Batman: Caped Crusader‘s second episode is an interesting, if slightly risky proposition, sidelining its titular character (even more than “In Treacherous Waters” did at points) to focus its attention on two other people familiar to Timm’s Batman universe; detective Renee Montoya and iconic (and often underrated) villain Clayface. By doing so, it provides Caped Crusader an opportunity to really hone in on its Golden Age aesthetics and tone, by removing any pretense of the mystical, still mysterious “The Bat” from the proceedings, for a far more straightforward story of a hardboiled detective working a strange murder case – albeit one that feels a bit limited in scope and ambition.
With such a light presence of its titular character, “..And Be a Villain” feels pulled straight from the original Detective Comics run where Batman and Clayface both made their debuts; when a prominent young actress suddenly goes missing, a hard-ass detective young Batman’s been watching makes her way to a local film studio to investigate. What she stumbles upon feels like Bruce Timm having a re-do at the Clayface character – by replacing Batman: The Animated Series‘s Matt Hagen with O.G. Clayface Basil Karlo, Caped Crusader naturally provides itself an avenue for a more personal, tragic backstory for the supervillain, one driven by rejection and loneliness rather than the vengeful pursuits of Hagen’s more supernatural Clayface.
Caped Crusader‘s take on Basil Karlo, spurned character actor turned victim of questionable plastic surgery, is desolate and opportunistic, turning to an eager doctor for an experimental procedure after his regular co-star rejects his advances. Tired of always playing the heavy who stands next to the Hollywood jawlines cast alongside him, Karlo hopes his surgery will turn him from an object of scorn to one of revered beauty – except the surgery lives him hideously disfigured, his facial features turned into moldable clay. He is an embodiment, in that way, of Bruce Wayne’s crisis of identity, and Gotham’s own sense of self; two dark entities, able to twist their shapes into grotesque, idealistic representations of self (Bruce through his nighttime antics, Gotham through its attempts to coat over its rampant corruption).
Strangely enough, despite these obvious opportunities to build out Caped Crusader‘s supposed protagonist with a little more dimensionality, Bruce Wayne and Batman are both nascent presences in “…And Be a Villain”, it never presents itself an opportunity to make this connection, or translate Basil’s crisis of identity and purpose into anything tangentially relatable to this still-inscrutable interpretation of the Dark Knight.
Instead, “…And Be a Villain” makes the odd choice for Batman to be an observer for the most of the episode – watching Renee investigate the sudden disappearances on Karlo’s film set, as he contemplates bringing someone into the fold of his vigilante attempts to take down the city’s competing (and now slightly consolidated) crime syndicates, which… are entirely absent here, making this Karlo story feel even more thematically isolated from the pilot episode. Montoya’s investigation doesn’t reveal anything about her character after she turns down Bruce’s attempts to bribe her (which is really Batman’s attempts to see if she’s easily corruptible), and neither her or Batman’s discoveries lead to any particularly interesting character beats – while Karlo is an interesting character, especially with his comments to Batman about finding his “last role” as a villain are a compelling idea, but one tethered to absolutely nothing, which makes for a slightly disappointing, surprisingly prosaic interpretation to Clayface’s character.
Even the larger plot threads about Batman figuring out who to trust in the Gotham P.D. is ignored after the first scene, though, so “…And Be a Villain” can focus its attention on Montoya’s investigation into Karlo and the stack of bodies Karlo is turning into “performances”. Outside of Clayface’s murderous antics, though, Greg Rucka’s script is rather paint-by-numbers Batman storytelling – an approach leaving it all feeling a bit underdeveloped, even in the moments it focuses on Karlo’s backstory.
There’s so much obvious pathos to pull from Karlo’s descent into villainhood and Batman’s attempts to find incorruptible figures alongside himself to serve his own agenda – but instead of emotional storytelling and character development, “…And Be a Villain” settles for a rather muted, traditional structure that undercuts both the mystery at its surface, and the show’s attempts at establishing the noir-ish tone it so obviously wants to embody. But by almost completely sidelining both Bruce and Batman, it’s hard to understand how “…And Be a Villain” fits into the show’s overarching narrative, which appeared poised for a somewhat serialized structure after Oswalda’s imprisonment and Rupert Thorne’s power play in the pilot.
Instead, “…And Be a Villain” pushes almost everything from the pilot aside for this very specific story between Renee Montoya and Clayface – and then strangely, fails to justify its own significance by holding its story at arm’s length for 25 minutes. Though Batman: Caped Crusader certainly has landed on a visual style and sense of tone in these first two episodes, this second episode proves the show is still figuring out how it wants to position its storytelling – and even how it wants to utilize its titular character.
The jury is still out on whether this “less Bat and Bruce is a good thing” is a bug or a feature in these early episodes, given how standard its narratives and personalities have been in this first hour (outside of some gender and race-swapping, which has drummed up a ton of idiotic debates on the internet). There’s certainly mix of encouraging and concerning elements to “…And Be a Villain” – but if there’s one constant amongst the inconsistency of these opening efforts, it’s Batman: Caped Crusader‘s obvious ambitions to tell a large, sprawling story set in Gotham City, a rich tapestry I still have high hopes for this series to explore.
Grade: C
Other thoughts/observations:
- The one serialized element in this episode is Harvey Dent, who clearly runs over the police departments with depraved impunity. I’m curious how this approach is supposed to endear us to Harvey before he inevitably turns into Two-Face (I’m guessing in season two, because it’s a TV show in 2024), because to this point, he’s just an asshole. Though I did enjoy his “Gotham’s finest… oh, and you too Bullock!” dig when leaving Gotham P.D.
- Great bit of incidental storytelling, when the surveilling cops discuss their sandwiches and what happened to the extra pickles.
- Batman and Clayface fencing on a collapsing movie set? Pretty good stuff, I will admit.
- There’s a weird moment where a bound Yvonne suddenly decides to criticize Clayface’s career choices; she tells him “I don’t believe your performance” when he talks about embracing the role of a villain. Had this episode put a little more effort into their dynamic, her behavior here might make sense – instead, it sticks out like a sore thumb amongst the scene’s otherwise morbid, slightly gothic tone.
- Batman’s fighting style is… surprisingly reactionary against Clayface? Again, we’ve spent so little time with him, but his combat in this episode feels markedly different from that in “In Treacherous Waters”, without any real context as to why.