Vintage Interviews with the Makers of the DCAU

[EmaHalJordan]

Hal’s appearance in JLVFF was again more like a fun Easter Egg than planting an actual seed for future stories. Sorry to disappoint you, but if I ever get to do another DCAU JL movie, I’d most likely just bring back John Stewart — and Shayera and J’onn and Wally. I miss those characters, and would dearly love to work with that entire amazing cast again someday.

I would love to see those 7 together again, especially Shayera! But some information on that Hal would be great! Maybe Parallax could be the villain, a crazy Hal Jordan from another earth!
Thanks for the reply @b.t. !

 

[Jinxlover]

I don’t recall any specific TNBA stories, character arcs or long-term plans that we had in mind when the plug got pulled — we just wanted to do MORE.

Hi Mr. Timm, if you can recall, I was wondering, was The Creeper intended to be a main character/hero before TNBA got cancelled? I say this because, in the TNBA original concept art, The Creeper is listed under ''Heroes'' next to Batgirl and Nightwing. He's also on the main line up for the original TNBA/''Gotham Knights'' poster! If he wasn't, I was wondering why he was on there, haha. I hope you don't mind me bumping a rather old thread, thank you for all your hard work! @b.t.

 

[GrantM]

Hi Mr. Timm, if you can recall, I was wondering, was The Creeper intended to be a main character/hero before TNBA got cancelled? I say this because, in the TNBA original concept art, The Creeper is listed under ''Heroes'' next to Batgirl and Nightwing. He's also on the main line up for the original TNBA/''Gotham Knights'' poster! If he wasn't, I was wondering why he was on there, haha. I hope you don't mind me bumping a rather old thread, thank you for all your hard work! @b.t.

The Creeper as a Bat Family ally!?!. Now that would have been interesting to see!

 

[Frontier]

Hi Mr. Timm, if you can recall, I was wondering, was The Creeper intended to be a main character/hero before TNBA got cancelled? I say this because, in the TNBA original concept art, The Creeper is listed under ''Heroes'' next to Batgirl and Nightwing. He's also on the main line up for the original TNBA/''Gotham Knights'' poster! If he wasn't, I was wondering why he was on there, haha. I hope you don't mind me bumping a rather old thread, thank you for all your hard work! @b.t.

Huh. That does make me wonder if Creeper was planned to be in more episodes...

 

[Yojimbo]

Hmm. If I remember right, that piece of art Jinxlover posted was in the Batman Animated book. It was some preliminary logo art Mr. Timm did as a color test I think in the early days of production/pre-production. I didn't think there was anything to the Creeper's temporary inclusion other than to serve as a 5th body in the art to look at colors, staging, etc. because it seemed like they cracked "Beware the Creeper" later into production but with the way they have do it all ahead of time, maybe Timm already knew Creeper was a lock. There are later Gotham Knights logo art where it's the final iteration of just Batman, Nightwing, Batgirl, and Robin. Then of course, the name gets changed to The New Batman Adventures.

But I would suspect Creeper would have showed up again if there were another season. Rich Fogel did come up with a Copperhead idea in that limbo time when they weren't sure if TNBA was going to be renewed or not. Maybe he or someone else had a Creeper idea in mind, too.

 

[Fone Bone]

I used to go to the Batman / Superman Adventures Official Kids WB website all the time. Creeper was always listed with the heroes in the bios.

Edit-
Mods, please merge this double-post. Interesting information that deserves to be seen.

The World's Finest - The New Batman Adventures

Well, look at that.

 

[Stu]

I seem to recall The Creeper was mentioned to be more of a recurring role in Batman: Animated coffee book, but proved to be a difficult nut to crack?

That could just me my memory failing me, however.

 

[Yojimbo]

I seem to recall The Creeper was mentioned to be more of a recurring role in Batman: Animated coffee book, but proved to be a difficult nut to crack?

That could just me my memory failing me, however.

In Batman: Animated, the caption on that Gotham Knights logo art was "We also introduced Steve Ditko's manic comic creation, the Creeper, into the series, though contrary to these Bruce Timm logo illustrations, he did not become a regular part of the Bat-Team" then on page 144 or however they paginated it, they alluded to what we now know was the "Lo, The Ceeper!" unused script for BTAS. "We originally wanted to do the team-up in our first run on Fox, and though several talented writers tried their best, the character never seemed to work at script stage. A few years later the writers and producers spent some time rethinking the Creeper's origin, devising a closer link to the series by making the Joker responsible for Jack Ryder's transformation." Based on the first drafts WF has, those "talented writers" were Gerry Conway, Marv Wolfman, and Michael Reaves.

And also in the Modern Masters Vol. 3 book, Timm said on page 46, "Yeah, the Creeper show just didn't gel that first time around. We went back and forth on it, and a number of writers took a stab at it. It just never got to a point where we all felt happy with it, so we just dropped it."

 

[Ed Nygma]

Well....I’m not really sure if there’s an industry standard for this sort of thing, whether or not it’s entirely appropriate. I spilled the beans on Ms. Manchester in this thread only because she’s not really known as an actor anyway, and the revelation isn’t likely to hurt her career at this late date.

What I can say about the Original Hro Talak actor is that it was one of the biggest professional disappointments of my career. I’d been a huge fan of the actor in question for decades. Andrea and I had tried to get him to come play with us for years and years, but his agent was always “Oh no, he wouldn’t be interested” and then, finally, when we were casting “Starcrossed”, we got lucky and booked him to record all three episodes in one massive session, along with the rest of the cast. Andrea and I (and our co-producers and directors) were thrilled.

We knew pretty early on while recording the first episode that it wasn’t going to work. He underplayed every single line in a calm, quiet voice, barely above a whisper. Andrea tried every trick in her arsenal to try to inject some energy into his performance, but it just wasn’t happening. So, during the break between episodes, we reluctantly made the decision to finish recording the episodes with him, for appearances sake (SAG rules required us to pay him for all three anyway, whether we actually recorded him or not) and have Victor Rivers re-do the Hro Talak lines after we let everyone else go.

(And thank god, Victor was MAGNIFICENT.)

To this day, I don’t know if our Original Talak was just nervous because he wasn’t used to voice acting, or if he was just having an “off” day, or what. In retrospect, it’s also entirely possible that we’d simply miscalculated. We wanted Talak to be a strong, commanding, almost “macho” presence, and the actor in question DOES have an extremely powerful presence on film. But looking back, quite a bit of that power is a physical thing — it’s in his look, his body language, his facial acting — he rarely raises his voice. He doesn’t need to. But in animation work, an actor’s voice is the ONLY tool they have to convey personality and a range of emotion. So, for our purposes, it was just an unfortunately bad fit.

For years, I didn’t want to mention his name in the context of this story, out of professional courtesy. He sadly passed away about a year and a half ago...and I’m still reluctant. Even though he’s gone now. Like tears in rain.

I feel like an idiot but I was assuming you meant a completely different Blade Runner actor... because there was an unfounded rumor this actor had passed away a few years ago and I guess I got it stuck in my head. Not to mention, kind of ignorantly, I also assumed it was this different actor since all of the Hawkpeople voices were by actors of Latin descent. But, not dead, unless you also were under that impression!

My first thought for the Under the Red Hood Joker voice that didn't work out was Bard Dourif, I don't know why. Were this actor and Bruce Greenwood the original cast for the first version of The Killing Joke circa 2009 with the Phil Bourassa designs? I don't know how far it got, I seem to recall this was the time Ed Harris was pursued for Batman and turned it down...

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Makes sense they wanted to use Mister Miracle in an episode. Could have been a build up to the Justice League idea they later dropped.

My understanding is that Mark Evanier pitched a Mr. Miracle story for STAS that didn't happen for whatever reason. Mark ended up using the story in DC's Superman Adventures #42 (Apr. 2000). He then later did a follow up to that story in Superman Adventures #53 (Mar. 2001). Whether that one also started as an episode pitch, I don't know.

Superman Adventures Vol 1 42

"Living (Scott) Free": The synopsis for this issue has not yet been written. Superman Adventures #42 is an issue of the series Superman Adventures (Volume 1) with a cover date of April, 2000. Featured Characters: Superman Mister Miracle (Flashback and main story) Supporting Characters: Oberon...

dc.fandom.com

Superman Adventures Vol 1 53

"The Greatest Escape": The synopsis for this issue has not yet been written. Superman Adventures #53 is an issue of the series Superman Adventures (Volume 1) with a cover date of March, 2001. Featured Characters: Superman Mister Miracle Supporting Characters: Lois Lane Oberon Felix Farnsworth...

dc.fandom.com

I have a question to ask. It says that WB ordered 65 episodes of Superman: The Animated Series, but at the end, the show ended up with 54 episodes. What happened there? I know there was supposed to be another season about Superman regaining the world's trust after he was brainwashed by Darkseid, but I just need to know.

In this interview with Stu Hamilton over at World's Finest, Stan Berkowitz said that they cut Superman's order a bit short to make more Batman episodes after STAS's ratings were lower than expected:

"I'm not letting any cats (or bats) out of the bag by telling you that the Superman staff was assembled in late '95 and early '96 with the expectation that we'd be doing 65 episodes in the course of a year or so. When the first episodes aired in the fall of '96, ratings were lower than expected, and the remaining episodes were scrubbed and replaced by new Batman episodes."

Full interview here: The World's Finest - The New Batman Adventures

But OMG, I’d completely forgotten that Dianne wasn’t our ”first” Poison Ivy! Here’s the scoop: it was a rare instance of one of Andrea’s “Outside The Box” ideas not bearing fruit. Singer Melissa Manchester (“Midnight Blue”, “You Should Hear How She Talks About You”) was Ivy at the initial record. We had been talking about Ivy‘s voice having a “film noir / femme fatale“ quality. Andrea had heard from Ms. Manchester’s agent that she was interested in doing voice acting, and she thought her voice had a sultry quality that fit the “film noir” bill — and we were both fans of her music — and so we gave it a shot. Her voice DID have a lovely, mid-range, “smoky” sound, but acting-wise she just wasn’t quite what we wanted. And Dianne was there, she knocked it out of the park, and Bob’s your uncle.

Thank you SO much for sharing this story, Bruce! When I interviewed Diane Pershing back in 2017, she related the story of her getting cast as Poison Ivy after playing some incidental voices that day. She no longer remembered, or never knew, who she replaced, though. Andrea Romano also didn't recall when I moderated a panel with Diane and several other BTAS actors in 2019, so it's great to finally hear this from you!

I also shared your story with Diane this morning, as I thought she'd get a kick out of it. And yes, this was news to her as well! She said she was "blown away" by this.

For years, I didn’t want to mention his name in the context of this story, out of professional courtesy. He sadly passed away about a year and a half ago...and I’m still reluctant. Even though he’s gone now. Like tears in rain.

Ah, I gotcha. Sorry that casting didn't work out.

I‘m pretty sure I’ve told the “Three Jennifers To Play One Princess” story before. Our first Jennifer came in to play Cetea the Space Princess in an episode of SUPERMAN, but long story short, it didn’t work out. We were lucky to get the amazing Jennifer Jason Leigh to replace Jennifer #1, and she was great. Months later, we needed her to do some ADR and fight walla but she was shooting a movie out of town somewhere and wouldn’t be available before our delivery deadline. At that point, Jennifer Hale came in to re-do a few of Jennifer #2’s lines and all of her oofs and ughs.

And now, Mike Doughty's song "27 Jennifers" is in my head.

From the original BTAS auditions, the only two actors that I can specifically remember out of the dozens and dozens of aspiring Batmans were Sam Jones and Gil Gerard. I thought it was pretty dang cool that we had both Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers trying out for the part.

That IS cool! I also love hearing that Bruce Campbell and Gregory Harrison both auditioned to play Superman at different times. I LOVE learning new DCAU tidbits like this! Thank you for sharing!

 

[Yojimbo]

My understanding is that Mark Evanier pitched a Mr. Miracle story for STAS that didn't happen for whatever reason. Mark ended up using the story in DC's Superman Adventures #42 (Apr. 2000). He then later did a follow up to that story in Superman Adventures #53 (Mar. 2001). Whether that one also started as an episode pitch, I don't know.

Yes, he revealed that in an interview with World's Finest.

I confirmed via email, this part March, with Mr. Evanier that only Superman Adventures #42 was an unused STAS story.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Yes, he revealed that in an interview with World's Finest.

I confirmed via email, this part March, with Mr. Evanier that only Superman Adventures #42 was an unused STAS story.

Thanks. I knew I'd read that in a Mark Evanier interview somewhere, but I couldn't recall where.

 

[Revelator]

Animated Sidekick: Loren Lester is by his hero’s side voicing the animated Robin​

By Kim Howard Johnson (Comics Scene Presents #1: Batman and Other Dark Heroes, January 1995)

As the voice behind the Dark Knight’s animated sidekick on The Adventures of Batman & Robin, Loren Lester is thrilled to have become part of the Batman legend. The actor was cast early on as Robin, even though he didn't become active on the series for quite some time.

“I had to read several times before I finally got the role,” says Lester. “They did a pilot episode, and I didn’t hear from them for a long time. I found out that they weren’t using Robin in the series—it was just going to be Batman. Then, about halfway through the first season, they changed their minds and brought me in!”

Lester admits it was frustrating to be cast as the character, only to find out that Robin wouldn’t be a part of the show. “I was pretty surprised. When I grew up, I was a Batman fanatic. I had a table next to my bed which I called the Batman Stand, and I covered it with Batman toys and comic books. I didn’t understand the concept of Batman without Robin! When the first Batman movie came out, I didn’t understand why they were doing it without Robin. Robin appeared in the comics very early on [Batman’s first appearance was in Detective #27, while Robin was introduced in Detective #38]. He was such an integral part of the story, and I didn’t understand why they had made that choice. But, they did make the choice, and thankfully, they reversed themselves!”

Despite his love of Batman, it didn’t affect Lester's audition. “It didn’t sink in until I actually got the part and I had been doing them for a while,” he says. “I looked around the recording studio one day and said, ‘Wow! I’m Robin!’ I couldn’t believe it!”

Lester didn’t have much trouble molding his voice for the Robin character in his audition. “Robin is a very excitable kind of guy—all of the dialogue since the audition has been the same, too. When I speak excitedly, my voice goes up quite a bit, and my voice sounds younger than I actually am. He’s also very cocky, and the dialogue is written that way, so it’s easy to play that.”

A good rapport with Kevin Conroy, who supplies the voice for Batman, was the key to making the Dynamic Duo come alive.

“Ninety percent of the time we’re in the studio together for a taping,” reveals Loren Lester. “Sometimes Kevin would be shooting a movie and be gone for a few weeks, but most of the time we’re together. I met Kevin during the pilot. He’s a very nice, personable guy who made me feel at home, like I belonged there.”

While he has been in the recording studio with many of the guest villains, Lester notes that some of them tape their performances without other cast members present. “I was in several episodes with Ed Asner, but I never met him, and I never met Adrienne Barbeau, the Catwoman. Alan Rachins, the Clock King, was always there, and so was Paul Williams, who plays the Penguin. Paul is very funny off-mike, and it’s always fun on the days when he’s there—his acting is just terrific! Richard Moll, who is Two-Face, is actually a lot like the character [Bull] he played on Night Court!”

Many of the guest stars look upon a part in Batman & Robin as more than just another voiceover job. “Richard and Paul always enjoyed it very much,” says Lester. “Sometimes we would have a star there who was just there to do a character for one day. They acted like they were in a candy store! It was such a new and different experience for them, like, ‘Wow, I’m doing a Batman cartoon!’ William [Greatest American Hero] Katt was like that. It was pretty funny, because I would say, ‘Yeah, but you do movies and TV,’ and he would say, “Yeah, but it’s really interesting to be doing a cartoon show!’”

Lester also praises Mark Hamill’s characterization of the Joker, while noting that Hamill wasn’t initially cast in the role. “He wasn’t the original Joker. The original pilot was Kevin and me; Efrem Zimbalist wasn’t on the show—it was actually Clive Revill, the British actor, playing Alfred. Tim [Congo] Curry was the original Joker, and he was brilliant. But they weren’t asked back for some reason. The next thing I knew, Mark Hamill was the Joker, and he’s great, too. Mark and Tim Curry are really different, and so are their interpretations.”

Robin was kept in the background for much of the series’ first season. They explained his absence in most of the shows that I wasn’t in by saying that Robin was in college,” says Lester. “In the current Robin comic book, he [the Tim Drake Robin] is a high school student, but in the TV show, they ship him off to Gotham University. So, when he comes to work with Batman, he’s coming in from Gotham University. Now that the show is called The Adventures of Batman & Robin, and I was in all 20 new episodes, he’s not at school anymore. They’ve dropped that whole part of the plot. He lives at Wayne Manor now, and works constantly with Batman.”

Apart from his voiceover roles, Lester has appeared on camera as a hall monitor in Rock and Roll High School, was eaten by devilish pigs in Evilspeak and had a recurring role as Roy, the bakery delivery man on The Facts of Life. He has been doing voiceover acting for 20 years, but the role of Robin is something special. “I was particularly excited to be doing this series, more than any other voiceover job I’ve ever had,” says Lester, noting his previous experience in animation and commercials.

“My voice is heard in literally hundreds of radio and TV commercials all over the country. Right this minute, I’m the voice of Southwestern Bell, and I do a Coca-Cola spot that’s on right now. I played Barbeque on G.I. Joe, so I had a Maine accent. I played Flash Gordon’s son on Defenders of the Earth, and I was one of the New Kids on the Block when they were hot—I played Jordan, because the New Kids were too busy touring to record their voices for the cartoon. I also did a very spooky, strange show, Real Monsters, from the folks who do The Simpsons.”

Lester doesn’t alter his own voice a great deal for Robin. “The Robin voice is definitely higher, so I sound younger. There’s also a self-assured cockiness that comes in because of the way the dialogue is written. I personally don’t go around all day being tough and cynical, but then, I’m not dealing with bad guys all day! When Robin’s dealing with bad guys, this sardonic, sarcastic, cynical thing creeps in that definitely affects my voice!”

The actor admits that there’s undoubtedly some subliminal influence on his performances from Burt Ward, the original TV Robin. “I’m sure there is, somewhere in the back of my mind. How could I forgot about Burt Ward?” he laughs. “I was such a fan of that show. There’s a little bit of Burt in there, even if it is unconscious.”

Lester credits their director for the successful recording sessions for The Adventures of Batman & Robin. “We have a wonderful [recording] director, Andrea Romano, who is the perfect combination of two things,” he says. “She makes each session a fun, pleasurable experience, but she’s all business, too. She knows exactly what she wants in the script, and knows exactly how to get it out of the actors. Sometimes sessions are a big waste of time, because people either don’t know what they’re doing, or they just waste a lot of time. Andrea doesn’t waste time, and she’s a real pleasure to work with.”

A normal Batman & Robin recording session finds the actors all separated. “We go into the session and sit between two soundproof walls. It’s the only show I’ve ever done this way. You actually don’t see the actors you’re working with. Many times, at other studios, you stand at music stands and you’re all in the same room; you can see the other person as they’re delivering their lines. In this show, we talk about being race horses inside our chutes. We can’t see each other, but of course, we all wear our headphones and hear what everybody else is doing.

“At a typical session, we read a script through, and then Andrea explains what the animation would look like, when we’re screaming. All the script might say is ‘Aahhh!’ She tells us, ‘You just fell off the building.’ So, we would know to make the ‘I’m falling off the building’ sound. Then, when we’re done doing the read-through, we’ll sit down at our microphones and record the show in order, skipping any lines of people who aren’t there.

As in almost all animation, the voices are done prior to the drawings. “Each session normally takes about two to three hours,” he says. “Then, they ship off the voice track overseas, and it comes back months later in a rough version. Very often, what we originally recorded doesn’t quite work with the animation that they’ve made. For example, they might have originally conceived of a scene as one of the characters shouting, and when the animation comes back, the character is standing right next to the person he’s shouting at—it just doesn’t work! So, we go back in to do what we call ADR—additional dialogue recording—to replace that.”

Lester jokes that his favorite scripts are “the ones that feature Robin. I like when Robin becomes an integral part of the story, and offers his own ideas or solutions to problems. Very often, some of the scripts will have Robin saying, ‘What are we going to do, Batman?’ ‘What does this mean?’ ‘I don’t get it!’ That gets a little tedious after a while. My personal favorite episode is the one with the Riddler. where we’re put into a maze—Robin is actively trying to solve the puzzle, because he has played this game before on his computer and knows the solutions to some of the questions. I enjoyed that—I got to save Batman a couple of times in that one, so it was fun!

Batman Forever brings Robin into the current series of Batman films, but Lester admits he hasn’t seen any clips of Chris O’Donnell as Robin. “All I’ve seen are posters. They have him in a costume that I’ve never seen. I've seen all the different faces of Robin, the different names and looks that Robin has had, and this one is completely different. It’s just like the Tim Burton Batman is totally different—he’s unlike anything that you see in any of the comics. Needless to say, I was not asked to read for it—they don't know I exist!”

The actor is currently waiting to hear whether new episodes will be shot, and is encouraging fans to write to Fox to ask for more shows. The fan-turned-pro also notes proudly that he still has all of his childhood Batman toys. “I have everything. I have a Batman puppet and a Batman lunchbox and a Batman utility belt with a climbing rope and a gun and Batcuffs! I went to a toy convention recently and found out what that’s worth. I suppose I could sell it all and make a lot of money, but I just couldn’t part with any of it!”

Loren Lester admits it’s pretty amazing to have Batman and Robin back in his adult life. “All of these toys take on a new meaning now that I’m doing Robin. If you had told me when I was a kid collecting that stuff that one day I would be playing Robin, I would have probably fainted or something!”

 

[Ed Nygma]

My understanding is that Mark Evanier pitched a Mr. Miracle story for STAS that didn't happen for whatever reason. Mark ended up using the story in DC's Superman Adventures #42 (Apr. 2000). He then later did a follow up to that story in Superman Adventures #53 (Mar. 2001). Whether that one also started as an episode pitch, I don't know.

Superman Adventures Vol 1 42

"Living (Scott) Free": The synopsis for this issue has not yet been written. Superman Adventures #42 is an issue of the series Superman Adventures (Volume 1) with a cover date of April, 2000. Featured Characters: Superman Mister Miracle (Flashback and main story) Supporting Characters: Oberon...

dc.fandom.com

Superman Adventures Vol 1 53

"The Greatest Escape": The synopsis for this issue has not yet been written. Superman Adventures #53 is an issue of the series Superman Adventures (Volume 1) with a cover date of March, 2001. Featured Characters: Superman Mister Miracle Supporting Characters: Lois Lane Oberon Felix Farnsworth...

dc.fandom.com

In this interview with Stu Hamilton over at World's Finest, Stan Berkowitz said that they cut Superman's order a bit short to make more Batman episodes after STAS's ratings were lower than expected:

"I'm not letting any cats (or bats) out of the bag by telling you that the Superman staff was assembled in late '95 and early '96 with the expectation that we'd be doing 65 episodes in the course of a year or so. When the first episodes aired in the fall of '96, ratings were lower than expected, and the remaining episodes were scrubbed and replaced by new Batman episodes."

Full interview here: The World's Finest - The New Batman Adventures

That's sad that the ratings for Superman were not all that right out of the gate; I remember really liking season 1 and thought it was never better than then. What I'm not getting though, and the interview isn't quite clarifying, is did the only do TNBA at all to fill the 11-13 episode order; and how do we go from that to only 24 episodes of Batman if so. Might as well have just done the extra 13 of Superman anyway and gone for broke (or one more batch of 26 Batman to get to 52), they held Legacy pt 1-2 until 2000 so it was like a fourth season without the new episodes, anyway...

Of course, what really doesn't make sense is why they only did 52 of Beyond instead of 65 since the ratings were, I seem to recall, pretty great right out of the gate... I wish we had at least gotten more of TNBA if there was no getting more of Superman in any scenario, that one makes the least sense of all the scenarios since they went to the trouble of redesigning and bringing it back for such a truncated run. Ironically TNBA got more mileage than even BTAS with the adventures comic running another 6 years after it ended, and countless merchandise/DTVs/books spinning off from that one for years and years and years.

 

[Frontier]

That's sad that the ratings for Superman were not all that right out of the gate; I remember really liking season 1 and thought it was never better than then. What I'm not getting though, and the interview isn't quite clarifying, is did the only do TNBA at all to fill the 11-13 episode order; and how do we go from that to only 24 episodes of Batman if so. Might as well have just done the extra 13 of Superman anyway and gone for broke (or one more batch of 26 Batman to get to 52), they held Legacy pt 1-2 until 2000 so it was like a fourth season without the new episodes, anyway...

Of course, what really doesn't make sense is why they only did 52 of Beyond instead of 65 since the ratings were, I seem to recall, pretty great right out of the gate... I wish we had at least gotten more of TNBA if there was no getting more of Superman in any scenario, that one makes the least sense of all the scenarios since they went to the trouble of redesigning and bringing it back for such a truncated run. Ironically TNBA got more mileage than even BTAS with the adventures comic running another 6 years after it ended, and countless merchandise/DTVs/books spinning off from that one for years and years and years.

If I remember right Will Friedle said they ended it because they felt they had told all the stories they wanted to tell and wanted to move on to the next thing.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Of course, what really doesn't make sense is why they only did 52 of Beyond instead of 65 since the ratings were, I seem to recall, pretty great right out of the gate...

If I remember right Will Friedle said they ended it because they felt they had told all the stories they wanted to tell and wanted to move on to the next thing.

Plus by that point, they didn't need a full 65 episodes as the magic number for syndication any longer. 52 was fine. So why pay for and make another 13 episodes if you don't need them?

 

[Revelator]

Quin-tessential: Arleen Sorkin gets a kick out of being Harley Quinn, the Joker’s “Hench Wench.”​

By Pat Jankiewicz (Comics Scene Presents #1: Batman and Other Dark Heroes, January 1995)

She looks normal. Sitting in a trendy Hollywood café, she comes across as a witty, spunky, sweet, wise-cracking blonde who has spent some quality time in front of television and film cameras. What the other patrons of this café don’t know is that Arleen Sorkin has a criminal past.

As Harley Quinn, Sorkin has played the Joker’s put-upon girlfriend, a psychotic clown (and former psychiatrist) on Batman: The Animated Series. With her bone-white skin, dazed Judy Holliday-voice, one-sided love for the Joker and odd quips like, “It is too laugh,” Harley Quinn has become one of the series’ most beloved characters.

“I see Harley as a girl who wants to do the right thing, but it’s just not within her control,” Sorkin observes. “She wants to be a good girl but it’s so much more her to be a bad one. I think she’s popular because of her vulnerability.”

The actress landed the role in an unusual way. “I slept with Paul Dini,” she jokes. “Actually, Paul and I have been friends since college—back at Emerson. He was home one day watching Days of Our Lives [a soap on which Sorkin appeared]. We did a dream sequence where I was a court jester and he said that was the inspiration for Harley. Paul called me up and said, ‘Would you like to do this character?’ I said yes and came over! I was born to play her.”

One wonders how the performer felt about having a character tailor-made for her. “It’s completely flattering,” Sorkin says fondly. “Knowing that makes it a joyful experience to play her. I don’t feel I'll ever be recast, so that's good too.”

Sorkin sees several similarities between Harley and herself: “Her naturally blonde hair is certainly not me! Her occasional use of the word ‘Oy!’ is very much me, that fantastic figure is also me, as is her joie de vie and those high, pointy breasts!

“I love the name Harleen so much, that if I had to do it over again, I would have made my name Harleen instead of Arleen, It’s a great name!

“Doing Batman has been terrific. When we talk. I know Paul’s not really listening to me—he’s filing; filing away ideas while I’m talking to him!”

She has nothing but praise for her “Mr. J.” “Mark Hamill is a great guy. My ex-boyfriend, Charlie Wessler, worked with Mark on Star Wars. Mark, Charlie and Carrie Fisher are all friends, so when I walked in and saw Mark, I knew him from parties! When I saw him do the Joker, I was wildly impressed. He's an amazing talent, there’s nothing he can’t do. He also has a great comic sense.

“The joke of it is, I would be so engrossed watching him do the Joker that I would forget to pick up my line! Mark stands up so you can see him and I would be watching him, then it’s like, ‘Oh, my turn.’ He’s just so interesting to watch when he’s playing the Joker.”

She found Kevin Conroy (Batman/Bruce Wayne) to be “a very nice man. I don’t have any personal relationship with him, but I like him very much. I think his underplaying of the role is brilliant.”

Of all her episodes, Sorkin points to two all-time favorites. “My first is ‘Harley and Ivy.’ I love it because there’s a great relationship between Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy. Anybody who has ever had a girlfriend obsessed with some guy and you just wanted to tell her to ‘get over yourself’ can relate.

“I also love all her stuff pertaining to the Joker. I thought it was cute when Harley did the drawing of the Joker’s face in her salad. I also liked working with Diane Pershing [who voices Poison Ivy] very much.

“‘Harley's Holiday,’ where Harley gets out of prison, is my other favorite. I suggested that one to Paul. When I was on [the Fox TV series] Duet, my character was a thief. I thought it would be a funny running gag if she wore outfits with the security tags still on them. They didn’t take the idea so I brought it to Paul; the idea of having Harley walk out of a store wearing a dress with the tag still on. The security thing goes off and she’s worried she’ll go back to prison.”

Sorkin remembers “The Laughing Fish” episode “because that’s where I threw Batman in the shark tank. I got a lot of pleasure doing that,” she grins. “It made me feel tough!”

In “The Man Who Killed Batman,” Harley Quinn and the Joker eulogize the Dark Knight in an unusual way. “That was the episode in which I got to play ‘Amazing Grace’ on the kazoo. I practiced it in the car on the way to the studio,” Sorkin notes. “I remember during taping it was hard not to laugh, but I did it in one take. The minute it was over, I burst out laughing. It was hysterical just to be able to whimper through a kazoo! I can now put ‘Kazoo’ under special skills on my resume,” she jokes.

“Almost Got ’Im,” where Harley is going to drop Catwoman into a catfood meat grinder, “was an episode that I thought had really great writing, It was also very funny.”

In “Lock-Up,” Sorkin only had a cameo. “Not enough material!” she smiles. “I love the confession in ‘Trial’,” the show where criminals put Batman on trial for ‘crimes’ against them. “I really enjoyed my breaking down on the stand!”

“Harlequinade,” in which Batman and Harley Quinn form a reluctant truce to capture the Joker, “is another favorite because I got to sing,” she states. “We were going to a recording and I was singing in front of Paul. It’s an actual song called ‘Say That We’re Sweethearts Again,’ from Meet the People, an old MGM movie.

“I used to use it as an audition song back in New York and I knew Paul would think it was funny, so I sang it to him. That’s when Paul decided to use the song—most people think he wrote it because nobody had ever heard of it before! I have it in my jukebox.

“It’s a song about a woman who’ll put up with anything in an abusive relationship. ‘I never knew that our romance was over until you poisoned my food,’” Sorkin sings. “‘I thought it was a lark when you kicked me in the heart, but now I think it's rude!’ It’s a really funny song from 1930. Paul made it happen—he bought the song!”

According to Dini, “It took a year before I found a graceful way to get that song on the show. I finally thought, ‘Harley has to provide a distraction, how about we have her sing and just put the song in?’ It’s the one musical number we’ll ever do on Batman!”

Sorkin feels that Harley Quinn’s giant cult following “is more a credit to Paul than to me. Harley is totally Paul Dini & Bruce Timm’s invention. Other than a few ideas from me, it’s all them. I’m just an animal in a glass booth. They make it happen, they create it.

“It’s really fun. Not that many people know or even recognize that it’s my voice,” she admits. “I’m working on Pride and Joy, a good, fun show, and I wore the jacket—Paul gave me a jacket with Harley on the back—and this guy was going nuts over it.

“When I told him that I was Harley’s voice, he was delighted. I guess the credits go by so fast, you don’t know who does the voices. He was just so impressed. The fact that I’m producing a TV series meant nothing to him, but the fact that I had actually voiced Harley Quinn made me a goddess!”

Some fans view Harley as a hip take-off on the molls seen in TV’s Batman. “I used to watch the Adam West series and I really liked it, but I would say Harley is more inspired by the molls in old James Cagney movies and Guys & Dolls’ Adelaide."

Before Batman, Sorkin’s first animation job came when “Paul hired my then-writing partner Beth Milstein and I to write two episodes of Tiny Toons Adventures. My first animated voice work was Harley. It was great fun because so much of my acting work has been built around my hair, my earrings, my hats and costumes. On Batman, I could come in looking like a total dog,” she giggles. “It was really a treat! I like to say, ‘What I’ve lacked in talent, I made up for in accessories!’ Harley was the one job where I didn’t have to rely on that at all.”

The daughter of a dentist, the Washington, D.C.-born Sorkin debuted onstage very young. One of her first gigs came “when I danced as an elf with the New York City Ballet in A Midsummer’s Night Dream. I fainted at my Bat Mitzvah, so I got out of show business soon after that,” she laughs.

“During my senior year in college, the head of the Theater Department told me, ‘Go to New York, give it six months to two years, and if it doesn’t work out, then you should teach.’ He was probably going to every person in the room and saying the same thing, but I took it as,” she lets out a melodramatic sigh, “‘He sees something in me!’ I went to New York and started with a comedy group called ‘The High Heeled Women.’

“We had a lot of success and I did a lot of commercials and radio spots. In New York, I was an extra. Because I was also a shoe model , I had these gold lame boots. Anytime they needed a hooker, they would call me because I had those boots! I was a hooker in movies like Fort Apache: The Bronx,” she says demurely. “You’ve seen me leaning into cars in numerous films!

“I’m also in Trading Places with one line. [Director] John Landis has been a big supporter. I got the line in a weird way—I was an extra with a lot of cleavage. John came by, took a look and said, ‘We’ve gotta do something with that cleavage!’ He built a whole moment around me and my very large, pushed-up breasts,” she smiles. “Way before the Wonderbra, I knew how to work it!”

Batman isn’t the only genre hero with whom she has partnered. “I was married to Q,” she explains, “I guess that makes me ‘Harley Q!’ John de Lancie was my husband on Days of Our Lives. We had many blissful years of marriage together and we’re still very good friends. I have a great story about John.

“We were the misfits on Days of Our Lives, but he was even worse than me! On his last day, he was leaving the show and wanted to go see ALIENS. John said, ‘We have some time between the first camera block and dress rehearsal , let's go to a movie.’ I didn’t want to go, but it was his last day and I wanted him to be happy.

“The real reason John wanted to go,” Sorkin playfully reveals, “was that on Hollywood Boulevard, it was only a dollar if you went before noon! So, we go running to the theater. We watch almost the whole movie and ALIENS has like 10 endings! My heart is pounding, but after the second ending, I said, ‘John, we have to go.’ He would not leave, so I got mad at him and said, ‘I’m going to the back of the theater and you better come because we’re gonna be late for work and you’re gonna get me fired!’

“I ran to the back of the theater and I’m waiting and watching, thinking he’ll follow me, and he doesn’t come,” the actress laughs, “I can’t take my eyes off the screen because it’s so compelling, so I walk back and finally sit behind him, Another ending goes by and just before the climax, I put my hand on his shoulder and loudly say, ‘JOHN, WE HAVE TO…’ and it wasn’t John! It was some poor man, sitting all by himself. When I grabbed him, he stood up and screamed; I scared the sh*t out of him!”

John de Lancie’s Next Generation work reminds Sorkin of her childhood. “When I was little, I loved the original Star Trek, especially Susan Oliver in ‘The Menagerie.’ She was so cool in that. I always wanted to have someone say, ‘Arleen Sorkin: No mortal man can resist her.’ When I started Days of Our Lives, somebody wrote TV Guide and asked if I was her daughter! It was the most exciting day of my life; someone actually thought I even looked like Susan Oliver!”

Her future looks busy. Besides producing Pride and Joy, she’s even more happy with her latest project. “I just had a beautiful son, Eli Jonathan Lloyd,” Arleen Sorkin says proudly. “I’m completely relying on Paul to introduce him to the world of animation. I’ve decided that I’m gonna start him on black-and-white Mickey Mouse cartoons!”

 

[Raider969]

Great interviews again. I look forward to reading more.

 

[Revelator]

Thanks! I've got a few more pieces in the tank and they'll appear each Thursday.

 

[Revelator]

Mad Loves: Writer/Producer Paul Dini helped add animated evil to Catwoman, Poison Ivy & Harley Quinn​

By Pat Jankiewicz (Comics Scene Presents #1: Batman and Other Dark Heroes, January 1995)

Batman: The Animated Series boasts some of the most unique females on television. While some other shows feature weak-willed women in need of protection, Batman features a vast array of assertive and unusual women, ranging from the noble Batgirl and self-reliant Poison Ivy to the dependent, deranged Harley Quinn.

“They’re interesting characters to me,” writer/producer Paul Dini observes. “For example, I think a villainess’ needs are different than those of a villain. They want to prove different things—perhaps to themselves and to the world. The female characters in Batman are all rather strong and they don’t listen to anybody as far as telling them how to accomplish their goals.”

By far, the show’s breakaway female character has been Harley Quinn, the Joker’s mad lover. Harley is probably the most dysfunctional character to ever appear in a cartoon. “She has an interesting origin,” Dini states. “I had a birthday party several years ago and my pal Steve Dunnington couldn’t make it, so he sent a stripper, unaware that people had kids and babies there.

“A gal dressed as a policewoman says she’s there to ‘read me my rights.’ She handcuffs me to a chair and proceeds to undress while I’m watching my boss, [animation producer] Tom Ruegger, usher his little ones out! She was really sassy and funny and it was such an embarrassing moment, I thought, ‘I really gotta use this somewhere!’

“When I was writing ‘Joker’s Favor,’ I wanted someone to attack Commissioner Gordon at this banquet and I remembered the ‘policewoman.’ Naturally, I didn’t have her undress, but I decided the last thing you would suspect is a policewoman. Using her meant the Joker has a girl working for him; the only other option was putting the Joker in drag, which would have destroyed the moment.

“I began to wonder, ‘What kind of girl would work with him?’ She would be messed up, which makes her automatically more interesting. What’s her story? It’s also kind of like the ’60s Batman TV show, where each of the guys had a henchgirl. I thought we could do a little bit more with her.”

Dini also recalled a Days of Our Lives fantasy sequence starring his friend Arleen Sorkin. “She was in a two~tone Pied Piper outfit, white face and a little jester cap. I said, ‘That’s really cute; I must use that!’ When I thought of Harley, I remembered Arleen's clown and said, ‘Maybe something like that…’

“I came up with this ‘Harley Quinn’ character and [fellow producer/designer] Bruce Timm did this really nice clown-like design for her. We also gave her good lines. Some of her lines parody the ’60s show. When Batman nails her, Harley says, ‘I know—you’re thinking, “What a poor, innocent creature led astray by bad companions,” which is what Adam West always used to say. But while she says this, Harley is grabbing for a knife. Little things like that made her special.

“Also, adding little wisecracks is very much the way Arleen talks. We’re close friends and she’s the queen of wisecracks. I added a lot of wisecracks I picked up from Arleen. When we were thinking, ‘Who are we gonna cast?’ I thought, ‘Why not Arleen?’ She’s a comedic actress and did a great job.”

He enjoyed modeling Harley after a real person. “The fact that she’s a friend made it easier to write,” Dini states. “It was also fun. When we see her without makeup, she gradually began to look a little more like Arleen. Bruce began to draw with models of her out of costume and, whether consciously or unconsciously, he began using little elements of Arleen.

“Sometimes Arleen will tell a story and I’ll remember little things and file them away. She told me this great story about her and Dana Delany at the San Diego Zoo, sassing a guy on the tour bus, so I’ll be using that someplace.”

He also found that the character was independent. “We realized we couldn’t put her in every Joker story, so we dropped her out of a few on purpose; you don’t want to water down the Joker either. We said, ‘Let’s see if she’s strong enough to carry one on her own.’ That’s why we did a couple with just her in the spotlight.”

If Harley is weak, her polar opposite, Poison Ivy, is strong. The comic book character was re-developed for the series into a brilliant, willful ecoterrorist.

“Poison Ivy is pretty self-motivated; there’s what she wants and the rest of the world doesn’t really matter,” the writer explains. “It’s her aims and her goals—if she wants to steal something, she’ll steal it. If she wants to terrorize people for cutting down a forest, she’ll do it. She’s not one who takes ‘No’ for an answer.

“In the episode where she wants a family, she wants one that loves and dotes on her the way her plants do, so she just creates a family out of her plants. That’s kind of sick,” he concedes, “but it’s also understandable and logical, given what her character’s about. With her twisted nature and what she wants out of life, that makes more sense to me than if Poison Ivy were off stealing a lot of money just for the sake of stealing.

“You can treat her like your basic criminal type, but why not try to broaden the character a little bit? Look at what Ivy’s motivation is. She’s sterile. In a story Denny O’Neil wrote called ‘The Poison Tomorrow,’ Poison Ivy tells somebody she can’t have kids. I liked that; she’s this sort of evil Earth Mother-type character, a demented Queen of the May.

“On the other hand, if her body is set up to kill any outside infection that comes into it, she can’t get pregnant, so I think of Ivy as tragic. That was the motivation for ‘House and Garden’; she wanted a family and her only way of doing it was to create one for herself out of the means she uses by mixing around DNA and plant material. To me, that’s a good motivation.”

Dini teamed the two characters together in “Harley and Ivy.” “It works because they’re a contrast—the hardass and the idiot,” he explains. “Ivy is the one who must keep them focused on their goals and stick with their plans, while Harley is the space cadet. She’s more prone to wander off.

“They’re friends because no one else will have them, so they’re sort of thrown together. They’re also a good contrast. Despite everything that happens to them, they actually do like each other. They also work well as solo characters.”

One of Dini’s favorite solo episodes was “Harley’s Holiday.” “It’s the wackiest Batman we’ve intentionally done. I think that episode is as light as we could play those characters and still keep their integrity. Even then, it may have crossed the line. Batman is pretty much of a Boy Scout in it, trying to keep Harley from getting into too much trouble.

“That episode was our attempt to do a screwball comedy. I think we pulled it off; Harley’s personality carries it. [Director] Kevin Altieri and I plotted out much of the episode thinking, ‘How much stuff can we load into a half hour?’ Kevin is the Cecil B. DeMille of cartoons,” the writer notes. “He’s like, ‘Tanks! If we have a tank, we’ve got to have helicopters and fighters!’ ‘No, Kevin, just the tank! Be lucky you got that!’

“‘Harley's Holiday’ was partially in response to Fox's request that we lighten up the show a little bit. They said, ‘We would like Robin in every episode and we would like the shows to be a little less on the dark and gritty side.’ Naturally the way to do that, rather than make Batman a funny character, is to put in characters who are funny and can carry the action around them, which is what we did. We didn’t want to make Batman himself silly,” Dini says.

“Catwoman is a very strong character,” Dini says. “At one point, we talked about doing Batman-related spin-offs; a Catwoman series or a Robin series. I don’t think those are going to happen at the moment. Catwoman is so strong, she could work without Batman. Bruce and I came up with a really good development for her. We take her out of Gotham City and treat her like an adventurer.”

In the proposed series, Catwoman is a freelance thief/adventurer. “That makes her a deadly seductress. In a Catwoman series, we could really open her up and make her everything we didn’t have a chance to make her on the show. Catwoman is really interesting and we would have been able to do much more with her. There was talk of both Robin and Catwoman shows, but the one we really wanted to do was Catwoman.

“I wrote only one, really strong Catwoman story, but I like it a lot. It’s called ‘Catwalk’ and in it, she’s still trying to be good as Selina Kyle and it’s really taking a toll on her. She’s at a party with Bruce Wayne and she mouths off to the hostess, she’s mean to Bruce and just walks out because she feels very confined by the fact that she can’t be Catwoman anymore. She made a deal with the judge; she can’t wear the suit or prowl around at night, so it really gets to her.

“When Scarface says, ‘I got a little job and there’s no risk of you being caught,’ she does it. There’s some really terrific animation in that episode. When Scarface offers her the deal, I don’t know how they did it , but they got every emotion in her face. She does not say a word, she just thinks about it. but you know in her heart she’s saying ‘Yes.’ She goes back to being Catwoman for this one job and it’s a set-up.”

Dini and Timm re-teamed for another superhero project, the forthcoming Freakazoid. “What happened with that was, Steven Spielberg wanted to do a show in the Batman mode. Steven had seen Batman, liked it and was interested in doing an action/adventure show like it. We came up with a number of concepts, like a period piece/Indiana Jones-styled development, a couple of space stories, some futuristic Blade Runner-type stories and one that was a contemporary teen adventure built around a young superhero.

“The concept was, ‘If you were a shy kid in high school, what would happen if you could suddenly turn into this super-powered, manic, crazy adult?’ We came up with something that was in the mode of the early Stan Lee/Steve Ditko Spider-Man stories. This shy, quiet kid really likes being a shy, quiet kid but now he turns into something that’s a cross between the Joker and the Hulk, a super-powered , raving madman—who fights for good.

“We don't really know why he’s fighting for good, he just is. Freakazoid is an outrageous, uncontrollable character, everything the teenager is not and in a more adult body. That was the original concept and we were handling it as a superhero show. But Steven found he liked the basic idea, but really wanted to see more comedy.

“After we wrote a couple more scripts, he said, ‘Not bad, but still not there yet.’ I think he was really looking for Animaniacs in tights. Short cartoons, a lot of jokes, with a lot of craziness going on. He wanted it looser, funnier and hipper and wanted it to break all bounds of reality. That’s what Freakazoid is now. Bruce and I are not producing.

“It was an action/adventure show that mutated into this comedy. At this point, it has changed considerably from what Bruce and I intended. I’m going to write a couple of episodes to help out. After that, there's talk we’ll do Superman next, which I would like to do.”

The writer is also penning this year’s Batman Adventures annual, to be drawn by Timm.

“We’re doing a Ra’s Al Ghul story because he’s an interesting character. He has been alive for 600 years, so you would figure he has met other characters in the DC Universe. Let’s just tell a story from his past.

“It involves a meeting in Ra’s’ past with Jason Blood and the Demon. Batman’s in it , but it involves a mystical battle over the centuries between Ra’s and Jason Blood over a mystic tablet that Ra’s wants but Jason tries to keep from him. It culminates in Gotham City during the present day as Batman, Blood and the Demon take on Ra’s for this magic tablet.”

Dini was pleased by the reaction to their first graphic novel, the acclaimed Mad Love. “I was very happy and surprised. It was better than Bruce and I hoped for! I worked on it so closely that when people tell me, ‘I really like this or that line,’ I think, ‘Oh God, I stayed up until 2 a.m. to come up with that!’

“The other thing is, how do top it? I don’t think I can,” he admits. “I can write other interesting stories that are fun, but Mad Love seemed to have this core rooted in real obsessive, psychotic emotion and that’s what carried it off and made people interested.

“It's fabulous to look at. Bruce pulls off action scenes better than anybody, but he really pulls off dramatic sequences. Another artist would say, ‘I have to draw the boring stuff. I’ll just crap it out because I don’t want to draw straight talking,’ but Bruce really got into the psychoanalyzing scenes between Harley and Joker. He played them superbly.”

The Dark Knight’s animated influence has led to further superhero shows. One, Ben Edlund’s The Tick, affectionately pokes fun at various heroes. Batman is spoofed by Die Fledermaus, a pointy-eared hero who talks like Kevin Conroy (voice of the animated Batman) and likes to strike poses more than criminals. “I thought Die Fledermaus was funny,” Dini says.

“Their show is clever and fun. I think The Tick is more a superhero genre parody with a Batman character than a deliberate parody of our show. If they wanted to parody us, they would have to do it visually as well. It’s clever and fun.

“Spider-Man is a good attempt to translate the comic to the screen. That’s obviously what they set out to do; they looked at the comic and took it no further than that. As a casual observer and lifelong Spider-Man fan, I would have liked to see them take more chances with Spider-Man. It’s easy to play armchair producer, but I watched the first couple of episodes with the spiderslayer robots and thought, ‘Their focus is on the big robots, not Parker and his relationship with his aunt or the other characters.’

“I’m not sure Spider-Man talking all the time is a good thing. To make Batman effective, we keep him silent and kind of dangerous. I would like to see Spider-Man a little more like that. I know the show's a big hit and some episodes look great. The Lizard episode played really well and reminded me of ‘On Leather Wings’ [the Batman pilot] in more than one way.

As for the future, “I’m writing a Harley and Ivy comic book mini-series. Bruce will draw it and we plotted out the stories together. It’s three fun issues of the girls off on their own causing trouble! There’s a vague through-line in all of them, but they’re really three separate adventures.

“We liked the ‘Harley and Ivy’ episode and thought, ‘Hey, we can easily bring these characters back and we don’t need Batman to be a big part of it.’ It’s just going to be these two gal pals having fun and fighting with each other, messing around. I just finished the first issue of Harley and Ivy and sent it in to DC yesterday. Bruce read it and said he can’t wait to start drawing it. It’s gonna be great,” Paul Dini smiles mischievously. “The girls take a two-page shower!”