On November 10, Kevin Conroy died at age 66.
For thirty years, through dozens of series, movies and video games, Conroy was the voice
of Batman.
The role, which he won after spending a decade acting on television, was Conroy’s big break.
Batman would define Conroy for the rest of his life, and Conroy, in turn, would define
Batman for a generation.
With the possible exception of Adam West, no other actor has ever been as closely and
exclusively associated with Batman as Kevin Conroy.
And it’s no mystery why.
The world was introduced to Conroy’s Batman in 1992 with the premiere of Batman: The Animated
Series, a show which many people consider to be the definitive take on the character.
I’ve called it the Batman that everyone can agree on — even those of us who don’t
count it as our very favorite version of Batman can’t help but admire the animated series,
and Conroy’s performance sits right at the heart of it.
You listen to Conroy on Batman: The Animated series and it’s the audio equivalent of
seeing Christopher Reeve in the Superman costume.
It’s just right.
That’s Batman’s voice.
To achieve that voice, Conroy synthesized bits of two prior performances of superhero
characters that were also regarded by many as definitive in their own right.
He employs the same technique used by Bud Collyer, who played Superman on the radio
and in the Fleischer Studios animated shorts in the 1940s, using two distinct voices to
play the costumed hero and his civilian identity.
Like Collyer did with Clark Kent, Conroy played Bruce Wayne with a higher, friendlier tone.
Then, for his Batman voice, like Collyer’s Superman, Conroy switched to a deeper tone.
And, he also adopted the low rasp introduced by Michael Keaton in the 1989 Batman film,
something almost every actor to play Batman has done some version of since.
But Conroy takes his performance beyond Collyer and Keaton in a couple of ways.
First, his Batman voice, though bearing a superficial similarity to Keaton’s, is far
richer and capable of expressing a greater range of emotion.
While Keaton’s rough whisper is clearly an attempt by Bruce Wayne to disguise his
voice while in costume, Conroy’s Batman voice sounded genuine.
Second, and related to that: Conroy lets us know through his performance that the Batman
voice is how the character sounds when speaking normally.
His bright, optimistic Bruce Wayne is the disguise — the voice of Batman is his true
self.
Appreciate the help, Doc.
I’ll return the favor next time you’re raising funds.
Bye bye.
This computer checked that fiber against every animal species known to man . . .
This is the standard interpretation of the character throughout the grim and gritty 1980s
and ‘90s and early 2000s — Batman is his true face, Bruce Wayne is the mask, man — Rachel
says more or less exactly that to Bruce at the end of Batman Begins — but the animated
series, thanks to Conroy’s performance, is able to get that point across without veering
too sharply into grim and gritty territory.
The Batman of the animated series, and the many spin-offs and sequels that followed,
which eventually became collectively known as the DC Animated Universe, is played straight
— he’s not the ironic, deadpan comedy figure of the Adam West series — but, because
it was a children’s show, Batman: The Animated series keeps things from getting too heavy.
The darker side of Batman’s world and backstory is occasionally alluded to, but rarely ever
shown.
The murders of Bruce Wayne’s parents are fleetingly referenced, and highly stylized
on the rare instances when they’re depicted visually.
It’s in this “dark, but not too dark” space that Conroy truly comes into his own
as Batman.
Through the animated series, Justice League, and other DCAU projects to feature him, Conroy’s
Batman is everything one might expect him to be based on the character’s reputation
— cool, intimidating, somewhat autocratic.
But, Controy shows us other sides of the character as well.
His Batman can growl and threaten and speak with a voice of anger, but that same voice
can speak with compassion, and intelligence — it can be the voice of a loyal friend,
a concerned father, a heartbroken son.
That range is on full display in the episode of Batman: The Animated Series which contains
what Kevin Conroy himself considered his best performance as Batman.
It’s an episode titled “Perchance to Dream.”
We open on action, as the Batmobile is in hot pursuit of some crooks!
The crooks make it to a warehouse and run inside.
Batman follows, but all of a sudden something comes crashing down on him from the ceiling
— and everything goes black.
A moment later, he wakes up in bed at Wayne Manor, as though starting up from a bad dream.
He’s confused — what happened?
How’d he get home?
Alfred is here, but he’s not offering anything in the way of helpful answers.
He just says “Drink your coffee and I’ll fix breakfast.”
So, Bruce gets dressed and heads into the study — whether or not he drank the coffee
remains a mystery to this day, I know I’d certainly like to know.
He goes to the grandfather clock to open the secret door to the batcave, but — what’s
this?
The door isn’t there.
Weird.
When Alfred walks in a moment later, he doesn’t seem to have any idea what the Batcave is!
Weirder.
Then, Bruce’s parents walk in!
Super weird!
Er, bat-weird, I guess.
Actually, not bat-weird — that’s the whole point.
No Batcave, alive parents — is Bruce not Batman?
When did that happen?
Bruce goes to splash some water on his face, and his old man follows to check on him.
Bruce is still obviously confused about, well, just everything, but he goes along with it
when his Dad talks to him about work and playing golf as though it’s all just normal!
Later, Bruce is bored at the office.
Then, Selina Kyle — his fiance in this inexplicable alternate life — drops in for a visit.
They don’t get to say much to each other because not long after she arrives, Bruce
looks out the window and sees — Batman!
Bruce and Selina run down to the street and watch along with a crowd of onlookers as Batman
apprehends a gang of jewel thieves.
He swings around, grabs one dude with his legs and slams him into a wall, causes their
getaway car to crash into a fire hydrant.
The hydrant breaks and water sprays all over the place.
Everybody’s all wet — including Selina, who isn’t standing anywhere near the water!
She’s watching Batman climb up the side of a building like, “Mmmph, I wouldn’t
mind letting him climb on top of m— oh, hey, Bruce, forgot you were standing there!
Heh . . . Climb on top of me, is what I was about to say.”
Desperate for answers, Bruce seeks the advice of his old friend Dr. Leslie Thompkins.
He says to her, “I thought I was Batman, but apparently I’m just Bruce Wayne, and
Batman is this totally separate guy who is not actually me.
How could I have gotten that so wrong all these years?”
And Dr. Thompkins, who seems remarkably unfazed and borderline bored by this conversation,
tells Bruce, “What probably happened is you just imagined you were Batman, because
your real life is so boring and pointless.
It happens to a lot of rich people who contribute nothing to society.
I even heard about this South African guy who thinks he’s Tony Stark.”
So, Bruce goes home and decides to embrace the life of a rich guy with rich parents and
a gorgeous and also rich girlfriend, and really try to make it work.
He hugs his Dad.
He jokes with Alfred about the entrance to the Batcave being missing.
He seems ready to leave the whole dark knight thing behind him.
But then, he opens the newspaper and — gee, that’s funny, all the letters are jumbled
around and nothing makes any sense.
“Must be a typesetting error.
How embarrassing.
I hope they fired the working class person responsible.”
See, he’s getting into the spirit already!
Bruce pulls a book off the shelf, and it’s all random letters, too.
In fact, all the books are!
He drops to his knees!
He says “Alfred, I can’t read any of these books!”
And Alfred says, “There there, Master Bruce, illiteracy isn’t an obstacle for a person
with your advantages.”
But that doesn’t help!
Bruce jumps up, shoves his parents aside, jumps in his car and speeds to Gotham City.
He buys a rope and a grappling hook, blows off some Keystone Kops who show up to tell
him his parents are concerned about him, and runs to a belltower, which he climbs to the
top of using the aforementioned rope and grappling hook.
I mean, I would have at least tried the door . . .
Bruce gets to the top, calls out Batman, Batman shows up, and Bruce tells him he knows what’s
up now: this is not the real life — this is just fantasy!
Specifically, a dream.
He knows because of the nonsense text in the newspaper and the books — because dreaming
and reading are functions of separate hemispheres of the brain, it’s impossible to read in
a dream!
Batman’s like, “So, how’s that my fault?”
And Bruce says “It just is!”
And they fight!
And the cops have the building surrounded, and there are cops trying to break through
the door to the bell tower, and Bruce gets the upper hand on Batman and pulls off his
cowl to reveal — the Mad Hatter!
“You’re right,” the Mad Hatter says, “this is a dream — a very special dream!”
The Hatter explains that this dream was created by his dream machine to give Batman everything
he could ever want, the perfect life, the dream he’d never want to wake up from, so
that he would never bother the Mad Hatter again.
The dream machine doesn’t reveal any information from the dream to the outside world — so
the real Mad Hatter, unlike his dream counterpart, doesn’t know Batman’s secret identity
or anything.
But it doesn’t matter, because once you’re in the dream machine, you can’t wake up.
But waking up is exactly what Bruce wants to do.
See, the perfect dream life the Mad Hatter’s machine created has one flaw: it’s not real.
So, just as the cops break through the door, Bruce takes a running leap off of the tower,
betting that this dream works under Inception rules, not Nightmare on Elm Street rules.
And he’s right!
Instead of killing him, the suicide dive wakes him up.
Batman kicks some ass on Hatter’s henchmen, then demands to know why the Mad Hatter did
it.
And the Hatter, still the same entitled incel he was in his first episode, says to Batman,
“You ruined my life!
I was willing to give you any life you wanted — just to keep you out of mine!”
Which would be kinda poignant if the Hatter wasn’t such a whiny forever alone crybaby
who’s still upset because Batman wouldn’t let him mind-control the girl he liked.
Anyway, Batman hands the Hatter and his gang over to the cops.
Commissioner Gordon checks out the dream machine helmet and he’s like, “What’s this?”
Batman says, “The stuff dreams are made of,” and walks away into the shadows.
It’s a good episode, an example of how the animated series was able to present a relatively
dark and dramatic take on the character while still leaving room for the strange and fantastic
touches that have always added flavor to the Batman comics, even when they’ve been at
their grimmest and most self-serious.
Not only is it a good episode overall — it’s easy to see why this was a favorite of Kevin
Conroy.
I was talking about the range of his Batman performance earlier — how’s this for range:
he plays three different versions of Batman in this one episode: the real Batman of the
waking world he usually plays, the Bruce Wayne of the dream world who suddenly finds himself
not Batman, and the Batman of the dream world.
And Conroy isn’t just giving the same performance as all three characters — he manages to
distinguish each variation, giving real Batman, dream Bruce, and dream Batman their own individual
personas.
Dream Bruce, in particular, is an impressive characterization, allowing Conroy to inject
a lot more uncertainty and vulnerability into his portrayal of Bruce than usual.
Dream Batman is also interesting — Conroy plays him flatter, with a harsher edge than
normal.
He sounds like we would expect Batman to sound without Bruce Wayne — all growl, no humanity.
Plus, Conroy also voices Thomas Wayne, Bruce’s father, meaning that he essentially plays
four characters in this one episode, three of which are subtle variations on the same
character — and he pulls it off!
Besides the quality of his own performance, I can take a guess at another reason Kevin
Conroy might have liked this episode in particular — a more personal one.
Earlier this year, Kevin Conroy wrote a story — with art by J. Bone — for DC Pride called
“Finding Batman.”
In it, he reflects on various events in his personal and professional life that gave him
insight into the character.
As child from a chaotic and unstable family, and a closeted gay man pursuing an acting
career in the 1970s and ‘80s and having to deal with both industry homophobia and
the height of the AIDS crisis, Conroy realized that he could relate to Batman more than he
initially expected.
He knew what it was like to endure trauma and tragedy.
He knew what it was like to keep his private life a closely held secret, and wear his public
persona like a mask.
Since Conroy’s death, DC Comics has made “Finding Batman” and the rest of the 2022
volume of DC Pride available online to read for free, and if you haven’t done so I highly
recommend it.
As I watched it to prepare for this video, there was one moment in particular in “Perchance
to Dream” that brought “Finding Batman” back to the front of my mind.
When Bruce is facing off against the Mad Hatter in the clocktower near the end, the Hatter
tries to sell him on the whole “living the rest of your life in a dream world” deal
by telling him, “You have love, wealth, a family, all you’ve ever wanted — your
own private wonderland!”
Bruce clearly struggles — for a moment — then declares “No!
I won’t live a lie, no matter how attractive you make it!”
I don’t want to attempt to psychoanalyze Kevin Conroy here, but knowing what I know
about his life and career leading up to Batman: The Animated Series, having read “Finding
Batman,” I can’t help but think that line hit a lot harder for him than it would have
for an actor who had not had his experiences.
Here he was, a gay man in Hollywood, in the early ‘90s, playing Batman, declaring that
it was better to live authentically as yourself, even if that meant hardship and pain, than
to pretend to be someone you’re not.
Maybe, underneath all the layers of talent and technique and experience, that’s what
makes Kevin Conroy’s Batman so great: authenticity.
When you watch the animated series or any of the other projects where Conroy played
the character, it doesn’t sound like you’re hearing someone play Batman.
It sounds like you’re hearing Batman.
His Batman’s the real deal, because Kevin Conroy himself was the real deal.
That’s why, for millions of fans, he was, is, and always will be the best Batman ever.