Plot summary: The Penguin tinkers with the Batmobile after uncovering the secret of Batman’s personal mechanic.

(Originally published on The Reel World January 16th, 2021)

Notes

Original Air Date: January 24^th, 1993

Directed: Kevin Altieri (14)

Written: Steve Perry (5) (story) & Laren Bright (6) (story), and Randy Rogel (7) (teleplay)

Animation: Akom Production Co. (13)

Music: John Tatgenhorst (1) & Peter Tomashek (3)

This episode’s plot is obviously taken from Batman Returns.

One of Penguin’s henchmen is referred to as Falcone. Presumably this is not meant to be mob boss Carmine Falcone, and simply another bird pun.

Earl Cooper Auto Repair can be found in the Arkham Knight video game.

Recap

We open in media res with a car chase between Batman & Robin and a group of Penguin’s men, one of whom opens fire on the Batmobile with a tommy gun.

The goons attempt to jump a gap in a bridge after it lets a barge pass, landing on the boat instead and nearly dying. Luckily for them, an uncharacteristically careless Batman fails to brake in time and the front end of the Batmobile gets crushed in the now-lowered bridge. Bummer.

Bruce drives the wrecked Batmobile to a seemingly abandoned warehouse in a shady part of town, which is concealing a secret auto-repair workshop. A man named Earl Cooper weighs the damage while our vigilantes make bird puns.

Earl offers the two a pair of Bat-Bikes and they immediately take off to try and capture Penguin’s men, leaving Earl and his daughter to order replacement parts.

Over at Penguin’s secret lair, essentially an even larger Batcave, the villain throws a tantrum that his men didn’t steal good enough loot. He threatens one of them with a vulture, Percival (what happened to Scrap???), but his mood improves when he’s introduced to Arnold Rundle.

See, Arnold Rundle works for an auto parts distributor, and he correctly deduces Earl Cooper’s recent order was for the Batmobile. Penguin offers him $400,000 as a reward, but instead sends him off to his ostensible death.

Just as Earl has finished his repairs, Penguin and his men attack the shop and make some ‘modifications’ of their own while holding Earl’s daughter hostage.

At Penguin’s insistence, we go to a black and white flashback of how Earl came to work with Bats in the first place:

Earl used to work at Global Motors, who ignored his warnings about a new car with brake issues and had him attacked to warn him off whistleblowing. Batman naturally intervened, but the damage was already done to Earl’s reputation.

A jobless Earl was approached by Batman some time later, seeking a replacement for his original Batmobile, thus the more famous version was designed and built by Earl.

Back in the present, Penguin’s men finish up and take Earl’s daughter with them to ensure cooperation. Earl gives Batman a less than subtle hint, but it goes undetected by ‘The World’s Greatest Detective’.

A car chase ensues, with Penguin revealing he can remotely control the Batmobile and causing mayhem, with Batman and Robin unable to even escape the vehicle.

Batman at last figures out Earl’s secret code (he “fixed” the air conditioning switch), allowing them to eject moments before death. The Dynamic Duo pursue via glider and bring Penguin down.

Earl closes up his shop, with Batman promising the new one will come with a series of shell companies to order parts through to make him impossible to trace. Penguin meanwhile spends his prison sentence furiously working on licence plates.

Best Performance

Nobody really stood out to me here, as it was pretty pedestrian stuff for Kevin Conroy and Loren Lester, and while Paul Winfield was perfectly fine as Earl, it was nothing to write home about. There’s some casting weirdness with Earl’s daughter, Marva, as both Candy Brown and Lynne Moody have been credited as the actress in different places, perhaps hinting at re-dubbing?

Thus I’m going with Paul Williams as Penguin once again. It’s not his best outing in the role, but he still outshone the rest of the cast, with his dangerous temper peppered back in after an attempt to go straight in ‘Birds of a Feather’. The scene with him threatening his own men, then perking up, then murdering Arnold Rundle, and then busying himself with the auto parts paperwork was some excellent moment-to-moment tonal shifting.

Episode Ranking

Listen, I know it’s a controversial opinion, but I’m firmly on record expressing my intense dislike of Batman Returns, so to me this episode is essentially a superior version of the small sub-plot it’s based on with Penguin taking control of the Batmobile. Which IS a fun premise!

More importantly it’s another episode that fleshes out the world of the show, both in terms of the logistics of how Batman keeps his top of the line monster vehicle in order, and via the flashback, which contained some fun little nods to the golden and silver age era of Batman. The OG Batmobile is really something.

It loses some points for making Batman oblivious to Earl all but spelling the situation out to him, but that’s a minor quibble that doesn’t ruin an otherwise simple, fun episode.

[2023 Edit: This one is way too high. I don’t think it’s one of the absolute worst episodes, but can spot several that it should sit below. I like fleshing out the mythos, but it does feel a little too silly.]

1. The Laughing Fish
2. Almost Got ‘Im
3. Heart of Ice
4. I Am the Night
5. Robin’s Reckoning Part I
6. The Man Who Killed Batman
7. Perchance to Dream
8. Two-Face Part I
9. Joker’s Favor
10. Feat of Clay Part II
11. Robin’s Reckoning Part II
12. Beware the Gray Ghost
13. Mad as a Hatter
14. Heart of Steel Part II
15. Appointment In Crime Alley
16. Two-Face Part II
17. Pretty Poison
18. Feat of Clay Part I
19. Off Balance
20. Vendetta
21. Birds of a Feather
22. Heart of Steel Part I
23. On Leather Wings
24. See No Evil
25. The Clock King
26. It’s Never Too Late
27. Joker’s Wild
28. Eternal Youth
29. The Cape and Cowl Conspiracy
30. The Cat and the Claw Part I
31. Zatanna
32. Day of the Samurai
33. The Mechanic [NEW ENTRY]
34. The Strange Secret of Bruce Wayne
35. Terror in the Sky
36. P.O.V.
37. Christmas with the Joker
38. Fear of Victory
39. Be a Clown
40. What is Reality?
41. Night of the Ninja
42. Mudslide
43. The Cat and the Claw Part II
44. Nothing to Fear
45. Prophecy of Doom
46. Tyger, Tyger
47. If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?
48. Dreams In Darkness
49. The Last Laugh
50. Cat Scratch Fever
51. Moon of the Wolf
52. Paging the Crime Doctor
53. The Under-Dwellers
54. The Forgotten
55. I’ve Got Batman in My Basement

Rogues Roundup

The Penguin (Paul Williams) (fifth appearance)

While he’s not as good as in ‘Birds of a Feather’, the rehabilitation work that and ‘Almost Got ‘Im’ did for Penguin has gone a long way, so that even these blah appearances seem better than they would have a dozen episodes ago. He FEELS like a major antagonist now, and getting to futz around with the Batmobile is some big villain stuff.

Indeed, Penguin isn’t always presented as an evil mirrored version of Batman, but it does work surprisingly well. They’re both wealthy, avian themed, love gadgetry and this episode adds a lair that greatly resembles the Batcave. Lets slide Oz into the top ten, shall we?

1. The Joker
2. Mr. Freeze
3. Two-Face
4. Mad Hatter
5. Poison Ivy
6. Catwoman
7. Harley Quinn
8. Clayface
9. Penguin (↑)
10. The Riddler
11. Clock King
12. Killer Croc
13. HARDAC (and Randa Duane)
14. Lloyd Ventrix
15. Count Vertigo
16. Josiah Wormwood
17. Scarecrow
18. Roland Daggett (and Germs & Bell!)
19. Rupert Thorne
20. Sid the Squid
21. Jimmy ‘Jazzman’ Peake
22. Tony Zucco
23. Man-Bat
24. Hugo Strange
25. Red Claw
26. Arnold Stromwell
27. Mad Bomber
28. Tygrus (and Dr. Dorian)
29. Kyodai Ken
30. Talia al Ghul
31. Ra’s al Ghul
32. Nostromos (and Lucas!)
33. Cameron Kaiser
34. Dr. Dorian (and Garth)
35. Professor Milo
36. Romulus
37. Sewer King
38. Boss Biggis
39. Montague Kane