Batman: Caped Crusader, which is streaming now on Prime, takes Batman back to his gritty noir roots, and recaptures the lurid crime drama vibes of his initial comic book adventures. It's both a superhero detective series and a horror show, and while it sometimes struggles to find its footing when it involves Batman's sleuthing efforts, it thrives as a creepy exploration of his foes. If that sounds surprising it shouldn't be – the history of Batman in the comic book medium provides a wealth of potential for things to get a little scary.
Batman's early years are heavily inspired by horror, both on the page and the screen. Many of his exploits in those inaugural issues of Detective Comics find him tackling macabre foes that seem straight out of pulp magazines and ghoulish stories. By his third ever appearance, he's already moved on from blackmailers and jewel thieves to a mad scientist named Dr. Death. And it doesn't take long for Batman to fight mutated abominations, the handiwork of the demented Hugo Strange.
Mild spoilers for Batman: Caped Crusader ahead
The foes that have become pop culture iconography, especially, feel pulled from the genre – the look of the Joker is famously based on actor Conrad Veidt's gruesomely tragic visage in The Man Who Laughs, a film steeped in German Expressionist angst and murk. The Scarecrow's real name, Jonathan Crane, is obviously inspired by poor Ichabod Crane from Washington Irving's famous tale The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, while the original Clayface was a horror actor/serial murderer named Basil Karlo (named after Frankenstein actor Boris Karloff.)
Caped Crusader, set in what appears to be the early 1940s, doesn't hide its adoration for this source material. Clayface is an early foe in the series (allowing its creative team to tinker with all sorts of riffs on Golden Age Hollywood) and his eventual reveal is played with effective Phantom of the Opera-style shock. But as the series moves on, it also pulls in villains (and remixes of villains) that are of a newer vintage, all while managing to imbue them with a noirish eeriness. Its take on Firebug (a character who didn't actually show up until 1979) is a product of nervous psychopathy, coming off like one of Peter Lorre's distinctly haunted characters.
But Batman's horror homages didn't end in the 1940s. Caped Crusader also includes foes like Nocturna, a soul-sucking baddie and pseudo-vampire that first appeared in 1983. Though it would take time for her powers to develop in the comics and the version of her that appears in Caped Crusader is younger (Comic book villains rarely start out with the full deck of outlandish skills that they'll inevitably accrue) she's always been an oddly fascinating, otherworldly presence. To watch her draw in victims in Caped Crusader feels like seeing Christopher Lee and his bloodthirsty brides hypnotize their own prey in '60s Dracula installments.
One of the most recognizable foes in Caped Crusader is Harley Quinn, transformed here into a ruthless psychiatrist who even calls into question Bruce Wayne's own mental health. At times, the atmosphere recalls that of Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, the landmark comic from Grant Morrison and Dave McKean, which delved into the surreal dread of Batman's mind.
Equally unmistakable is Two-Face, not presented as a cartoonish double-talker in Caped Crusader but as a nightmare who doesn't just crave revenge but his own twisted form of empathy. His facial scarring is far from outlandish here, and in fact, he looks like something that classic horror actor and make-up genius Lon Chaney could've pulled off. And his personality ties into the powerful figure, equally scary and full of pathos, shown in fairly recent comics like Batman: One Bad Day – Two-Face and The Beautiful Ugly.
Batman: Caped Crusader has hit the ground running when it comes to capitalizing on the horror of the Dark Knight's world. And with so many villains still to run into, this version of Gotham City will likely never be safe from the grotesque and the frightening...
Many of the characters from Batman: Caped Crusader appear on our list of the best supervillains of all time.
