold Stromwell, uncle of the murderer of Dick Grayson's parents, who eventually turned himself in to the cops in the excellent episode It's Never Too Late.

Scientist's Daughter Killed in Car Crash - Reference to the fate of robotist Carl Rossum's daughter, which lead to his creating a super-intelligence AI, HARDAC, in the two-parter Heart of Steel. This does not go well.

Nation Wide Bestseller! - A reference to the Scarecrow, that I discuss here.

Lawford to be Tried Separately - reference to Warren Lawford, one of the titular Terrible Trio, a three person gang of wealthy men who took to crime as a form of extreme sport. Notable for actively disgusting Batman more than some of the straight criminals he's dealt with in the show.

Toxic Barge in Gotham Harbour - reference to the episode The Last Laugh, where the Joker uses the toxic fumes coming off of a trash barge to incapacitate most of the city so he could rob it at his leisure.

Boyle Out At Gothcorp - reference to Ferris Boyle and his company, from the episode Heart of Ice. Ferris is directly responsible for the creation of Mr Freeze, what with his kicking Victor Fries into a table of chemicals while trying to unplug his wife from cryogenic life-support. Amusingly, while the tie-in comics did reveal that he DID go to jail for that, he would eventually be murdered on his release by Nora's new husband in attempt to frame Victor and make her cut off any contact with her ex. This doesn't work.

March Gives Bizzare Lecture At Gotham Zoo - Typo! But yeah, Dr March comes from the series premiere On Leather Wings, as the father of Dr Francine Langstrom and father-in-law to Man-Bat Kirk Langstrom. His "bizarre lecture" could be a reference to how in the episode he is used as a red herring, due to his being very pro-bat, to draw attention away from Kirk, the actual person during himself into a literal bat-man.

Thankfully, Jamie Chung, voice actor of Harley Quinn in Batman: Caped Crusader, has confirmed that she is indeed returning for an episode in the second season!

She didn't give any details away about what her episode may be about, besides a comment about Harley's origin that could mean either the version in the comics or the revised one in the show, other than it's one that seemingly doesn't involve the Joker in it potentially.

This is just as well, as out of all the characters in the show, B:CC's Harley has a lot going on that we only caught glimpses of back in the first season.

Such as how her mentor when she was in college was one Dr Jonathan Crane (the Scarecrow in the comics).... Who it was revealed elsewhere in the series as having written a variation on the self-help book How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie. This being relevant in this case due to the book gaining some infamy due to people using the lessons taught in the book to manipulate others, with notably Charles Manson taking courses on the book while in prison for car theft and becoming a cult leader upon his release for one example.

Considering how Harley's revealed tactic in the show is revealed as mentally breaking down powerful abusive men until they're mentally enthralled to her, taken in the context of Crane being her professor and his book, that's implicitly something that she picked up from him in college.

Interestingly, while the 2010 film Megamind is broadly a parody of Superman tropes (Metroman being Clark and Roxanne being Lois, for example), it is kind of hilarious that the Jimmy Olsen analogue, cameraman Hal Stewart, is actually named after two Green Lanterns (Hal Jordan and John Stewart respectively).

n the second season of My Adventures With Superman, the civilian design of Kara Zor-El as she's wandering around Metropolis is based on that of Dragonball Z's Android 18, explicitly so.

Amusingly, both are,

Superpowerful blonde women who were abducted by fascist mechanical people (the cyborg Dr Gero who formerly worked with the Red Ribbon Army crime syndicate/paramilitary organisation vs. the Kryptonian AI Brainiac whose imperial ambitions even outlasted the society that created him).

Turned into weapons of mass-destruction by said mechanical people but ultimately turn on them.

Like Gail Simone's since deleted tweet about how the version of Cass Cain in the Birds of Prey movie saw wasn't the version that the creators of the movie wanted, for example.

A frequent guest character in Batman: Caped Crusader is Lois Lane (voiced by the prolific voice actor Grey Griffin), accompanied by a voiceless Jimmy Olsen.

As I've stated elsewhere, while there are female reporters from the Batman comics even back in the 1940s, having Lois around occasionally is a lot of fun, as she's a character where her talking like someone from the 1940s just kind of fits, you know?

It definitely is played for humour during Lois' appearances in the sadly cancelled DC Super Hero Girls' second incarnation, where despite being a teenage girl working for a high school paper, she still both talks like that AND is also voiced by Grey Griffin (and her Jimmy is also voiceless, although explicitly non-verbal in the show).

Having Lois randomly be in Gotham is additionally amusing, considering how the second season of My Adventures With Superman had a side-plot of Vicki Vale attempting (unsuccessfully) to poach Lois from the Daily Planet for a higher position at her Gotham-based paper instead.

In the Batman: Caped Crusader episode Kiss of the Catwoman, we see that Selina Kyle's address is amusingly a nod to the producer of the 1942 film Cat People.

This being a classic horror film where a Serbian fashion illustrator believes that she's descended from people who can transform into cats, who begins to stalk her husband's female co-workers when she suspects he may be about to have an affair.

With the reoccurring cameo by Lois Lane in Batman: Caped Crusader, her design (but not hair colour) appears to be based on her appearance in the old Fleischer Bros. Superman cartoons from the 1940s.

Will admit that it's kind of funny that Lois is the reoccurring female reporter in this show, considering how there ARE others even in the Batman comics. Heck, occasional Batman love interest Vicki Vale also debuted in this period in Batman #49 (Oct. 1948), for example.