Many moons ago I looked at the intros for the various Batman TV series [part 1|part 2]. At the time I didn’t have a layout for how to do such articles when it came to properly separating them by decent categories and I didn’t really talk about the shows, just the intros. Since then we’ve had a number of Batman related shows but the Dark Knight himself was kept to live-action movies or direct-to-video animated movies. Meanwhile you had shows like Gotham, Harley Quinn, Batwoman, and Gotham Knights (no relation to the video game despite sharing a name and premise) that just have title cards instead of full intros and Batman’s barely tied to any of them. Granted I didn’t want to talk about them anyway. Gotham and Harley Quinn have fans but I’m not among them. Titans has Nightwing but that’s for a potential Many Intros Of Teen Titans to complement the Many, Many Intros Of The Superfriends series I already did which also featured various Justice League series.
On the other hand we do have three shows that are also tied to Batman without really starring him, and one that actually does show us Batman, Batgirl, and Robin in action. I was just going to review that intro but I figured what the heck, we’ve got two other shows barely tied to Batman–another “what if Batman disappeared”, show, another prequel nobody asked for, and a show about Batman’s car, which may be the most fun and accurate Batman depiction in years off of home video. Go figure? So we have three intros to look at and I’m adding them to the Bat-List.
Birds Of Prey
I’m not sure WB/CW likes killing or otherwise disappearing Batman in their live-action shows considering their best ones were the two animated versions starring Batman, but that’s the world we live in. I remember liking the show on its own merits but it was so removed from the actual DC heroes and villain that I just couldn’t stick with it. Maybe it should have been it’s own property? I liked Black Scorpion (not to be confused with the Disney show that clearly didn’t know this existed or they totally would have given Ultra Violet’s uncle a different name) and that was typical Roger Corman stuff. Imagine a more serious take. Yes, there is a reality or two where Batman and Catwoman had a daughter who took on the identity Huntress. It was the character’s original origin before Earth-2 was wiped out of continuity, but she didn’t have superpowers. She also had a costume and Bruce and Selina’s outfits didn’t look that crap. Dinah’s way too young as depicted here, and that’s supposed to be Harley Quinn being nothing like Harley after splitting with the Joker (voiced in the flashback to Barbara’s shooting by Mark Hamill but with a different live-actor: fun fact). The only character they got right was Barbara Gordon, the only live-action use of Oracle, who has seen little time in that identity outside of comics. (I think the flash forward story from Kids WB’s The Batman was the only other time.)
The intro itself…is not very good. At first I thought the part with Alfred’s narration was going to be it and the credits would be in the episode. Then that terrible music started that sound like a bad Evanescence imitator. That part of the intro is somehow MORE boring than the narrated part. That’s the trouble with most live-action intros. It’s just pictures of the actors with their names by it. It’s not very exciting. We don’t see them fighting, their abilities in action, or really them doing anything. Do you know who the one guy besides Alfred is? I think he was a cop or a detective but I don’t remember. I think he also had a “will they/won’t they” thing going on with Huntress, who doesn’t even bother wearing a mask and despite her upbringing and mentor doesn’t realize her therapist is a former supervillain, technically STILL a supervillain but her public persona doesn’t seem to be known as even a former one. Live action needs to try harder to up their intro game rather than slapping a title card on and calling it good.
Pennyworth
Well, there you go. Visually this is a lot more interesting. Sure, it tells you jack squat about the show and if it wasn’t for the “based on DC characters created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger” part you wouldn’t even know it has ties to Batman so it still fails to sell the “what Alfred did before and after becoming the Wayne family butler but before Bruce was born” concept of the show. And this is one I haven’t seen because I don’t have Epix and really don’t care about the concept even if I did. It looks like a regular but would have been interesting secret agent show, and that is part of Alfred’s backstory. However, it is more exciting to look at.
We have one more intro and hopefully this will do a better job at selling the show and drawing us properly into it’s world. It’s the show for preschoolers because they’re the only kids allowed to have superhero shows in 2023.
Batwheels
Um, with the exception of the Batwing (just called “Wing” on the show), none of them are wearing black unless you count their tires. Even the Batmobile is a shade of blue while Batman is wearing more classic blues and purple for the inside of his cape. That’s new but I think it works for him in this incarnation. As far as showing us the cast it does quite well. As each of the vehicles show up the singer is saying their name. Bam is the Batmobile, mentioned first as he’s the team leader because it’s the Batmobile, Buff is the Battruck (I didn’t remember Batman HAVING a monster truck with a winch crane but at least he isn’t some version of the Tumbler), Bibi is the Batcycle, all decked in purple like Batgirl because she’s her ride, Redbird is the red car, originally the name of Tim Drake’s car but in this version they’re using the Damian Robin, and as mentioned, Wing is short for Batwing, with an oddly yellow and black color scheme. I’m guessing they’re trying to add as much color variety to the preschool show as they can.
Yes, Damian appears to have darker skin than normal since Damian’s racial history depends partly on Ra’s history in that continuity but if they saw “Arabic” and ran with it even though he’s at least one-third white via Bruce (I’m not sure about Talia’s mother). Eh, I’m not too bothered by it. They also altered his personality to something closer to a younger Dick Grayson but…let’s face it, the comic version isn’t going to show up in this age group. Even Batman smiles now and then and seems a bit more relaxed in downtime, even cracking the occasional joke during a mission. Batgirl we don’t see a lot of but she does have a similar personality to the fun-loving bike she rides.
Not that any of our human characters know their vehicles are alive and here’s where the intro misses the mark. The first episode tells the origin of the Batwheels, given special circuit boards based on the Batcomputer (which serves as the assignment giver and analogous mother of the team) after some of them are stolen by an evil computer program trapped in a broken scoreboard (for laughs). I want him to be a trapped Brainiac so we can get the Supermobile in on a guest appearance (Toyman is one of the human villains despite even the show noting he’s one of Superman’s foes and one story involves a metal called “Supermanium” that’s delivered with the S shield on the box) but for now he’s just known as Badcomputer. He uses them to turn some Gotham villain vehicles into his “Legion Of Zoom”, a nod to the gathered villains of Challenge Of The Superfriends that comes up now and then in other continuities. We see none of the Legion Of Zoom members nor does the intro make clear that nobody knows the Batwheels and Legion are sentient and operating on their own. We DO on occasion see Batman, Robin, and Batgirl tackling villains while their rides do battle, so this technically qualifies as a Batman show even though their contributions to the story are limited.
I actually kind of enjoy it and you’re clearly new here if that’s a surprise by now. Welcome. Hope you like what you see. This does end up being the best of the three intros if only because it beats Pennyworth by explaining something about the plot, but without being boring like Birds Of Prey. That makes this a win on a technicality but another victory for cartoon intros just the same.
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