Building A Better "Birds of Prey"

On my alternate-history discussion forum, the gentleman whose handle is TheReturner posted a thread asking how one could make the television series Birds of Prey successful.  The show is basically about Batman and Catwoman's illegitimate daughter Huntress and the Oracle (the former Batgirl, crippled by the Joker) fighting crime, with the chief villain being none other than evil psychiatrist Harley Quinn, lover of the Joker.

Sufficient to say, it wasn't successful.  Here're some ideas that the board member whose handle is Antonio and I came up with to make it better:

*Don't call the city "New Gotham."  I don't see why they made that change.  There's no point.  Antonio suggested making this a generic near-future setting, perhaps by stylizing some of the items.  Heck, given how Batman could have been active for decades and might've had his affair with Catwoman years ago, they could even set it in the present day.

(I doubt the Joker could have gotten away with constantly being declared legally insane and then breaking out of Arkham Asylum every few months in the "tough on crime" 1990s, so setting Batman's heyday in the 1960s and 1970s makes sense on those grounds.  Also, the board member whose handle is Black Angel suggested it could be a direct sequel to the Adam West Batman series and when we actually meet Bruce Wayne, he could be played by West.)

*There was an animated series called Batman Beyond that ran from 1999 to 2001, just before Birds of Prey, that featured an elderly Bruce Wayne mentoring a new Batman many years later.  Something that was in a similar vein--basically "Batman: The Next Generation" with female protagonists--would have probably been better-received than Birds of Prey was.

*Dump the "metahumans" aspect of the story entirely.  It came off to me like they were cribbing from the X-Men or even Dark Angel, which was on at the same time.  And Catwoman in the comics was an ordinary human, not a mutant.

*The show depicts Batman as having left Gotham in his grief for Catwoman's death.  I remember at least some fans complained about that, claiming it made Batman a coward.  If I were writing it, I would depict Batman going insane with rage at the Joker's killing of Catwoman and killing the Joker himself, then having a Heroic Blue Screen of Death and going into self-imposed exile for violating his one rule.  Antonio said that if the crippling of Barbara Gordon and the death of Jason Todd (the second Robin) took place at the same time, it would be enough to push Batman to outright homicide.  That's actually a really good idea--the TV show included a flashback to Joker shooting Barbara and the Joker actually killed Jason Todd in the comics.

As I said on the forum, this gets Batman out of the way in a manner true to his character and eliminates the Joker, allowing for Harley Quinn to come into her own as a major villain rather than simply being the Joker's girlfriend/minion.  Making the Joker's sidekick into a full-blown Big Bad in her own right (I guess that would make her a Dragon Ascendant) was one of the more creative ideas of the show.

Also, it could lead to a really interesting flashback episode (or even series of episodes) if Huntress sought her father out for answers.  Batman would say something to the effect of, "Helena, let me explain..." and we see a full-blown Batman arc in the midst of the Oracle/Huntress show.  Even if the show still fails, those episodes would likely be beloved by Batman fans.

*Batman doesn't seem to be the type to get a woman pregnant without marrying her, nor abandon a child.  The TV series dealt with this by making it so Batman wasn't aware of his daughter, at least initially.  Another idea might be to have Batman and Catwoman marry and retire from their respective lifestyles.  Then the Joker breaks out of Arkham one last time and rampages, killing Jason Todd (who might try to continue being Robin on his own), crippling Barbara Gordon, and then killing Catwoman and (apparently) Helena.  Batman puts on his costume one last time and literally tears the Joker apart, then leaves.  Alfred discovers Helena is still alive, but cannot find Batman and so, like he did with Bruce, raises Helena himself.

A Comic Book Commentary

I was hanging around the East Cobb Borders this morning, killing time until I met up with a friend for lunch, and a comic book on the rack caught my eye.

It was Brave and the Bold #31, in which lesser-known DC hero Atom is paired off with the Joker.  It turns out that the Arkham Asylum medical staff needed help treating the Joker for a brain disease and Atom, against his better judgement, decided to help them.  Given his ability to shrink to microscopic size, he ended up literally getting inside the Joker's head.

It was there that he ended up viewing and being affected by the Joker's memories.  This gives us (drumroll) another Joker origin.

SPOILERS


In this one, the Joker clearly had issues from the beginning.  As a child, he pontificates to another child about how he's going to make the world as weird as he is.  Then he goes berserk on a bully to the point the bully needed stitches (and a meeting between his mother and the school principal makes it clear that excessive violence is a problem the kid has had before).  The next memory is him as a teenager, preparing his house to burn while his parents discuss how they know he's been torturing and killing dogs and cats (BIG sign of psychopathy).  The pre-Joker jams the doors shut and the next panel shows him walking away from the burning house.

We later see him and some hooligan types robbing a convenience and, just when they're about to leave, he shoots the shopkeeper for kicks.  Another gang member tells him that they had agreed not to actually kill anyone so the whole group wouldn't be charged with murder--the pre-Joker responds by telling him it's fun to kill and then shoots him for challenging him.  We later see a montage of Joker-related mayhem clearly based on The Dark Knight, including him robbing the bank and challenging Batman to hit him with his bike.

I'm not really a big DC comics aficionado (beyond having seen the films and being really good at mimicking the Heath Ledger Joker, much to friends' and siblings' aggravation).  I did like the artwork for this one, especially the creepy way the pre-Joker was drawn.  His green eyes in particular stood out.

However, I liked the Joker origin story in Batman: The Killing Joke better.

SPOILERS


In this one, the pre-Joker is an engineer at a chemical plant who quit his job to become a comedian.  He wasn't very successful and his wife was pregnant, so he let some gangsters talk him to sneaking them through his old factory so they could rob the place next door.  His wife and unborn child are killed in an accident and he tries to back out, only for the gangsters to outright bully him into going along.

They get into the factory (the pre-Joker wearing a costume to make it look like the gangsters are the accomplices of a supervillain) and Batman and the police intervene.  The pre-Joker ends up falling into a vat of chemicals and when he sees his disfigured face, he loses his mind.

This origin would explain his obsession with making people laugh (there's a scene where the pre-Joker complains to his wife about how nobody laughs when he tells jokes) and his technical skills, as well as him trying to prove the world is as bad as he is (the graphic novel revolves around him trying to prove "one bad day" would affect Commissioner Gordon as severely as it affected him).  It would also make him more human (and thus a more complex character), as opposed to the born-evil "bad seed" of The Brave and the Bold.

Of course, even in the primary Batman canon, the Joker's origin isn't entirely clear.  The Wikipedia has a quote from TKJ in which the Joker comments on how, as far as his past is concerned, he'd like it to be multiple choice.  It also has other scenarios besides TKJ and The Brave and Bold (which I added earlier today).

Any comments?