#shows a clear capability to do better than tom king on their main comic line

[fantastic-nonsense]

out here fighting for my life on Twitter trying to convince people that the company that managed to bag Leigh Bardugo and Shannon Hale is perfectly capable of finding at least one talented woman on the planet to write the main Wonder Woman title instead of Tom King

[dcarevu]

The Underdwellers

“Rise and shine, Master Leprechaun!”

While Batman The Animated Series is generally considered to be a masterpiece, with some near-perfect episodes making up a lot of it, any show with as many episodes as it has is bound to have some that don’t quite measure up to the rest. A couple pieces of chewed up gum hidden on a floor covered in pillows. The Under-Dwellers is one of those gobs to a lot of people. But what about to Char and I? Well, here’s a game I like to play called It’s Not As Bad As It Gets Credit For. One that I usually play with Spider-Man 3, so let’s give a dark and brooding hero a chance. Well. One that doesn’t have emo hair and an all black suit. SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT

Villain: Sewer King Robin: No Writer: Tom Ruegger (Story), Jules Dennis, Richard Mueller (Teleplay) Director: Frank Paur Animator: Studio Junio Airdate: October 21, 1992 Episode Grade: C

Yup. A C rating. I can hear some of you laughing me off of this website already.

There are very valid reasons for this episode getting the criticism it does. Despite my grade, there are things that I complained about as well. The first scene involving the kids playing chicken on top of the train, for example. First of all, these kids are idiots, and it’s pretty hard for me to maintain the suspension of disbelief here, especially since this part was not overly entertaining. I did like Batman’s line, “You play chicken long enough, you fry” (Char didn’t so much, though) and overall how he handled the children, but other than that, no. The kid getting his ankle stuck is a trope I’ve seen enough times, and of course Batman is going to swoop in last second.

After that scene once we start with our real episode, we have a kid dressed in green running down the streets, stealing a purse from an old lady. She screams and tells the cops that a leprechaun was the culprit. Okay, this is well and good. A bit of comic relief, right? Plus, she’s old. Maybe she’s not as on things as she used to be. But when we get to the part where Batman tries to convince Alfred that it was a leprechaun, that’s where I start rolling my eyes. I mean, this is Batman. The Dark Knight. He sees a kid wearing a green hood. Why the hell would his first thought be that it’s a damn leprechaun? This is probably the most stupid thing I’ve ever seen on this show. I get that this is a world with a psychotic, murderous clown, man-eating plants, and a talking, stalking scarecrow. But this is something I can picture coming from Adam West, and not so much Bruce Wayne, especially when we are supposed to take this episode seriously.

Then later when we cut to under the sewers and see the child slavery in action. When this popped on screen, my internal thoughts were, “Oh no…” This episode was headed downhill quickly. Those of you familiar enough with Batman The Animated Series know that episodes about children is often where the writers just didn’t know what they were doing a lot of the time. We have a certain later episode focused on kids that I already know I’m giving a straight-up F, mark my words. Then we see the villain of the episode, who looks like he should be in a Disney Afternoon special. And I mean, he’s got an eyepatch built into his glasses. Jesus, how corny are we gonna get here?? But luckily from here, things didn’t really get worse to me. They got better. Hence the C. There are things in this episode I hate, then things I really liked.

What are some things I liked? While not 100% awesome, Alfred dealing with Frog, the under-dwelling child Batman finds, is cute. Despite having raised Bruce Wayne and, in a way, Dick Grayson, he insists that with children, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. And you almost believe it, watching him. But Frog is a real shithead, misbehaving in virtually every way possible. Some nice comic relief, because other than that, the episode is pretty dark as usual. Even with the concept of a guy running a sweatshop under the sewer (complete with gators!). I think that this is the main reason that people dismiss the episode. The concept alone. And yeah, I’m kinda surprised that this was Tom Ruegger who wrote the main story. Judging by this episode and the last, I think he’s more of a teleplay guy. The teleplay in this episode is actually pretty decent, though!

Also the animation! For most of the time, it’s the best we have seen so far, if you ask me. Granted, I’m no animation expert, so I can’t talk about technicals, but I loved the way it looked. There was some nice lighting, especially on Batman’s face, and wow, watching Batman fight those alligators! It’s the best fight scene we’ve gotten yet, and it actually looked like I remembered the action scenes from this show looking. Watching them slowly find their fitting when it comes to Batman kicking ass is super interesting. Their more cartoony Tiny Toons background is clear, where real fist fights were certainly not nearly as common (at least not to my memory). Char next to me gasped a couple times watching Batman take on those alligators. I always find it fascinating to watch Batman deal with animals other than humans. The thing with animals is that they aren’t thinking about what they’re doing like humans do. You can’t beat the shit out of them in the same way. The idea is simply to stop them from attacking, and then not going any further. When it comes to giant reptiles that could devour any human, yeah, that does involve some slamming around (admittedly, the one alligator who gets its mouth forced open was something that could have been left out). But I mean, I personally can say that I wouldn’t prefer to reason with them. Maybe compliment their lovely eyes? Yeah, no. And look how well-fed those gators are. What, you think their living so well on garbage people throw in the sewers? No. It was Char who brought this up to me, but y’know what the most likely thing is? Think about it. Gators eat pretty big meals. They eat meat. And the Sewer King was pretty quick to almost feed one of his slaves to them. They’ve probably been feeding on the kids. The ones who disobey too much…maybe the ones who get too old (it’s pretty unclear how this operation has been going on)…either way, yikes, these kids have it bad. I mean, these children are not even allowed to express vocal pain, as we see at the beginning as one of theme slams his shin with the tool he was using. It makes me cringe every time I see it. If Fox had allowed blood, man, lemme tell you, that would have bled.

So while some of the animation was great, for some reason on almost all of the scenes on the streets, it got really bad. Namely, at the beginning and end of the episode. When I started watching, Char and I both noted how it just didn’t look right. I was so afraid that the entire episode would look like this, and it just wasn’t the case. Why we had this discrepancy, I have no idea. Maybe all the damn budget went to the action? It’s the only thing I can think of. The whole episode, as far as I know, was done by the same studio. I’m not familiar with this studio’s work at all, and it really excites me to finally be able to pay attention and compare the work of all these studios who worked with the show. I’ll be going back occasionally to make sure I can comment on other episodes different studios have done occasionally. So if Junio pops up again, I’ll likely mention it. Hopefully their next episode (if there is one) keeps the good quality the entire show.

Most of the rest of the episode was mixed too. The villain was pretty shallow, and just kind of generic evil. On the other hand, Batman getting as pissed as he did and hunting this guy down was awesome. The voices of the children were pretty annoying. On the other hand, most of the children were completely mute (a truly wonderful thing). There were a lot of really corny lines from some of the characters. On the other hand, we had a guy in an even more ridiculous getup than a spooky bat costume yell, “Destroy that costumed freak!” Irony! Yeah, I don’t know guys. When you add in the fact that these children are gonna have some serious PTSD, and this type of thing, while exaggerated and made more accessible for the 7-year-olds, really does happen in the real world. Children are enslaved undoubtedly more than I realize, and more than I even want to know. I wish we had a Batman in real life to destroy these monsters, I truly do. Add all this together, with the fact that I simply didn’t feel the discomfort/displeasure throughout much of the episode, I can’t rate it too harshly. I’m not a professional critic. I’m just a guy with a blog, who makes his own rules. Because of that, yes. A C. I hope that’s fair.

Char’s grade: B

Major firsts: Batmobile’s transforming capabilities, Sewer King, a children-focused episode

Next time: P.O.V.