Travis Sengaus
Bruce Timm comes to Calgary with (drawings of) Batman
The employees of Eau Claire Market’s Cineplex theatre sometimes play a little game with their nametags. I’ve had my ticket ripped by A. Kurosawa and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen E. Wood mopping the floor. About a week ago I had my ticket ripped by one H. Quinn.
I wondered aloud if this was a reference to Harley Quinn a sidekick/love interest for the Joker invented by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm in 1992 specifically for Batman: The Animated Series (though I left out everything after the comma) . Apparently I was the first person to ever get this right.
“It’s like no one else had a childhood right?” she asked.
I mumbled my agreement failing to mention that Harley Quinn remains a consistent feature of my weekly viewing. No one ever really grows out of Batman.
For people of a certain age — those who were too young for Frank Miller in 1992 — Timm’s gloomy art deco Gotham City is the definitive take on the fictional metropolis. Born in 1961 Timm grew up at a time when the most iconic interpretations of the character were yet to be made. So 26 years before voice actor Kevin Conroy was cast as the iconic grumpy man-bat Timm’s love for the character came to him like a CRASH! of onomatopoeia.
“I can tell you the exact moment” says Timm. “The exact moment I fell in love with superheroes was the first time I saw Adam West’s Batman television show way back in 1966. I was aware of Batman and comic books and superheroes before that but only in a vague kind of way. At the time of course I didn’t realize it was a comedy. I just thought it was awesome.”
Later in life while working for Warner Bros. on Tiny Tunes Timm would be given the opportunity to put his own twist on the character with Batman: The Animated Series . After his three-year run on Batman Timm went to work on to Superman: The Animated Series and eventually teamed both of the heroes up for the two Justice League of America cartoon series Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. His crisp hyper-simplified art style permeates all the DC Animated Universe shows (the “Timmverse” as it’s known by fans) though the 1940s pastiche — called “Dark Deco” by Timm and his collaborators — was specific to the original Gotham.
Due partly to Timm’s recognizable art and partly to consistently good (and occasionally great) writing the DCAU quickly became so popular among both comics fans and more populist audiences that ripples of its impact can still be seen today well after the cancellation of the last series. Harley Quinn Renee Montoya and the Timm/Dini version of Mr. Freeze have all made the transition to DC’s mainstream comics continuity. Last year Mark Hamil took home an Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences award for reprising his role as the Joker from the DCAU cartoons in Batman: Arkham Asylum . So it should come as no surprise that Timm Dini and other members of the old DCAU team’s current projects — feature-length animated films like Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths and Green Lantern: First Light — are selling like gangbusters.
“In the movies it’s nice because you don’t have to worry about Broadcasting Standards and Practices” says Timm. “If the story needs to be dark it can be.”
“We are chasing two audiences [with the movies] and you see that everywhere” he continues. “It’s all a bit of a crapshoot. It’s got to be accessible and light enough for the soccer moms but we still want to make it all dark and cool for the fanboys.”
Still Timm doesn’t see the DCAU’s dual audiences as a limitation. “I don’t find [it] restrictive at all” he says. “We were working on one project that was so dark I just knew it was going to get us in trouble with the soccer moms. There were these little alarm bells going off in my head. So I had to step back and ask: ‘Are we throwing buckets and buckets of blood at the screen because we need to or are we doing it just to throw buckets and buckets of blood?’ It makes you ask what the best way to tell the story is.”
Timm says the DCAU cartoons will continue to be made so long as they continue to sell. This is good news for those of us whose weekend mornings are littered with memories of psychologists-cum-sociopaths and grumpy billionaires in grey pajamas. No one ever really grows out of Batman.
