Batman: TAS unproduced episodes

[-batmat-]

Wow, those storyboards from On Leather Wings are a real treat. Awesome stuff!

 

[Revelator]

7/27: What a fantastic treasure trove! Thank you for for sharing this with the public!

* "Masks." This is Alan Burnett's outline for what became Mask of the Phantasm, and my already high respect for the man has further risen. Most of the finished movie and many of its best lines are already there in Burnett's outline, which didn't substantially change when fleshed out into a script, aside from a few minor deletions and several mentions of "Jack Napier." Though the script for Phantasm was a collaborative effort, it's an expansion of Burnett's clear and detailed vision, down to Bruce asking his parents to release him from his vow.

* "Mama Didn't Raise No Dummies." Considering that this document came from Martin Pasko's files, and that Pasko had a stack of rejected scripts from early in the show's gestation, before Alan Burnett became story editor, I assume this particular script was part of the early reject pile. Not a terrible script, but as an introduction to the Ventriloquist and Scarface it's definitely inferior to "Read My Lips" (whose story was co-written by Burnett). The rejected script gives the Ventriloquist an okay origin story, but it's ultimately less interesting than the conflict between the Ventriloquist and Scarface at the heart of "Read My Lips." Additionally, the sports stadium climax of the rejected script would have been too reminiscent of that from "Fear of Victory." Had "Mama Didn't Raise No Dummies" been produced the result would have been regarded as a passable episode of BTAS, one without the deliciously twisted psychology and imagery that made "Read My Lips" such a terrific debut for the Ventriloquist and his dummy.

* "Never Say Uncle" (I'll add some spoiler tags). Had this been produced, it would have been another mediocre episode starring a certain villain notorious for appearing in lackluster episodes. A lot of it reads like a sitcom, complete with hamfisted slapstick courtesy of "Uncle Fred." The climax is weak, lacks action, and features a wholly unconvincing moral reformation. But we do learn that

Spoiler

Bruce's mother was herself an orphan

and the end features a sweet dialogue between Alfred and Bruce, along with the possibility that

Spoiler

Fred might really be Bruce's uncle after all.

I feel the basic ideas in this story could have made an interesting episode, but the script would have needed a lot of work.

* "The Golem." This follows "Mudslide" and concepts from it were recycled into "Growing Pains" (the female child character, Clayface reconstituting himself in an amnesiac state). There's also a conceptual similarity to "See No Evil" (a little girl has a monstrous friend) and the Reaves-scripted "Sideshow" (freakish villain acts a child's protector). The script is low on action and the biker gang villains are decidedly underwhelming, but Batman has a poignant final line and the script effectively updates and pays tribute to the Golem legend (the family is Jewish, as indicated by their surname). I think this would have been a good episode, but if it had been produced then we wouldn't have "Growing Pains." Tough call! Was "The Golem" rejected because the censors didn't want to see a pregnant woman or a child in danger? Did the producers decide that "Mudslide" didn't need a follow up?

* "Razing Hellbane." Randy Rogel adapted this story from a comic by Frank Robbins, who wrote Batman comics from 1968 to 1974 and was skilled at crafting mystery stories. The exact issue is Batman #236, "Wail of the Ghost Bride!" As Yojimbo notes, the story has a Gothic atmosphere and flirts with the idea of the supernatural, though the solution to the mystery is ultimately earthbound. "Razing Helbane" would have made a very fine episode but I can see why it was never produced. First and foremost, it would have been rejected by the censors, since it features a

Spoiler

murder and a corpse.

It also reads like the treatment for a mystery show for adults, rather than an action show for kids. That's fine with me but might not have been with Fox. A pity it was never produced though--I can see the storyboarders having a lot of fun with the ambiguously ghostly imagery.

7/30: Just a note: it looks like the second half of the script for "The One and Only Gun Story" is incomplete. It doesn't have an ending. Would it be possible to restore the missing pages, or is the source script itself incomplete?

Mod Note: Double Post Merged

 

[iammattie]

The second part of the Watchtower Database deep dive into unproduced episodes is up! I'm sure a decent chunk of these are already known about here, but I know for sure we dug up a decent handful of info on some episodes that I hadn't seen mentioned (Including a pretty thurough outline of what would have been the Nocturna episode!) check it out:

 

[James Harvey]

Just a note: it looks like the second half of the script for "The One and Only Gun Story" is incomplete. It doesn't have an ending. Would it be possible to restore the missing pages, or is the source script itself incomplete?

It appears to be incomplete, but we're double-checking to see if there are any other pages or content we missed. Fingers crossed!

 

[Yojimbo]

The second part of the Watchtower Database deep dive into unproduced episodes is up! I'm sure a decent chunk of these are already known about here, but I know for sure we dug up a decent handful of info on some episodes that I hadn't seen mentioned

The bit about Mitch Brian's Stonegate script I believe originates from the Show Bible, which James has up on World's Finest for download, there was a section towards the end of it with episode ideas. Some got used, some didn't, some a little bit. The Stonegate one I was talking about was:

Exhausting his final lead in a current case, Batman sneaks into Stonegate Prison in order to question a connected prisoner who refuses to talk. Once there, he realizes that a trap has been set by prison kingpin Mr. Big, who comfortably runs his criminal network from within his cell. As word spreads of the Batman’s presence, a riot ensues. Pursued by sworn enemies furious for revenge, Batman fights his way through the bowels of the prison, only to be captured and marched down Death Row and strapped into the electric chair. Luckily, the Riddler springs him at the last minute, not about to have the honor of besting Batman robbed from him by a bunch of low-life jailbirds.

I guess Mitch Brian did go far enough to make it into a script. There some others like Mad Hatter using baseball caps to carry out a crime spree with the Wonderland Gang, Two-Face kidnaps Batgirl and lures Batman and Robin into a showdown, a Clayface one where Bruce has no way to change into Batman, a battle against this villain called The Architect in his submarine base, a weird Killer Croc origin story, a Catwoman one where she went to an island to stop hunters from hunting big cats, a Riddler one where he hacked the hi-tech security system of a skyscraper and goads Batman into coming to get him, Scarecrow infects the water supply and creates a Batman hysteria in the whole city, Robin has 24 hours to find Poison Ivy and an antidote after Batman is poisoned by her, a battle against Mad Maestro in the Gotham Opera House after he vows revenge on a judging committee who rejected his composition, a pirate fashioned after Blackbeard, and 3 cops including Montoya who tell their Batman story at a coffe shop but realize it's all part of Batman's current case (seems this became POV).

 

[DBTrilogy100]

I have always been a fan of behind the scenes information and such details about the DC Animated Universe is no exception to me. It is very fascinating hearing about these episodes that could have been and having the chance to even read scripts from some these episodes that could have been. Of course, there is a big difference between reading the spark notes, outlines and scripts compared to being able to see the presentation and execution in action but I still consider this behind the scenes information to be a real treat and am grateful to all involved in it being shared. It also makes me hopeful that discoveries like this will happen for the other shows within the DCAU but I suppose time will tell if that happens or not.

 

[iammattie]

The bit about Mitch Brian's Stonegate script I believe originates from the Show Bible.

Y'know what, You're probably right! We covered the show bible in the last installment, but I didn't even put two and two together on that one.

 

[Revelator]

[Cross-posted in the "Vintage Interviews with the Makers of the DCAU" thread.]

Gotham Nocturna: Too dark for the Dark Knight, she didn’t get to put the bite on an animated Batman
By Pat Jankiewicz (Comics Scene #46, September 1994)

Throughout Batman: The Animated Series, Gotham City’s pointy-eared protector has fought a wide variety of foes: mobsters, madmen, renegade robots, science-spawned mutants and monsters, even a werewolf or two. Still, there was one supernatural menace that Fox TV found too unsettling for the caped crusader.

At his Warner Bros. Animation office, Batman producer/director Bruce Timm discusses the Dark Knight’s close encounter with another creature of the night. “For the second season of Batman, we wanted to do a ‘vampire show.’ There was a character from the 80s named Nocturna, a female vampire. We really wanted to use her in the worst way and I came up with a really neat design for her,” Timm states.

“It was going to be a two-part episode involving a really sick love story. Nocturna falls in love with Batman and wants to vampirize him so that they can live together eternally as vampires. She puts the bite on him at the first episode’s end.

“Bruce Wayne wakes up the next morning, and says, ‘Oh boy, how did I ever get home?’ Alfred tells him, ‘I found you and dragged you home. Good thing you’re safe now.’ Bruce feels like he has a really bad hangover. Alfred pulls open the blinds and Bruce starts shrieking because his skin is on fire! He looks in the mirror and sees that he has vampire fangs.

“The second episode was going to focus on Batman trying to cure himself of the vampire taint. We were going to say he wasn’t a supernatural vampire but a biological vampire, with a chemical substance in his bloodstream. He’s in the Batcave frantically trying to cure himself and at the same time he’s looking at Alfred, thinking, ‘God, he looks really tasty.’

“He’s about to attack Alfred, when he realizes, ‘This is horrible, I’m not gonna have time to cure myself of being a vampire; I’ll have to destroy myself before I’m a danger to anybody!’ Alfred says, ‘Just calm down. You’re too distraught to cure yourself. I’ll go get Kirk Langstrom [the scientist who turns into Man-Bat]. He’s the best guy to help you. Just lie down and relax!’

“Bruce tries to relax, but he can’t control the bloodlust. Batman goes out to Gotham City looking for victims when he realizes at the last minute that he must cure himself. That was as far as we got, but we thought that would make a great two-parter.

“The Fox Network said, ‘Nope, can’t do it! First of all, you can’t do vampires. You can’t have anybody sucking anybody else’s blood. You also can’t have Batman as a vampire looking for victims, you can’t have biological vampires, because you can’t have a disease that’s transmitted through blood, it’s too much like AIDS,’ ” Timm recalls.

“We went back and forth with them on this. We really wanted to do it and they really didn’t want us to, so we didn’t, but it would have been fun.”

The comic-book storyline that inspired the episode (from Batman and Detective Comics) was even grimmer; Batman is infected with the vampire virus by Robin, who got it from a lady vampire he met at college. In the story, Batman saves Vicki Vale from a bloodthirsty Robin and narrowly avoids preying on Alfred. He loses control, goes into Gotham City looking for victims and actually kills and drains a burglar in a back alley. (“I sent you to jail once, Marley. Now I only hope I haven’t sent you to Hell.”) There’s a violent showdown with the vampires in a desecrated church before he finds a cure.

As for whether Batman would have taken a hammer and put his love at stake, Timm says, “I’m sure we would have played up all those traditional vampire clichés and put some kind of twist on them, but we never got past the development stage. I would have loved to have done it, but...”

Vampirism has always been somewhat taboo in television animation. Past incarnations, like the short-lived superhero monster/comedy shows Monster Squad and Drac Pack, simply ignored the main preoccupation of their vampire leads. Super Friends was able to circumvent the “no vampires” policy by doing an episode where Dracula turns Superman into a vampire by having him use ridiculous eye-beams instead of fangs.

Despite this setback, Batman has encountered several unusual monsters, including the reptile-man Killer Croc, the shape-shifting Clayface, the savage Man-Bat and a steroid-induced werewolf. “We get away with monsters easily,” Timm explains. “It surprises me, because I think some of our monsters are really scary.

“Monsters are great, because the network thinks of them as fantasy figures and not things that could exist in real life. The censors are concerned about drive-by shootings; things that a kid can actually get in trouble by repeating in real life. They’re actually more concerned about things like parents being divorced than monsters. They don’t want any mention of divorce; they don’t want kids to think about that. Monsters they don’t have a problem with, which is great, because I love monsters,” he says, gesturing towards the Aurora Universal Monster model kits that sit on his shelves.

“For the most part, the network doesn’t like zombies, or any living dead people—even though we have one in the second season, a 2,000-year-old zombie sorceress [voiced by Star Trek’s Nichelle Nichols]. It’s pretty scary, but the network approved it.” (Reportedly, Fox kiboshed plans for another ectoplasmic enemy of Batman’s, the Gentleman Ghost.)

As for the Dark Knight’s other fearsome foes, Timm feels, “Somebody like Clayface isn’t really horrifying, he’s just gross. He looks like a big walking pile of turds,” Bruce Timm smiles. “Two-Face actually scared me, the first time he turned around and revealed himself. There’s something about him that gives you a weird chill. It’s pretty scary. Still,” the producer sighs, “Nocturna would have made a really interesting story.”

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note: Nocturna, who was created by Doug Moench for Detective Comics #529, is not a vampire. She was a jewel thief whose skin was drained of all pigment by an accident that rendered her sensitive to light. The animated Nocturna was really based on Dala, a vampire who was the very first Batman villainess (back in Detective Comics #32). She was brought back by Gerry Conway during the 1980s for the story arc described in this article, where she briefly turned Batman and Robin into vampires (Detective Comics #517 and Batman #349-351). Bruce Timm and company therefore planned to use the character of Dala but give her the more evocative name of Nocturna.

 

[grumix8]

they should of continue with the old series. it was better, someone should make those unproduced episodes you know independant artists.

 

[AdrenalineRush1996]

They should of continue with the old series. it was better, someone should make those unproduced episodes you know independent artists.

That ship has sailed.

 

[b.t.]

The bit about Mitch Brian's Stonegate script I believe originates from the Show Bible......a Riddler one where he hacked the hi-tech security system of a skyscraper and goads Batman into coming to get him....

Boy, this thread takes me back! A lot of these scripts and outlines I don‘t even remember.

The DIE HARD-ish Riddler outline seemed a little too basic and straight-forward to me — too much action, not enough genuine story, zero character development, and the thought at the time was, “Why is this even a Riddler story? The villain could be ANYONE.” Was this one by Michael Reaves or Peter David? I remember that Dini reached out to both of them for stories in the very early days, when he was ”half in / half out” of BTAS, and both of them did turn in story outlines, but I don’t recall who did what. I seem to remember that David didn’t actually write his outline by himself, that he brought in another writer to work on it with him, but I could be totally mis-remembering that.

Interestingly enough, a similar “Batman runs a gauntlet inside a skyscraper” story was done by James Robinson and Tony Salmons in an issue of LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT, right around the same time. And even though Tony was on staff as a storyboard artist in the beginning, I don’t think he had access to the aborted Riddler outline, so it‘s just a pure coincidence.

I seem to remember that Mitch’s Stonegate script had Scarface as the main baddie at one point. It was one of the stories we’d commissioned before we had a dedicated Story Editor on staff (meaning Yours Truly was the de facto Story Editor, in addition to all the other hats I was wearing at the time). This particular story wasn’t quite jelling and I think Mitch did at least one re-write of it once Sean Derek and Laren Bright came on board. The re-write didn’t seem to satisfy anyone so Sean and Laren took a pass over it themselves. Eric Radomski and I thought their re-write still didn’t work, and told them that we thought Mitch’s previous draft, though still far from ideal, was actually better. Our working relationship with Sean and Laren was already pretty strained at that point, due to various factors ( intense pressure from WBA and Fox to get some workable scripts in the pipeline, as well as just simple incompatibilty issues) but that might have been the actual breaking point.

Another story that I commissioned in the pre-Sean days was ”The City That Could Not Breathe” by an author named Will Murray. I’d known his work as a Pulp Historian and fiction writer for years, and I’d been particularly impressed by his ability to write incredibly authentic-sounding pastiches in other authors’ styles. His ghost-written Destroyer novels were pitch-perfect and the “Lester Dent” voice he used for his Doc Savage books was uncannily spot-on.

So I cold-called him, told him what we were up to — specifically that I wanted to inject as much classic Pulp Hero action and atmosphere into the series as possible — and mentioned that I’d like him to do a Batman story in the general style of Norvell Page’s Spider novels. He turned in his outline just as Sean and Laren came on board. I handed over to them all the stories and scripts that we currently had, all in various states of completion ... and I STUPIDLY didn’t follow up with Will. I thought his outline had loads of potential, and DID actually manage to evoke Page’s patented apocalyptic “Doomed City“ aesthetic (even without the usual ginormous body count common to the Spider books) — but with everything else I had going on at the time, his story fell through the cracks, and I regret it to this day. The only positive side-effect is that he was able to salvage his work by turning it into a pretty kick-ass short story and getting it published in THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF BATMAN VOL. 3. So, if you can track down a copy of that book, you’ll get a very good idea of what his “BTAS LOST ADVENTURE” would have been like.

Remind me to tell y‘all about the very FIRST B:TAS story ever committed to paper sometime....

 

[Yojimbo]

I seem to remember that Mitch’s Stonegate script had Scarface as the main baddie at one point. It was one of the stories we’d commissioned before we had a dedicated Story Editor on staff (meaning Yours Truly was the de facto Story Editor, in addition to all the other hats I was wearing at the time). This particular story wasn’t quite jelling and I think Mitch did at least one re-write of it once Sean Derek and Laren Bright came on board. The re-write didn’t seem to satisfy anyone so Sean and Laren took a pass over it themselves. Eric Radomski and I thought their re-write still didn’t work, and told them that we thought Mitch’s previous draft, though still far from ideal, was actually better. Our working relationship with Sean and Laren was already pretty strained at that point, due to various factors ( intense pressure from WBA and Fox to get some workable scripts in the pipeline, as well as just simple incompatibilty issues) but that might have been the actual breaking point.

Interesting, I was wondering if it was Scarface. From what I gathered, it was just some ventriloquist dummy named Mr. Big. Unless that was the name of a precursor to Scarface?

Just as a recap for everyone:
1. In the bible:

"Exhausting his final lead in a current case, Batman sneaks into Stonegate Prison in order to question a connected prisoner who refuses to talk. Once there, he realizes that a trap has been set by prison kingpin Mr. Big, who comfortably runs his criminal network from within his cell. As word spreads of the Batman's presence, a riot ensues. Pursued by sworn enemies furious for revenge, Batman fights his way through the bowels of the prison, only to be captured and marched down Death Row and strapped into the electric chair. Luckily, the Riddler springs him at the last minute, not about to have the honor of besting Batman robbed from him by a bunch of low-life jailbirds."

2. In 2015, on Batman Animated Podcast #13, 1:22:56-1:23:29, 1:23:31-1:23:42, Kevin Altieri said,

And I get to the climax where Batman is wrestling with the ventriloquist dummy and he's actually--it's in a prison and there's this ventriloquist dummy that attacks him when he actually has a wrestling match with it and at that point I went, "NO!" and I threw the thing--I picked it spontaneously up and threw it and it left the door in my office and the brads came undone and so it just flew like confetti.

Jean MacCurdy read the script and said, "Yeah, this is a problem." But she said you know, that's when they brought in Alan Burnett and Randy Rogel.

3. In 2017, on Batman Animated Podcast #64, 11:21-11:50, Mitch Brian said

It took place in the prison-Stonegate. And Batman kind of gets himself thrown into prison thinking he's gonna solve this case. Then what he doesn't realize is he's been sort of baited into a situation and everyone in prison wants to get him. And so it just becomes like this Batman is pinballed-bounced around from one villain after another as he's trying to make his way out of the prison.

Another story that I commissioned in the pre-Sean days was ”The City That Could Not Breathe” by an author named Will Murray. I’d known his work as a Pulp Historian and fiction writer for years, and I’d been particularly impressed by his ability to write incredibly authentic-sounding pastiches in other authors’ styles. His ghost-written Destroyer novels were pitch-perfect and the “Lester Dent” voice he used for his Doc Savage books was uncannily spot-on.

So I cold-called him, told him what we were up to — specifically that I wanted to inject as much classic Pulp Hero action and atmosphere into the series as possible — and mentioned that I’d like him to do a Batman story in the general style of Norvell Page’s Spider novels. He turned in his outline just as Sean and Laren came on board. I handed over to them all the stories and scripts that we currently had, all in various states of completion ... and I STUPIDLY didn’t follow up with Will. I thought his outline had loads of potential, and DID actually manage to evoke Page’s patented apocalyptic “Doomed City“ aesthetic (even without the usual ginormous body count common to the Spider books) — but with everything else I had going on at the time, his story fell through the cracks, and I regret it to this day. The only positive side-effect is that he was able to salvage his work by turning it into a pretty kick-ass short story and getting it published in THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF BATMAN VOL. 3. So, if you can track down a copy of that book, you’ll get a very good idea of what his “BTAS LOST ADVENTURE” would have been like.

Remind me to tell y‘all about the very FIRST B:TAS story ever committed to paper sometime....

Neat! Thanks for that and can't wait for this first story!

EDIT: And if anyone's interested, I did finish a big expansion on my cutting room floor section of my site, including BTAS.

 

[Revelator]

It appears to be incomplete, but we're double-checking to see if there are any other pages or content we missed. Fingers crossed!

Apologies for bugging you again about this, but has there been any luck in finding the missing end pages from scan 2 of "The One and Only Gun Story"? It's a terrific script and not knowing exactly how it ended has been quite tantalizing. Thanks again, and a million thanks for publishing all those fascinating scripts from Martin Pasko's archive!

 

[James Harvey]

Apologies for bugging you again about this, but has there been any luck in finding the missing end pages from scan 2 of "The One and Only Gun Story"? It's a terrific script and not knowing exactly how it ended has been quite tantalizing. Thanks again, and a million thanks for publishing all those fascinating scripts from Martin Pasko's archive!

We didn't find any missing files last time, but we'll take another look! This is a good reminder - thank you!

On that note, in the meantime, I believe Watchtower Database has some further coverage on "The One and Only Gun Story" that might help you out.

 

[iammattie]

We didn't find any missing files last time, but we'll take another look! This is a good reminder - thank you!

On that note, in the meantime, I believe Watchtower Database has some further coverage on "The One and Only Gun Story" that might help you out.

We did get our hands on a version of the script that I believe differs from the WF version, but we haven't made that publicly available yet. I believe the idea is to turn it into a radio play type production for the channel, though with how backed up our schedule is there's no telling when that may be available.

 

[Yojimbo]

Here's a loose summary of Will Murray's "The City That Could Not Breathe" printed in The Further Adventures of Batman Volume 3 (March 1993), pages 231 to 277. It definitely felt like something that could have continued Catwoman's arc of stories in The Cat and The Claw and Cat Scratch Fever.

The story begins in Lower Gotham and the air turns blue one December night near the Art Deco spire of the Gotham Tower, once the tallest man-made structure in the world but now the oldest Depression-era skyscraper still standing in Gotham City. It is located in a six square block known informally as Rust Scab where only the homeless live and even cabdrivers avoided. The roaring of beasts could be heard but Gotham Zoo had closed down. A millionaire developer named Kendall Sharp was blamed for the closure. He bought the block on the cheap but let it slip into bankruptcy and decay. He was on the verge of going belly-up himself. 17 were killed in one night. The news blamed it on a serial strangler. Commissioner Gordon told the reporters there were no neck bruises or signs of foul play. Every victim died of simple asphyxiation.

Batman and Commissioner Gordon inspected the bodies in the morgue. They note all victims died at the same time. Batman investigates Rust Scab, noting it was condemned, a ghost town, and once the heart of metropolitan Gotham. In the Gotham Tower, Batman triggers a trip-wire and hears roars. He runs into Catwoman. She claims Gotham Zoo's wild cats were not shipped to the San Diego Zoo like they were supposed to. She was worried about a black panther named Bast. The oxygen vanishes. Sharing a gas mask, Batman barely manages to return to the Batmobile, replenishes his oxygen, then brings in Catwoman and her cat Spooky and revives them. A voice is projected through the block of someone calling themself the Unseen Strangler and giving a deadline of $50 million or more will die. The Batmobile's engine dies. People lay on the streets like beached fish, affected as far south as Gotham Village. Batman suspects the Unseen Strangler is Kendall Sharp.

Bruce Wayne pays a visit to Kendall Sharp's uptown office building that Sharp built in the 1980s. Sharp points out they are from different sides, he was not born into wealth and built his empire. He talks about how he bought the block for a song five years ago and had plans to tear it all down and build up Sharp City, a city within a city but the market went belly up. To Sharp's surprise, Wayne offers him $500 million but Sharp turns him down. Sharp suspects he has something up his sleeve.

The power goes out in Sharp's co-op overlooking Gotham Park. He chokes out an intruder looking in his safe with his Hermes ties. It's Catwoman. Catwoman comes to in the Gotham Tower. There is a machine called the Atmospheric Converter and the zoo wild cats are all in cages. The Unseen Strangler is in a rubberized coverall topped with a fishbowl-like Plexiglass helmet. Batman approaches on the Bat-glider and is shot at. He is hit by sniper rifle bullets. The Unseen Strangler announces he is now demanding $70 million. Batman uses a flare to blind his henchman. On the Converter, there is a indicator that reads, "Oxygen-Ozone Balance." Catwoman gets free. Batman sabotages the Converter's blades with emery dust. The Strangler is surrounded by the freed wild cats and is slammed by Bast. Batman arrives and punches the Strangler's helmet with brass knuckles. He gasps for air and is revealed to be Sharp. Batman blows a green gas and the cats paw at it. The Converter soon blows up. Sharp is hit in the neck by a dynamo blade. The cats attack him.

Commissioner Gordon is startled by Batman in his office and asks how he does that. Batman dryly quips he oils his window regularly. Batman reveals Sharp was going to extort the city to refinance his real estate empire and build Sharp City. The Converter broke down oxygen molecules in the air and converted them into chemically similar but unbreathable ozone. He suspects a freelance renegade scientist is building machines and selling them to madmen. He tosses something to Commissioner Gordon to help in the clean up in Gotham Tower. Gordon asks what it is. Batman tells him it's catnip.

 

[b.t.]

I was going through some papers recently, and came across a a 15 page treatment dated 9/19/90. As far as i know, it’s the very first proposed BTAS story committed to paper:

‘CATMOVES (Part 1)’ by Warren Greenwood and Frank Brunner

Both of them were artists just finishing up the first season of TINY TOONS. I’d known Warren as a top storyboard artist since my earliest days in the Animation business, and I’d been a fan of Frank Brunner’s comics since I was a teenager (HOWARD THE DUCK, his legendary run on DR. STRANGE, various excellent stand-alone stories for STAR REACH, CREEPY, WEB OF HORROR, ALIEN WORLDS, etc). IIRC, they were both ‘at liberty’ for a few weeks while waiting for the second season to get officially green-lit, and took the opportunity to work up a few Batman story pitches. Besides Parts 1 and 2 of ‘Catmoves‘ , i seem to think they wrote a third treatment, but I don’t remember what it was about. I don‘t have a copy of it directly at hand at the moment (or ‘Catmoves Part 2’ either).

Anyhow — ‘Catmoves Part 1’, in brief:

Catwoman is committing a series of robberies all over Gotham with an army of mercenaries, a cyborg mountain lion and a huge hovercraft assault vehicle in the shape of a cat’s head : ‘We are reminded of the great flying stone head in ZARDOZ.’

Throughout the episode we see snippets of a recurring dream / hallucination — seemingly Selina’s memory of her past life in Ancient Egypt, when she was literally the cat-godess Bubastis.

Later, we find Bruce Wayne strolling through Gotham’s Inner City after dark : ‘A shattered ruined landscape…..it looks almost post-holocaust.’ He is described as ‘A huge man, almost seven feet tall and powerfully built…he also looks crazy as a bedbug…’

He‘s there to leave two roses at the spot where his parents were killed. On his way there, he passes by :‘Junkies and winos hunkering in dark doorways. Street crazies babble at him. Crackheads swarm around him like flies….’

After paying his respects, he finds a pathetic, starving little black kitten, which he impulsively names ‘Shadow’ and decides to adopt.

Back at Wayne Manor ( ‘Impossibly huge. Baronial. But with weird towers and geodesic domes as if perhaps the master wasn’t playing with a full deck‘) he and Shadow watch the evening news reports about Catwoman’s crime wave. Drug warehouses are being hit all over the city, but no drugs are being stolen, just large amounts of cash.

Later, the swanky hi-rise office of corporate raider Daniel Dollar is attacked by the hovering Giant Cat-head : ‘smaller scarab-like attack hovercraft converge on the tower …ski-masked men in camo uniforms blowing out windows with assault rifles etc’

Her forces overwhelm Dollar’s security team. SWAT teams converge , but Catwoman has taken prisoners and threatens to blow up the building: ‘She appears on tv with the hostages like Saddam Hussein, surrounded by Egyptian paraphenelia.’

After the broadcast, she dismisses her goons and sits alone in the dark, dreaming of her long-ago life in Ancient Egypt, surrounded by other animal-headed gods: ‘…a royal party of the gods on a huge barge floating down the Nile, the men and women of earth lining the shores to pay tribute.’

Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne is in the Batcave, watching the news while Shadow plays on the computer console — ‘He stares at the screen with a deranged intense expression’ — the video footage shows children among the hostages.

At Dollar’s office, Catwoman tells him she wants all of his liquid assets — all 900 million bucks of it — brought to the tower or she’ll blow it up. There’s a big bomb sitting right on his desk, so you know she means it. While they wait for the money to arrive, she amuses herself by running his business — making random stock trades, trying to buy the Egyptian exhibit from the Gotham Museum, donating large sums of his money to animal rights groups, etc.

On the tower‘s rooftop, Batman stealthily swoops in with his ‘Year One’ style Bat-glider rig and attacks Catwoman’s goons — two of them drop unconscious with razor-sharp drug-tipped ninja stars imbedded in their necks.

We cut to an upshot on Batman: ‘Lost in the darkness. Pulling some sort of big weapon out from under his cape…’

On the rooftop is a spectacular atrium garden : ‘Six stories high, with an 80 foot waterfall, tropical plants and winding stairways of green marble….filled with a score of Catwoman’s soldiers.’

Batman comes walking out of the shadows, armored up head-to-toe in black Kevlar, his face completely covered in a black welder’s mask-type helmet ‘with a single red eye-slit and tall bat ears…he is also carrying a very large black machine gun…’

The thugs DO shoot first, at least, but their bullets just bounce off Batman’s body armor. And then he returns fire:

‘Batman blasts the thugs with rubber bullets. They fly off the stairs, topple over railings into the waterfall. He empties the clip. Smashes a thug in the face with the rifle stock. Kicks the sh** out of the few thugs left standing…’

Once inside the building, Batman searches for Catwoman in the 100 room complex — ‘drifting from room to room like a shadow’. He finally locates her and ‘…enters her bedroom like an incubus…’

She‘s sleeping in an Egyptian sarcophagus. He grabs her wrist, turns her over — but it’s a dummy! Gas shoots out of its mouth — ‘He gasps for air, chokes, nearly vomits, and passes out.’

Catwoman steps out of the shadows with her cyber-lion and gloats as we fade out….


Well!

There’s a lot of wild, intense stuff here, seemingly very much inspired by Frank Miller’s edgy take on the character in THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. Unfortunately, there isn’t a whole lot of actual Story — it’s mostly a string of violent action sequences, with very little character development. It’s so far removed from the approach that Eric Radomski and I were thinking of, in tone and texture, that we both figured it was pointless to even have them take a second pass on it.

Also, even though we definitely wanted to push the envelope in terms of intense action sequences, spooky atmosphere, sophisticated themes and storytelling, the treatment was excessively loaded with things that NEVER would have been allowed in ‘Children’s Programming’ in the early 1990s. Like, not even close! The hyper-violent action beats, the emphasis on dark urban squalor, references to the illegal drug trade, the repeated mentions of Batman’s ‘deranged’ mental state and the overall bleak, downbeat mood — honestly, if we had delivered this treatment to the Execs at WBA and Fox Kids, we probably would have been fired on the spot.

I do hope i can find my copy of Part 2 someday, I’m curious to see how it all plays out — Catwoman’s delusions, little Shadow’s fate, etc.

 

[Revelator]

"We are reminded of the great flying stone head in ZARDOZ."

I love Zardoz but thought "Uh oh!" when reading that.

Thanks very much for posting this. Very entertaining evidence of the uphill struggle to get appropriate scripts for BTAS.

 

[Otaku-sempai]

I was going through some papers recently, and came across a a 15 page treatment dated 9/19/90. As far as i know, it’s the very first proposed BTAS story committed to paper:

‘CATMOVES (Part 1)’ by Warren Greenwood and Frank Brunner

Both of them were artists just finishing up the first season of TINY TOONS. I’d known Warren as a top storyboard artist since my earliest days in the Animation business, and I’d been a fan of Frank Brunner’s comics since I was a teenager (HOWARD THE DUCK, his legendary run on DR. STRANGE, various excellent stand-alone stories for STAR REACH, CREEPY, WEB OF HORROR, ALIEN WORLDS, etc). IIRC, they were both ‘at liberty’ for a few weeks while waiting for the second season to get officially green-lit, and took the opportunity to work up a few Batman story pitches. Besides Parts 1 and 2 of ‘Catmoves‘ , i seem to think they wrote a third treatment, but I don’t remember what it was about. I don‘t have a copy of it directly at hand at the moment (or ‘Catmoves Part 2’ either).

Anyhow — ‘Catmoves Part 1’, in brief:

Catwoman is committing a series of robberies all over Gotham with an army of mercenaries, a cyborg mountain lion and a huge hovercraft assault vehicle in the shape of a cat’s head : ‘We are reminded of the great flying stone head in ZARDOZ.’

Throughout the episode we see snippets of a recurring dream / hallucination — seemingly Selina’s memory of her past life in Ancient Egypt, when she was literally the cat-godess Bubastis.

Later, we find Bruce Wayne strolling through Gotham’s Inner City after dark : ‘A shattered ruined landscape…..it looks almost post-holocaust.’ He is described as ‘A huge man, almost seven feet tall and powerfully built…he also looks crazy as a bedbug…’

He‘s there to leave two roses at the spot where his parents were killed. On his way there, he passes by :‘Junkies and winos hunkering in dark doorways. Street crazies babble at him. Crackheads swarm around him like flies….’

After paying his respects, he finds a pathetic, starving little black kitten, which he impulsively names ‘Shadow’ and decides to adopt.

Back at Wayne Manor ( ‘Impossibly huge. Baronial. But with weird towers and geodesic domes as if perhaps the master wasn’t playing with a full deck‘) he and Shadow watch the evening news reports about Catwoman’s crime wave. Drug warehouses are being hit all over the city, but no drugs are being stolen, just large amounts of cash.

Later, the swanky hi-rise office of corporate raider Daniel Dollar is attacked by the hovering Giant Cat-head : ‘smaller scarab-like attack hovercraft converge on the tower …ski-masked men in camo uniforms blowing out windows with assault rifles etc’

Her forces overwhelm Dollar’s security team. SWAT teams converge , but Catwoman has taken prisoners and threatens to blow up the building: ‘She appears on tv with the hostages like Saddam Hussein, surrounded by Egyptian paraphenelia.’

After the broadcast, she dismisses her goons and sits alone in the dark, dreaming of her long-ago life in Ancient Egypt, surrounded by other animal-headed gods: ‘…a royal party of the gods on a huge barge floating down the Nile, the men and women of earth lining the shores to pay tribute.’

Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne is in the Batcave, watching the news while Shadow plays on the computer console — ‘He stares at the screen with a deranged intense expression’ — the video footage shows children among the hostages.

At Dollar’s office, Catwoman tells him she wants all of his liquid assets — all 900 million bucks of it — brought to the tower or she’ll blow it up. There’s a big bomb sitting right on his desk, so you know she means it. While they wait for the money to arrive, she amuses herself by running his business — making random stock trades, trying to buy the Egyptian exhibit from the Gotham Museum, donating large sums of his money to animal rights groups, etc.

On the tower‘s rooftop, Batman stealthily swoops in with his ‘Year One’ style Bat-glider rig and attacks Catwoman’s goons — two of them drop unconscious with razor-sharp drug-tipped ninja stars imbedded in their necks.

We cut to an upshot on Batman: ‘Lost in the darkness. Pulling some sort of big weapon out from under his cape…’

On the rooftop is a spectacular atrium garden : ‘Six stories high, with an 80 foot waterfall, tropical plants and winding stairways of green marble….filled with a score of Catwoman’s soldiers.’

Batman comes walking out of the shadows, armored up head-to-toe in black Kevlar, his face completely covered in a black welder’s mask-type helmet ‘with a single red eye-slit and tall bat ears…he is also carrying a very large black machine gun…’

The thugs DO shoot first, at least, but their bullets just bounce off Batman’s body armor. And then he returns fire:

‘Batman blasts the thugs with rubber bullets. They fly off the stairs, topple over railings into the waterfall. He empties the clip. Smashes a thug in the face with the rifle stock. Kicks the sh** out of the few thugs left standing…’

Once inside the building, Batman searches for Catwoman in the 100 room complex — ‘drifting from room to room like a shadow’. He finally locates her and ‘…enters her bedroom like an incubus…’

She‘s sleeping in an Egyptian sarcophagus. He grabs her wrist, turns her over — but it’s a dummy! Gas shoots out of its mouth — ‘He gasps for air, chokes, nearly vomits, and passes out.’

Catwoman steps out of the shadows with her cyber-lion and gloats as we fade out….


Well!

There’s a lot of wild, intense stuff here, seemingly very much inspired by Frank Miller’s edgy take on the character in THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. Unfortunately, there isn’t a whole lot of actual Story — it’s mostly a string of violent action sequences, with very little character development. It’s so far removed from the approach that Eric Radomski and I were thinking of, in tone and texture, that we both figured it was pointless to even have them take a second pass on it.

Also, even though we definitely wanted to push the envelope in terms of intense action sequences, spooky atmosphere, sophisticated themes and storytelling, the treatment was excessively loaded with things that NEVER would have been allowed in ‘Children’s Programming’ in the early 1990s. Like, not even close! The hyper-violent action beats, the emphasis on dark urban squalor, references to the illegal drug trade, the repeated mentions of Batman’s ‘deranged’ mental state and the overall bleak, downbeat mood — honestly, if we had delivered this treatment to the Execs at WBA and Fox Kids, we probably would have been fired on the spot.

I do hope i can find my copy of Part 2 someday, I’m curious to see how it all plays out — Catwoman’s delusions, little Shadow’s fate, etc.

Oh, I can see why "Catmoves" was passed over. Batman: The Animated Series ended up being much more grounded than is this treatment. Reincarnation, mecha, a cyber-lion. It's all a bit much in a single story.

 

[Frontier]

Oh, I can see why "Catmoves" was passed over. Batman: The Animated Series ended up being much more grounded than is this treatment. Reincarnation, mecha, a cyber-lion. It's all a bit much in a single story.

And Catwoman going crazy like that...well, maybe if it was inspired by Silver Age Catwoman, but still .