Batman TNA

Screen Shots

Synopsis

A very rich select crowd gather at Gotham Auctioneers, Ltd for an auction of rare and unique artefacts. A natural habitat for billionaire businessman Bruce Wayne, but a rather boring outing for his youthful ward Tim Drake. Tim spots another boy and tries striking up a conversation with him on the assumption that he too has been dragged there against his wishes. However, the odd youth (Klarion) and his vicious pet cat (Teekl) seem to be there of their own volition.

The auction starts with an item reputed to be the personal branding iron of Morgaine Le Fay (a sorceress enemy of Merlin and King Arthur). Klarion and a man called Jason Blood get into an bidding war over the item and it appears that Klarion has won until Bruce Wayne suddenly bids 1 million dollars. Wayne bought the item because Blood was trying so hard to keep it out of Klarion’s hands. Blood warns Wayne not to underestimate Klarion, a “witch boy” who turned his own parents into mice (the implication being that they were then eaten by Teekl).

Jason Blood’s apartment is filled with a host of arcana, but its a striking bust with two faces that catches Tim’s attention. One looks like Jason, the other as Jason relates is…

Merlin’s demon Etrigan. [...] He summoned it to defend the realm of Camelot, Merlin’s home. When Camelot finally fell Merlin decided to keep the demon in the service of humanity and merged the creature with one of King Arthur’s noble men.

While they have been distracted by the story Teekl has crept through an open window and almost escapes with the branding iron before Bruce snatches it from her. To his astonishment the cat transforms into a snarling feline woman who lashes out at him. She is faster than Bruce and Tim and has the upper-hand until Jason invokes his own transformation with “Gone, Gone the form of Man, Rise the demon Etrigan” revealing himself to be the very demon and noble man that he had just been telling Tim about. The Demon is a match for the humanoid Teekl, but he is forced to let her flee when he has to save Bruce and Tim from a fire she started.

After Teekl returns with the branding iron to Klarion his interest in it become clear. With it he casts a powerful spell that divides Etrigan and Jason Blood into two people, undoing Merlin’s original enchantment and placing Etrigan under Klarion’s command. Etrigan throws Bruce Wayne aside and bounds out of Blood’s apartment. Klarion forces Etrigan to obey everything his says even through the demon admits to hating him. However, Klarion’s view of what can be accomplished with a demon as powerful as Etrigan is tempered by his warped childish sense of humour. They blow up a cinema and wreck an ice cream truck before Klarion decides on smashing into a cake shop. Their streak of chaos continues with Etrigan derailing a train and demolishing a condemned building.

Eventually the Batman arrives to give Klarion a spanking and orders the witch boy to stop, but Klarion retorts that “No one’s talked to me like that in so long” and demonstrates why. He causes the Batman to be racked with pain as spikes grow out of his body. Tim and Jason watch the Batman’s predicament from a crystal ball in Jason’s apartment. The same spell that had bound Etrigan to Jason Blood had also granted him immortality, with it removed Jason is ageing rapidly. However, he is still strong enough to cast a spell to protect Batman. Tiring of his game Klarion orders Etrigan to destroy the Batman. Jason aids Batman again by using a pendant to create the illusion that there are dozens of duplicate Batmen. Etrigan blasts each of them with his infernal vision leaving a clouds of smoke and just a few stray bats.

The duplicates allow Batman to evades Etrigan, but Klarion spots him retreating and sets the Demon on him. Batman becomes trapped in a dead-end allay as Etrigan approaches and Jason helps him one last time by making him invisible. Klarion slaps Etrigan across the face for losing the Batman and decides it is time to end Blood’s interference once and for all. Jason Blood and Tim Drake prepare for Etrigan’s arrival by surrounding themselves with a magical circle. Jason Blood is becoming increasingly frail, but he concentrates hard to maintain the circle shield against Etrigan’s onslaught. Tim tries his best to fright the demon, but is just thrown aside.

Klarion is so swept up in his control of Etrigan that he doesn’t notice the Batman’s shoulder charge until he’s crushed against a wall. Batman grabs the branding iron and holds it out of Klarion’s reach as he recites a reversal spell. At that moment Etrigan has Blood helpless when the M-brand suddenly fades from his head. Jason Blood is restored to full health and then merges with the demon. Klarion sets Teekl on Batman in revenge for ruining his plan, but he still possesses the branding iron and uses it to make Teekl revert to her house-cat form. Klarion falls back on his own magic and sends a volley of exploding green balls at Batman. The final one is destroyed by the arriving Etrigan and Tim Drake (now in his Robin costume) and the blow back knocks Klarion unconscious. Etrigan then imprisons Klarion by “sending him to his room” (a crystal ball in Blood’s apartment) and vanishes.

Commentary

The New Adventures

For this final season of Batman the series was rebranded as Batman: The New Adventures and the character models and basic design were updated. It was explained that several years had passed since the first series. Batman was more or less the same, but he was drawn without the blue highlights and no longer had the yellow oval around his bat symbol. The biggest change was in the replacement of Dick Grayson (who like the comics had gone on to become Nightwing) with Tim Drake (with Jason Todd’s back-story), a younger teenager Robin.

Etrigan the Demon

In the end credits Jack Kirby is credited as the creator of the Demon. By the 1970s Jack Kirby – the celebrated co-creator of the Hulk, X-Men, and Fantastic Four – was looking for pastures beyond Marvel Comics. He moved to DC Comics where he took over Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen and created the New Gods, Mister Miracle, and the Forever People. Those comics have been tremendously influential and have been critically applauded, but it was claimed at the time that they weren’t selling and Jack was forced to move on to a second round of new titles.

One of this second wave of Kirby titles was The Demon. It told the story of an immortal called Jason Blood who had been alive since the time of King Arthur’s court. In the sixth century Merlin the Magician summoned a demon from hell to do his bidding and to defend King Arthur’s court at Camelot. However, Morgaine Le Fay’s forces destroyed Camelot so Merlin bound Etrigan to a human soul, Jason Blood, in order to stop him threatening mankind. That of course made Morgaine Blood’s immortal enemy. The first Demon series lasted 16 issues, but like most of Kirby’s work it has been reinterpreted and reworked many times over since then.

In this cartoon Batman obviously knows Jason Blood and his demon alter ago from a previous encounter, but we are not told what that adventure involved. Our introduction to Etrigan is via the reactions of Tim Drake’s Robin. Drake spends most of the episode with Blood and only appears in his Robin costume for the final scene.

When Blood transforms into Etrigan he recites a rhyme from the original comic (shown above). Alan Moore (of Watchmen fame) used Etrigan in his Swamp Thing comics and rewrote his dialogue so that he always spoke in rhyme. This worked under a writer as skilled as Moore, but can be painful when Etrigan is handled by a writer with less of a gift for iambic pentameter. The shadow effect that is used during Blood/Etrigan’s transformation is also taken from the comic book.

Etrigan and Jason Blood are voiced in this appearance by Billy Zane. Zane’s one other superhero like role when when he played Kit Walker in the 1996 big screen adaptation of the Phantom (“the ghost that looks really uncomfortable”). The Etrigan role was taken over by Michael T. Weiss for his appearances in Justice League.

Klarion the Witch Boy

Klarion the Witch Boy first appeared in The Demon vol 1. #7 (March 1973). Grant Morrison, who revamped Klarion in 2005, described Kirby’s Klarion as “a weird little Puritan-dressing kid with ill-defined powers and a mischievous streak” which is pretty much as he appears in this episode. The comic book Klarion was from an other-dimensional place called Witch World, but the cartoon skirts over that part of his origin. Klarion calling Blood “Uncle Jason” when they aren’t related is taken from the comics.

Klarion’s familiar is his pet cat Teekl. She had the ability to transform into a fierce humanoid form. She doesn’t talk in this episode and all her growls appear to be real animal sounds.

Klarion was voiced by Stephen Wolf Smith. He had a couple of roles in the 1990s, but this was probably his biggest. He died of cancer a couple of years after this episode first aired. There is another connection between Billy Zane and Smith as they both had roles in Titans, albeit Smith’s wasn’t credited.

Notes

• The Auctioneer at the start of this episode was played by Peter Renaday who also played Mandrake the Magician in The Defenders of the Earth. The other heroes in the Defenders were Flash Gordon, Lothar, and the Phantom. Billy Zane played the Phantom during the big screen adaptation.
• Morgaine Le Fay gets name checked during the auction of the magical branding iron, but she doesn’t appear in this episode. The comic book Le Fay was an enemy Etrigan, but she doesn’t make an on screen appearance until Justice League‘s “Knight of Shadows”. The name of this episode in French is “Morgane l’Enchanteresse” again despite her not actually appearing on screen.
• Blood’s quote to Tim Drake, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”, is spoken by Shakepeare’s Hamlet. It’s a retort to the shocked Horatio who had happened upon Hamlet talking to his father’s ghost.
• Most of the magical phrases used in this episode are based on the names of magicians from fiction and history. The French site La Tour Des Heroes (translation) does a better job than I at spotting them.
• There have probably only been two ice cream trucks in all the DC Animated Universe series and they just happen to be in the two cartoons I review sequentially. The Ice Cream truck is playing Pop Goes the Weasel – the same tune from Justice League “Legends”.
• The cake shop that Klarion and Etrigan visit is called the “Kirby Cake Company” which is an allusion to Jack Kirby, the creator of Etrigan.
• I can’t find any information about Rusti Bjornhoel other than he wrote this episode and that his name appears on a list that is reputed to be a Writers Guild of America list of those writers they cannot contact.
• Klarion: “There is nothing as good as strawberry!” (sounds like an advertising slogan, but for what I don’t know).
• The film at the cinema is Devastator 3 with Donald Shaltenpepper – a parallel for Arnold Schwarzenegger.
• While this is the first appearance of the Demon in the cartoon he has appeared before in the comic book based on the cartoon. He first appeared in The Batman Adventures Annual #2 (1995) in a story written by Bruce Timm and Glen Murakami in the break between seasons. It features a battle between Jason Blood and Ra’s Al Ghul (both immortals). JLU Revisited covers this particular comic in more details.

Opinion

Highlight

The magic effects

Oddities

If may be my imagination, but Klarion does come across as very Dragon Ball Z at times.

My Thoughts

I liked this episode, it told a good tight story and didn’t have any major flaws. The adherence to Kirby material, as always with the DCAU, was impressive. Billy Zane’s Jason Blood was also quite good, but he didn’t feel quite right as the Demon. I never got the sense from this that Etrigan was really that Evil (being a demon and all).

It’s interesting to see Tim Drake getting pulled along to the auction as if he was Bruce Wayne’s son. This is a set-up we never really saw with the Dick Grayson Robin who was more of an equal to Bruce. What surprised me here was Batman’s knowledge of magic. Maybe Blood told him the incantation before he left, but its one of those skills – like singing – that the DCAU Batman occasionally surprises us with.

3.5