Plot summary: Joker makes his move, kidnapping Lois Lane and daring Superman to try and rescue her, but doesn’t count on Batman helping out.
Notes and Trivia
Episode: 30 (S2.E17)
Original Air Date: October 4th, 1997
Directed: Toshihiko Masuda (4)
Written: Alan Burnett (5) (story), Paul Dini (8) (story) and Steve Gerber (teleplay) (2)
Animation: TMS-Kyokuichi Corporation (12)
Music: Michael McCuistion (9)
As this trio of episodes aired in the evening they were eligible for and won a Primetime Emmy, which TMS display in their lobby.
I couldn’t put a number on it, but this has to be one of only a small handful of meetings between Joker and Bruce out of costume, right? There’s Joker’s Wild aaaand… uhhh…. Probably at least one more instance?
Recap
Joker makes his first move against Superman by kidnapping Lois during a date with Bruce, doing his best to murder our beloved billionaire in the process.
The Clown Prince sends Superman an invitation ostensibly only he can see, but Batman tracks his movement in the Bat-Wing and follows.
Joker excitedly unveils his huge chunk of Kryptonite, but Superman heeded Batman’s warning and wore his Anti-K suit. Of course the thing isn’t acid-proof, so Joker just burns a giant hole in it and brings Supes to his knees.
Batman fights his way through Joker’s hired muscle but Harley radios ahead, leading to the heroes being locked in and gassed.
Bruce destroys the Kryptonite, allowing Superman to recover and fly him and Lois to safety after Joker escapes thanks to some explosive marbles.
In the aftermath Lex scolds Joker for his failure and Clark learns of their connection, taking the information to Lois… and by extension Bruce.
Confronting his business partner as Batman, Bruce is unable to get Joker’s location from Lex, but sure does spook him… before he calmly decides to help Joker deal with The Caped Crusader.
Joker lures Superman 200 miles out to sea to help a sinking ship, leaving Batman on his own back in Metropolis, where one of Lex’ war-bots takes aim…
TO BE CONTINUED…
Best Performance
Conroy switching from Bruce voice to Batman voice was somewhat of a rarity in TNBA, so I’m glad they snuck it in here when he and Clark ‘talk shop’ about Joker at the start of the episode. I also got a good chuckle out of the delivery of “I’m aware of that.” after Superman says he couldn’t have rescued Lois without him.
It’s definitely the Mark Hamill show this time though. I don’t know if he’s necessarily any better than he is in Part I (where he was already really good!) as much as he just got more screen time while Lois spent a decent chunk of the episode as a hostage. Joker lording it over The Man of Steel and unleashing his trademark laugh definitely goes on the DCAU highlight reel. I also enjoyed him yelling at Harley for trying to get him to laugh about blowing his billion dollar deal.
Episode Ranking
This is a far more paint-by-numbers affair than the electric opener, which seemed to pour over every second of screen time to make sure it was firing on all cylinders. In fact this episode made me appreciate how sterling the pacing was in the first all the more, as they achieved so much in the first 5 minutes and by comparison all we really got here was the quickest bit of Bruce/Clark banter, Joker kidnapping Lois and then taunting her. Not that those are bad things by any means, but the episode really never got out of second gear in my opinion.
You’ve only really got two big juicy things here amidst relatively weak connective tissue, namely the first meetings of Superman & Joker and Batman & Lex Luthor. The latter is disappointingly brief, which is somewhat surprising given they had three parts to work with and as mentioned above so little actually happens here compared to the opener. Sure Lex conveys how terrifying Batman is meant to be to first-timers, but Bruce completely fails to actually get any intel and leaves as quickly as he arrived having achieving nothing more than convincing Lex to help kill Batman to make Joker’s job easier. Luckily Joker beating the stuffing out of Superman is pretty great. The Anti-Kryptonite suit really needs to be made of durable material because villains simply keep ripping holes in it to render it useless. The only problem with these being the biggest and best moments of the episode is I have a whole section for the villains aaaand I don’t have quite as much left to talk about in the episode review.
I did like that Bruce and Clark started off shockingly cordial given they literally fought when they last saw each other… but then things quickly devolve into a lighthearted pissing contest. Clark besmirches Bruce’s good name so Bruce hits him with a ‘ya snooze, ya lose’ about Lois. I was also pleasantly surprised Clark wasn’t angrier at Bruce that Lois got kidnapped on his watch, but that’s what a decade of Zack Snyder influence will do to your expectations. Clark is a good man and these things happen. Like super regularly. I much prefer these gentle jabs from two people who are never in doubt they’re on the same team but with different methods. They’re reserving the proper team-up for the finale, but we did get to see them take turns saving each other as a teaser.
But yeah, the rest of the episode is pretty generic. The action scenes don’t look as good as they did last time, and the art design in general is much weaker. They devoted a lot of time to Batman running the gauntlet to save Superman and it just… wasn’t all that fun, really. We’ve seen literally dozens upon dozens of ‘Batman takes on armed thugs’ sequences and this one wouldn’t even crack the top half. Also I’ve seen my share of scenes where goons shoot lazily at someone and miraculously miss… but the scene where Joker kidnaps Lois was one of the very worst. I’m not sure if it’s how it was written or a failure to translate the idea into animation (likely a little of both), but it was so uncharacteristically clumsy. It’s not like the goons were trying to miss just to intimidate Bruce, because Joker demands they check he’s definitely dead after he tumbles over the balcony. Instead he miraculously takes zero damage from somewhere in the region of 30-50 gunshots. Is that nitpicky? Absolutely. But the DCAU has established a quality threshold that means they can’t just suddenly do a scene like this without reprimand.
I wondered if Part I was in fact strong enough for first place, but this middle-act is so much of a step down that not only am I fine with my previous decision but I’m sliding the collective down to fifth place. Sometimes single episodes need to be two-parters. Sometimes multi-parters don’t justify their episode count. This one smacks of them having like… 2.5 episodes worth of ideas and then padding this one for time.
- Brave New Metropolis
- Livewire
- Double Dose
- Fun and Games
- World’s Finest (↓)
- 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) (thirteenth appearance)
Joker kind of embarrasses Lex in their first meeting in the limo, doing his little jokes while Lex growls, so it’s only fair he’d get the better of their second exchange, threatening to murder him for failing to kill Superman. Of course Joker is easily able to talk his way out of it and Lex’s next moment is being scared of Batman, but hey!
I really don’t want to have to do this buuuut, I think I’ve got to slide him back down a slot. I acknowledged before how the nature of the premise means he has to take a backseat to Joker, but I really need more from him if he’s going to cling on.
Mercy Graves (Lisa Edelstein) (seventh appearance)
I feel so bad for this fictional character. It really felt like they had made a conscious effort to grow her role, and here we are with a perfect excuse to emulate the successful partnership of Joker & Harley and she’s… telling reporters to buzz off.
Oh sorry, I’m forgetting about this marvellous and not at all cringe ‘catfight’, which per Bruce Timm was one of their very earliest ideas for the crossover. Sorry, Mercy, down you go until the writing staff figure out what to do with you.
The Joker (Mark Hamill) (second appearance)
It’s pretty tough to get around the fact Joker strolls into town from a whole other show and in his first encounter with Superman literally dances around his barely conscious body after easily outfoxing him. It’s not an amalgamated list of villains but if it were it would be pretty tricky to keep Puddin’ off the top.
I have no choice but to slide him up to just below Lex. Exciting!
Harley Quinn (Arleen Sorkin) (second appearance)
After a really strong showcase to get her started, Harley is mostly reduced to playing lookout and standing next to Joker while he does cool shit. I guess it’s only fair Mercy would get her lick back after being the one to be embarrassed in their first meeting.
I’ve moved Lex and Mercy down for having consecutive weak showings, but I’m willing to let Harley stay where she is for now.
- Livewire
- Darkseid
- Lex Luthor (↓)
- The Joker (↑)
- Toyman
- Metallo
- Parasite
- Brainiac
- Mr. Mxyzptlk
- Kalibak
- Harley Quinn (–)
- Lobo
- Luminus
- DeSaad
- Mercy Graves (↓)
- 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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