Crisis of Infinite Episodes - Nothing To Fear

 

 

To me, Scarecrow is one of the most perfect villains for Batman, certainly much better than the more recognized Penguin. Batman Begins made the perfect case for the villain. Like Batman, both characters thrive on inflicting and manipulating fear in others. In this BTAS debut for Scarecrow, the underrated villain was able to find some cracks in the previously invulnerable Batman and we got solid look at the motivations and fears of the Dark Knight.

I guess one of Scarecrow's failings is his lack of physicality. On the other hand, I guess he really isn't meant to pose any sort of physical threat. I just don't find him even scary to look at. I think they had the right idea when designing the character for The Batman, even though the design was never used. Still, this is one of Batman's rogues which has a lot of untapped potential. Its just a shame he isn't used more.

A couple of other highlights in the episode were the Blimp fight -is it just me or are blimps in Batman always gold?- and the fear gas induced look at Batman from Scarecrows perspective. Awesome stuff. Having said all of that, this episode remains just shy of great. I can't exactly put my finger on why, maybe its the lukewarm back story of Scarecrow lacking any of the real tragedy of villains like Freeze or Clayface. The guy was just creepy and not at all easy to feel compassion for. That's OK though, this remains a very good episode of the series.

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Episode Count: 0542
Series Count: (8 of 81)