Plot summary: The Joker offers to solve Lex Luthor’s Superman problem, but Batman follows him to Metropolis, leading to a terse first encounter between the two heroes.
Our Powers Combined…
I did originally review this and other crossovers between BTAS and the various other DCAU shows when this was a Batman-only project over at The Reel World. But I knew when I started republishing my work on this site that I wanted to do STAS in full, so opted to leave the original version behind as it was a whistle-stop grab bag of a piece, whereas this time I’m breaking down each episode in full.
If you’ve read my reviews of The New Batman Adventures you’ll already know that Bruce Timm had to be begged by the network to do more Batman. He had no interest, feeling they’d already done everything they wanted to do with the character, so chose Superman instead. One of his conditions for the show was a simplified aesthetic that would be easier to animate, so when he finally gave in and agreed to do TNBA he insisted that this streamlining carry over.
Thus when the second season of Superman got underway it did so as a double-bill with TNBA, facilitating this eagerly anticipated crossover, which takes its name from a long-running set of Batman/Superman team-up comics. It did pretty well and they ended up selling the trilogy of episodes together as ‘The Batman/Superman Movie’.
Notes and Trivia
Episode: 29 (S2.E16)
Original Air Date: October 4th, 1997
Directed: Toshihiko Masuda (3)
Written:Alan Burnett (4) (story & teleplay), Paul Dini (7) (story & teleplay) and Rich Fogel (teleplay) (4)
Animation: TMS-Kyokuichi Corporation (11)
Music: Michael McCuistion (8)
While Joker is credited with many murders throughout BTAS, this was in fact the first time to date somebody had been shown to die from Joker Venom in the DCAU.
Harley calls Lex Luthor “Mr. L”, patterned after her habit of calling Joker ‘Mr. J.’ However Mr. L was actually briefly an alias of Luthor in the comics.
It’s mentioned that previous owners of the Laughing Dragon statue met with an untimely end… Make a note of that…
Recap
In Gotham, The Joker and Harley Quinn steal ‘The Laughing Dragon’, a jade statue, murdering the shopkeeper for his troubles. Batman examines a fragment and discovers it’s radioactive, deciding he needs to take a trip to… Metropolis!
Meanwhile Lois Lane is aboard freakin’ Air Force One as it gets hijacked, but Superman immediately comes to her rescue. She tries to ask The Man of Steel on a date after, but he’s called away to help with a bank robbery.
Harley poses as Mercy Graves to abduct Lex so Joker can offer to kill Superman for the tidy fee of a billion dollars, revealing his kryptonite statue. Amused, Lex accepts the deal.
Meanwhile Lois & Clark await Bruce Wayne’s touted arrival for a business partnership with Luthor, and Lois takes an immediate shine to the playboy billionaire, who asks her out to dinner.
Lex demonstrates a little rescue drone born from the collaboration, which Bruce approves of, but when Luthor illustrates how they could also be used for military purposes he’s… less into it.
Bringing his Batsuit to town, Bruce hits a local nightclub demanding to know where The Joker is hiding out. Superman steps in, feeling he’s gone too far with the thugs, so Batman judo throws him!!!
Superman tackles Batman and uses his X-Ray vision to discover his secret identity, so Bruce whips out his Kryptonite shard to make Supes back off, and then pulls his disappearing act.
Later that night Lois calls to tell Clark she’s having breakfast with Bruce… who he realises is watching him from across the rooftops, having planted a bug on his cape during their skirmish!
TO BE CONTINUED…
Best Performance
It was genuinely really nice to hear my old pals Bob Hastings and Robert Costanzo in addition to the big three of Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill and Arleen Sorkin. It’s a short scene but I’m thrilled they found room in the script for the GCPD to really make it feel like home.
This feels like one of those half dozen instances where Hamill felt excited by the material and kicked it up a notch, and he’s on fine form from the jump, but especially when he’s yucking it up at Lex’s expense. Sorkin was pretty solid too, but nowhere close to her best. Conroy was a little more subdued, but this was during the era where Bruce Timm insisted he play Batman more monotone. He’s somewhat charming flirting with Lois, but otherwise a step behind everybody else if I’m being honest. I did like him talking about Bruce in the third person though.
But nobody stands a chance when Dana Delany gets real material to work with. From talking shit to her hijackers to nervously asking Superman out, to doing both sides of the conversation when admonishing herself after, then thirsting over and becoming flustered by Bruce, she’s an absolute delight in this role and it’s a shame BTAS doesn’t have an equivalent character. Catwoman was decent, but only made sporadic appearances and wasn’t written or voiced as well as Lois. I honestly think she’s got a strong case for best actor in the DCAU. Definitely in the Top 5 and she ain’t fifth.
Episode Ranking
As a reminder: Multi-part episodes are now being ranked as a complete package, so wherever I place this after Part I is not necessarily its final position.
They didn’t really need to try all that hard to make this a compelling episode as their two titans collide for the first time. Not just Batman and Superman, but Joker, Harley and Lex too. And all with Lois Lane caught in the middle! As I say, they didn’t need to try hard, but you can tell that they wanted to pull out all the stops for Part I in particular, delivering everything you could want out of a crossover. Everybody gets a strong showcase, guests and series regulars alike. But they absolutely nailed the crucial confrontation scene, one of the most popular moments in the history of superhero animation. You can feel the tension in the nightclub when Batman instinctually throws Superman clean across the room. He obviously fucked up but he stands tall, utterly unafraid of his physical superior. Clark calmly reminds him who the big dog is in this equation, but Batman ALWAYS has a plan and I love that he’s unphased by Supes discovering his secret, moving straight on to the Kryptonite contingency. That each man is able to learn the other’s identity in a little pissing contest is just the juiciest possible way to end Part I. Bravo.
Beyond the obvious main attraction of Batman vs Superman, the glue that holds this all together in my opinion is the love triangle with Lois and it’s amazing how differently I feel about it now than I did when I reviewed these episodes years earlier. Originally I found it funny to see Bruce waltz into town and score a date with Lois, but after spending a season and a half with Clark I couldn’t help but feel bad for the big lug. Bruce doesn’t actually have much desire for a social life (though arguably a little more so in BTAS than other continuities) and he manages to swoop in and start a relationship with the object of Clark’s affections, though of course Supes is deliberately keeping her at arm’s length.
Still there’s something to be said for the confidence of a rich city slicker who wastes no time versus the polite-to-a-fault farmboy who has just been pining for years. She is in zero ways required to sit around waiting for Superman to decide he wants to settle down with her, and Bruce is a big rich dish who presents as someone who knows what he wants and goes after it. That’s attractive in a partner and you simply have to be happy for her… even if it feels a little shitty of her to rub it in Clark’s face by preemptively calling in late for work. It also feels like a deliberate follow-up to Fascist Superman getting to kiss her before the main one in ‘Brave New Metropolis‘, both in the sense of returning to the same well of narrative tension and that Lois has become bolder about asking him out since then. In fact, the hijacking scene arguably teases more of this given word is out with criminals that Superman always saves Lois, arguably defeating his main justification to not get closer to her.
It’s also one of the better looking episodes. Koko & Dong Yang do solid, consistent work, but I’m grateful this episode ended up in the hands of TMS. Look no further than the nightclub scene (above) as to why that’s the case, as they do sublime work with the lighting, and the extra run time lets them revel in that before Batman crashes through the ceiling to intimidate the goons. Even the little touches like the champagne bubbles fizzing around the Kryptonite, or the little spider-robot are great.
We’ve got a lot of road left, and from memory this is the strongest of the three parts, but it’s tough to argue this isn’t among the best episodes in the show.
- Brave New Metropolis
- World’s Finest (NEW ENTRY)
- Livewire
- Double Dose
- Fun and Games
- Father’s Day
- The Last Son of Krypton
- Ghost in the Machine
- Stolen Memories
- Action Figures
- The Prometheon
- Tools of the Trade
- The Main Man
- Mxzypixilated
- Blasts from the Past
- Target
- The Way of All Flesh
- Solar Power
- My Girl
- A Little Piece of Home
- Feeding Time
- Speed Demons
- Two’s a Crowd
- Identity Crisis
- Monkey Fun
Rogues Roundup
Lex Luthor (Clancy Brown) (twelfth appearance)
The premise demands that he take a backseat to a guest villain from another show, which is somewhat problematic, but I do like that he finds Joker’s proposal funny, dubious that he can pull it off. He also gets shut down in smooth fashion by Bruce when he pitches him on getting into the arms business, which at least feels consistent with his treatment throughout the series. He simply LOVES to sell weapons to the military!
It’s not character assassination or anything, and I’m not going to knock him back down after he finally climbed into second place, but the scales are definitely tipped closer to Joker than Lex here.
Mercy Graves (Lisa Edelstein) (sixth appearance)
I know she had built a pretty big following already at the time of this episode, but it is kind of wild to me that Harley gets to do so much more than Mercy given they were clearly trying to draw parallels between them.
While Harley is gassing shopkeepers, beating up mobsters and kidnapping Lex… Mercy is just getting beaten up by Harley. Not a strong introduction if you’re checking out STAS for the first time as a Batman fan.
The Joker (Mark Hamill) (first appearance)
I’ve made my thoughts on the redesign of Joker abundantly clear in my TNBA reviews, but I’ll grant them that he looks pretty creepy when he enters the doorway at the start of the episode.
Letting Joker take over a Metropolis mobster’s operation is the kind of thing they’re only able to do thanks to it being a multi-part episode, and I’m thankful for that, as even if you’d never seen a second of BTAS his actions in this episode impress how dangerous he is, killing and hospitalising two guys. All without giving up any of his whimsy and showmanship.
Naturally I’m ignoring his dozens of BTAS episodes for this ranking, so he’s not going straight to the top… but it is a really strong appearance even in a vacuum, good enough to be knocking on the door of the upper echelon.
Harley Quinn (Arleen Sorkin) (first appearance)
As I said above, they make sure to give Harley plenty to do so that you get she’s not just Joker’s eye candy. If anything she does 95% of the heavy lifting while Mistah Jay runs his mouth.
It is cute that by disguising herself as Mercy she’s recreating her look from ‘Joker’s Favor’ when she collects Charlie from the airport. I also enjoyed her banter about Joker being a cute hitchhiker, complete with him wearing heels and showing some leg.
Again, we’re analysing her appearance in a bubble, so I’d place her a little below Joker but still relatively high.
- Livewire
- Lex Luthor (–)
- Darkseid
- Toyman
- Metallo
- Parasite
- The Joker (NEW ENTRY)
- Brainiac
- Mr. Mxyzptlk
- Kalibak
- Harley Quinn (NEW ENTRY)
- Lobo
- Luminus
- Mercy Graves (–)
- DeSaad
- The Preserver
- Bruno Mannheim (and Intergang!)
- Kanto
- Mala & Jax-Ur
- The Prometheon
- Bizarro
- Earl Garver
- Titano
- Detective Bowman
- Weather Wizard
The Matt Signal 
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