2 - BTAS "Heart of Ice"

 Air Date: September 7th, 1992


Recap:
After a string of robberies, Batman comes face-to-face with Mr. Freeze and narrowly escapes.  After investigating why he's targeting businessman Ferris Boyle, Batman discovers that Mr. Freeze is in fact Victor Fries, a scientist who has lost everything in his life due to Boyle's corporate greed.


Reflections:
Seeing this episode sandwiched between a number of kid-friendly shows was jarring, because it felt like watching a movie.  Most importantly, it showed that this series's supervillains weren't just going to be overblown caricatures, rather those with a tragic backstory just as dark as those as Batman's.
Ironically, Mr. Freeze up until this point had always been an overblown caricature with no well-known backstory (plus I think he unceremoniously got killed by the Joker in the comics a year prior).  This origin because the basis for many of Mr. Freeze's origins to come in the comics, movies and Arkham games.

This episode also introduced us to Summer Gleason, who was more or less a clone of Vicky Vale, minus the romance.  I was never a fan of the character's presence, and apparently neither were the show's producers as she was eventually phased out.

Ferris Boyle's great voice acting came from none other than Mark Hamill, who would go on to voice the Joker.  That's something I never figured when watching this initially.


Chronology Notes:
This was the 14th episode produced, but the third to air, and the first to air in its regular weekday timeslot.  Likely Fox Kids wanted to put the strongest episode available first.

1 - BTAS "On Leather Wings"

Air Date: September 6th, 1992

Recap:
When a mysterious bat-figure is terrorizing Gotham, the police send out a special task force to hunt Batman down.  Batman's investigation leads him to Dr. Langstrom, who believes that humans can only survive evolution by taking on traits of a bat - and his formula will supposedly do just that.

Reflections:
Superhero shows paled in comparison to their comic book counterparts at the time so my hopes weren't too high .  Obviously, this shattered all of my low exceptions to the point where I think my parents were worried that their 14 year old son was still into cartoons.

I was also a little surprised that they didn't go with more well-known villain like The Joker to start off the whole series, but it went to show that the series creators didn't need to rely these gimmicks to sell their stories.

Chronology Notes:
This was the first episode produced, but actually the second episode to air, after The Cat and the Claw, Part 1 premiered the day before on Saturday morning.  In an unusual move, Fox aired this on Sunday during prime time, which actually isn't so unusual when you realize that it was more mature than most prime time shows at the time.

Welcome!

For no reason I decided to re-watch the entire DC Animated Universe in chronological order.  About 10 years ago I made a list of every single episode, short, and movie in the DCAU and sorted them by a mixture of air date and production date, so I figured I'd finally try and watch them all.  We'll see how this goes.