Yes, I said "naked Catwoman." COME AND GET ME, GOOGLE SEARCH USERS.
Following up from yesterday…the picture I was trying to pull out of my memory, rather than digging out the magazine and refreshing my recollection, was this one, provided by an anonymous commentator. I had a few details incorrect, such as there not being Harley Quinn in lingerie, but rather a naked Catwoman (bet you’re clicking through now!). The specific animation “no-nos” illustrated in the drawing (also listed by Jarrett in yesterday’s comments) are as follows:
1. Guns
2. Drugs
3. Breaking glass
4. Alcohol
5. Smoking
6. Nudity
7. Child Endangerment
8. Religion
9. Strangulation
Now there are guns all over the place in Batman: The Animated Series, but the drawing shows a gun putting a Fearless Fosdick-esque hole right through the Caped Crusader, so maybe the guns were okay in the cartoon so long as no one was shown getting hit. Of course, there was that episode I was discussing last time where Gordon was shot during a police raid, but it’s not like we saw it onscreen. I think I saw a clip of an interview with Bruce Timm or Paul Dini talking about this particular episode and how they were somewhat surprised they were allowed to get away with it.
Drugs and breaking glass…weren’t there references to “drug busts” in this series? Obviously, that’s different from the intent of this particular ban (represented by a hypodermic needle in the Timm drawing). And I could have sworn there was some glass broken at some point, though that may just be me filling in details in my head rather than recalling any actual events in the show.
And religion…characters on the show sure did say “my God” or “oh my God” a lot, which always kind of surprised me, since I thought even a mild epithet such as that may be verboten. Okay, again, not was probably meant by the ban on religious content, but still I wanted to note it.
Jon notes being freaked out by some elements in particular Batman episodes when he was a five year old, which 1) made me feel old, since I was an adult when this show started, and 2) made me think about the vague childhood memories I had of television shows I watched when I was a kid. Watching Batman and some of the weird-ass stuff that popped up on that show, it made me think on occasion “I wonder if there’s some adult walking around now haunted with some bizarre image or sequence from this show that s/he only half-remembers from childhood, and has no idea where it came from?” I know I had more than one or two of those types of memories, some of which having been cleared up by the internet (like this intro to a kids show and this segment from said show). If you may forgive me an old fogey moment, I can’t help but wonder in this age of everything ending up on DVDs/the internet/etc. if memories of shows like these ever get a chance to become mysterious and vague, fleeting images seen once and filed away in some dusty corner of the brain. Ah, I’m sure they do and I’m just overthinking it, but there you go.
Chad mentions the Two-Face origin episode as being a significant example of the mature storytelling possible even with the limitations placed by Standards and Practices…something I myself noted…back in April? Good gravy, I’ve been taking my time going through these DVDs, haven’t I? I think adding impact to Harvey Dent’s transition to Two-Face is the fact that he’d been a recurring supporting character in the series up ’til that point, and thus had even more audience sympathy than a character introduced in the same episode he becomes a villain.
And Roel mentions that the animated translation of the Bane storyline from the comics was oversimplified to the point of hurting the narrative. I haven’t seen this episode in my DVD-watching yet (though I may have caught it on TV, if I’m recalling correctly), but it sounds like it’s a similar problem with the Superman/Doomsday DVD. In the comics, you really did feel the loss of Superman as the character literally did not appear for half a year or more, and his actual titles were suspended for a couple of months. In the animated version, Superman is “dead” for what, ten minutes? You don’t get a chance to miss him, and the impact of his alleged “death” is lost. For Batman, of course no one expected the studio to have a series of Bat-cartoons with Bane running around, Azrael taking over, Bruce stuck in a wheelchair, etc. But I’ve no reason to doubt Roel’s analysis of the adaptation, but I’ll find out soon enough when I get to that episode in my Bat-marathon.
And Tom asks “Where’s MODOK,” which got me to search on the phrase “BATMODOK” which turned up only a reference (no image, alas) to a convention sketch on a message board. I can picture a giant-headed Batman in a floating chair fairly easily. Probably actually happened in one of his comics during the 1950s, I bet.
Speaking of kids shows, my primary exposure to Soupy Sales was the late ’70s revival of his program, which was silly and wonderful and I only ever got to see a handful of them, but I loved them dearly. Soupy was a very funny person, and I’m sorry to see him go.
So long, Soupy.
