Plot summary: The Scarecrow terrorises Gotham State University and injects Batman with his Fear Toxin. Can Bruce overcome his nightmares in time to save the day?
(Originally published on The Reel World July 18th, 2020)
Notes
Original Air Date: September 15th, 1992
Directed: Boyd Kirkland (1)
Written: Henry T. Gilroy (1) & Sean Catherine Derek (1)
Animation: Dong Yang Animation Co., LTD.
Music: Shirley Walker (3)
First produced script by Sean Catherine Derek, who reported that her scripts were constantly tinkered with against her wishes.
Scarecrow was originally drawn with janky posture to emulate… a scarecrow, but Dong Yang took this out when animating, irritating Bruce Timm.
Scarecrow’s voice changes in later appearances due to voice actor Henry Polic II requiring throat surgery and finding the original voice too difficult.
Clive Revill’s final outing as Alfred.
Recap
Summer Gleeson (remember her?) interviews Dr. Long about a recent string of crimes against Gotham State University. Bruce Wayne joins the pair, and the doctor – who went to school with Thomas Wayne – gives him a dressing down for his playboy lifestyle.
Luckily, Scarecrow and his gang rob a nearby bank, giving Bruce an excuse to punch his feelings away. Batman arrives with a gas-mask, so Scarecrow doses him with a dart gun instead. Our hero passes out in a ring of fire, hallucinating his father telling him he’s a disgrace.
And that’s the end of the show!
Oh… no. The sprinkler system activates and Commissioner Gordon and his men arrive to help him out. Phew. Bullock is dubious of Batman’s story, and the pair get physical over a piece of evidence (a torn scrap of Scarecrow’s mask). Gordon is none too pleased, but I mean… this is one of the more overt obstructions of justice our hero commits. Then again, ACAB.
Scarecrow reveals to his crew he taught psychology at the university. Shockingly, a boy who grew up chasing people with snakes and locking them in rooms full of bugs turned out to not be a very ethical adult, and was later fired by Dr. Long.
Bruce is still shaken up by the fear toxin. Alfred does his best to snap him out of it, drawing a parallel to his own habit of dressing up and scaring people, assuring him his father would be proud of him, and insisting he have chicken soup and a good sleep. Alfred ❤
No rest for the wicked though, as Scarecrow hits a fundraising event, kidnapping Dr. Long . Batman tries to intervene, but the fear toxin makes his appearance terrifying to the guests, who start attacking him.
Bats gets away and boards Scarecrow’s blimp (such blimps in this city), but experiences more hallucinations, seeing Thomas Wayne as an enormous judgemental skeleton.
His response? “I am vengeance. I am the night. I… am… Batman!”
Batman gets Dr. Long to safety just before the blimp crashes in a fiery explosion. But Scarecrow escapes in a weird little bi-plane… because of course he does.
Running a scan on the piece of Scarecrow’s mask he recovered earlier, Bruce cross references employees of the company that made it with Gotham State University graduates. There is only one: Dr. Jonathan Crane. How bad is the job placement rate of this university???
Crane laments his defeat, removing his mask in order to fully rue his misfortunes… only to fall victim to his own gas, silently released by Batman. He hallucinates giant bat monsters and winds up hanging from the world’s strongest ceiling fan, complete with a Batman logo affixed to his chest.
(Did Bruce stop off at the cave to print this off or does he carry around a thumb drive with .eps files and print them locally when the need arises?)
In a touching epilogue, Bruce lays a pair of flowers on his parents’ grave and walks away, his shadow stretching out behind him and taking the shape of the cape and cowl.
Best Performance
Henry Polic’s original Scarecrow voice is solid, as British intelligence is always threatening, and he imbues it with some good whiney energy on top of that.
But it’s not in that upper tier of villain performances, so I have to give this one to Kevin Conroy again. There’s a reason he opens most of his public appearances with a rendition of “I am vengeance. I am the night. I… am… Batman!”
Beyond that he does a great job selling Bruce’s panic attacks, both in the moment and the lingering after effects. Vulnerability is a key component of an engaging character.
Ranking
The production staff aren’t big fans of this, with Henry Gilroy having never written a cartoon before, and Bruce Timm and Sean Catherine Derek clashing over her revisions. I don’t know exactly what went on behind the scenes, but I’m inclined to agree that it isn’t as good as the bullet points make it sound.
Scarecrow’s motivations are pretty meagre, and there’s also stuff like a blimp crashing and staying in the air, and Crane being able to predict when Batman will experience another hallucination down to the second. Doctor or not, that’s a little contrived, even for a children’s cartoon.
I do like the brief window into Bruce’s psyche, which is more fragile than he lets on. It enriches the character, and also shows off the fatherly bond he has with Alfred. Best of all, he triumphantly overcomes the effects of the toxin and ends up embracing the terror he instils in his foes, with his grim silhouette drawn to great effect in the climax.
But the connective tissue between these highlights isn’t strong enough to save it, so it’s our new bottom of the pile.
- On Leather Wings
- Christmas with the Joker
- Nothing to Fear (NEW ENTRY)
Rogues Roundup
The Scarecrow (Henry Polic II) (first appearance)
You know how a lot of Batman villains have a sympathetic backstory? Well, Scarecrow does not. He was a creepy little child who tortured animals and turned into a creepy little adult who tortured his test subjects. As motivations for turning to a life of crime go, getting fired from a university for being a dick isn’t a fantastic one, but the hook with Crane has generally always been the effects of his fear toxin rather than the character himself.
Delving into the psyche of your main characters is always a positive, and hallucinations allow for weird and wonderful visuals. Flaming ghosts, giant skeletons, gargoyle monsters? Yes. Yes to those. It’s also interesting to see the unflappable Batman reduced to a sweaty, quivering wreck, if only temporarily.
For this reason I have to place him above Man-Bat, who was extremely well deployed in terms of his slow reveal, but without much substance. Scarecrow at least has something to him, even if it’s not a very good something.
On an unrelated note this is one of my least favourite character designs in the Rogues Gallery. That’s not why I’m being hard on him, but I’ve never cared for this version. He’ll get better later though.
- The Joker
- Scarecrow (NEW ENTRY)
- Man-Bat
The Matt Signal 
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