Plot summary: An Invisible Man robs from the rich to try and get close to his estranged daughter, unaware of who Bruce Wayne runs around as at night…
(Originally published on The Reel World September 5th, 2020)
Notes
Original Air Date: February 24th, 1993
Directed: Dan Riba (1)
Written: Martin Pasko (1)
Animation: Dong Yang Animation Co., LTD. (4) (with layouts by Spectrum Animation Co.)
Music: Shirley Walker (13)
This was one of the most delayed episodes in the show due to the script being thrown out and rewritten. It was intended to be 17th (hence it being covered here) but ended up airing near the end of season 1.
Some of those script changes stemmed from strict rules around depicting children in peril, which meant the entire final act had to be redone as Kimmy was originally in danger from the malfunctioning suit.
Ventrix’s daughter is voiced by a young Elizabeth Moss who would go on to star in a remake of The Invisible Man. Neat!
First appearance on the show of recurring Batman ally Lucius Fox.
A popular fan theory is the invisibility tech was later incorporated into the advanced Batsuit built from Batman Beyond.
Coincidentally, Lloyd Ventrix’s voice actor, Michael Gross, voiced Warren McGinnis, father of Beyond‘s protagonist, Terry.
Recap
We open with a window seemingly opening on its own and a disembodied voice talking to a sleeping little girl. Oh boy.
A doll floats into the air but little Kimmy is excited as she has spoken to “Mojo” before. The invisible man hands her a pendant and promises her a pearl necklace in future. I meaaaaaaan.
Kimmy says she’s going to be moving soon, which troubles “Mojo”. Her mother walks in and tells her to go back to sleep, laughing off stories about an imaginary friend.
A man carrying a briefcase walks into some fancy building or other and locks himself in the bathroom. Per the laws of Scooby-Doo, this man is revealed as our Invisible Man and he vanishes from sight and goes to work pickpocketing the wealthy elite’s jewellery. Bruce Wayne, witnessing the phantom thefts, sprints to the same bathroom to do a costume change of his own.
Batman gives chase and remarks how he hears footsteps that seemingly belong to nobody. Some conveniently located wet cement provides a trail, and Bats tosses paint on him. The thief adjusts his watch doo-dad and the paint melts off, allowing him to escape.
The Invisible Man returns home and dumps out all of his stolen loot. He promises a framed picture of Kimmy – revealed as his daughter to the shock of nobody – that he won’t let her mother take her away from him.
The now very visible man follows Helen from her job to a cafe, begging to see Kimmy but she tells him to go to hell, wishing he would “disappear”.
Bruce visits with Wayne Tech’s top science boys to ask about invisibility tech. They provide a lead to an old prospective business partner that Batman follows up on.
He grills a researcher about the invisibility material and we learn that it’s toxic, and an ex-con lab assistant named Lloyd Ventrix is the only other person who knows about it. Again, Scooby Doo logic.
Batman creeps up on Helen Ventrix while she’s taking out the trash. Yikes. He explains his theory about her ex and she quickly puzzles out who “Mojo” is, but it’s too late, as Lloyd has taken Kimmy.
Kimmy is hesitant to get in a car with “Mojo”, so he tries to make her feel better by revealing his face. This naturally has the opposite effect than intended and she tries to get away, but Lloyd grabs her and tells her he’s her father. That doesn’t help either, as she’s been told all about him, and Batman swoops in to save her.
Lloyd makes it to his car, also coated in the invisible material and makes several attempts to run Batman over. The sound is enough of a giveaway to allow Bruce to grab hold of the roof. This results in a pretty funny sequence where it appears Batman is flying around Gotham.
Batman tries to warn Lloyd about the toxicity but he refuses to listen. Both men bail from the car after it ends up in the path of an oncoming train. Ventrix continues kicking Batman’s ass, but a handful of Batarangs lead to a ruptured water tower, making him visible enough for our hero to lay him out.
Later, Kimmy talks to another unseen individual, telling her mother it was Batman this time. Helen say she believes her, but I kind of wish Kimmy were lying, because Batman KEEPS stalking children to end episodes.
Best Performance
When this episode began I was fully prepared to give the nod to Michael Gross as he provides a suitably creepy disembodied voice. He goes from sinister when talking to his daughter to cocky when he gets one up on Batman. He’s good at both.
But Jean Smart is frequently the best part of whatever she’s in, and this episode is no exception. I had no clue she was even in the show, but boy was I glad to hear her voice. It’s a small role but she gives them far more than they might deserve, with a strong-willed rebuff to Lloyd’s advances while also conveying believable distress when her daughter goes missing. This is a case of quality over quantity.
Finally another shout out to Elizabeth Moss for getting in her practice for The Invisible Man 30 years ahead of her casting. Wild. I wonder if she remembers this role.
Ranking
I liked this episode as it ended up feeling distinctly like Batman despite the invisible man stuff being well-trodden ground. Lest we forget, Bruce is a detective, and his creative ways to render Ventrix temporarily visible made for a fun game of cat and mouse. It was also funny watching Batman get beaten up by thin air, and a riot to see him flying about the city atop an invisible car. It all made for some unorthodox action scenes, and that’s welcome when we generally know what we’re getting on that front episode to episode.
Bruce exploiting his tech connections to track down clues and unravel the mystery was good attention to the overall show lore too.
The main drive of the episode being Ventrix’s attempts to kidnap his own daughter by posing as her quasi-imaginary friend put a spin on the invisible man formula, and all three members of the family were well acted.
It does lose a little steam in the middle which prevents it from climbing even higher, and I suspect many would be shocked to see it this high anyway, but again, I like how they took something you’ve seen before and put a show-specific twist on it.
- Heart of Ice
- Two-Face Part I
- On Leather Wings
- Pretty Poison
- Two-Face Part II
- It’s Never Too Late
- See No Evil (NEW ENTRY)
- The Cat and the Claw Part I
- P.O.V.
- Christmas with the Joker
- Be a Clown
- The Cat and the Claw Part II
- Nothing to Fear
- The Last Laugh
- The Under-Dwellers
- The Forgotten
- I’ve Got Batman in My Basement
Rogues Roundup
Lloyd Ventrix (Michael Gross) (first appearance)
Another original creation, Lloyd Ventrix is pretty memorable and has a lot more going on than Red Claw. As mentioned earlier, he shifts between unintentionally creepy as he tries to maintain a relationship with his oblivious daughter, to a fun villain who gets to lord it over Batman a few times.
They could perhaps have gone the sympathetic villain route, as a man losing his daughter and going too far in his efforts to keep her in his life is a compelling motivation, but that kind of goes out the window given his actions towards Helen, harassing her in public. He also makes a bad situation infinitely worse when he tries to take Kimberly by force at the end. That doesn’t in itself make him a worse villain, and they can’t ALL be tragically misunderstood, it was perhaps a missed opportunity to play in the morally grey zone.
I’ll keep banging the ‘Rupert Thorne is Great, Actually’ drum for as long as I need to, and he remains the gatekeeper to the upper echelon of villains, though I do keep looking at that Scarecrow ranking and scratching my head as to how I let him get so high up when I made a point of how lame his motivation was. Ya know what? Screw it, let’s fix that while we’re adding Ventrix to the list. He can always reclaim the spot in his future appearances.
- Mr. Freeze
- Joker
- Two-Face
- Poison Ivy
- Catwoman
- Rupert Thorne
- Lloyd Ventrix (NEW ENTRY)
- Scarecrow
- Red Claw
- Arnold Stromwell
- Man-Bat
- Penguin
- Sewer King
- Boss Biggis
The Matt Signal 
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