The Gentleman Ghost was originally considered as a villain for BTAS, but his appearance never materialized. What happened?
Batman: The Animated Series apocrypha is filled with stories of episodes and pitches that, for one reason or another, didn’t happen. These can include early drafts of existing scripts, rejected variants of the main cast, and other characters who simply didn’t make the cut. And while some of the latter would eventually make their way into the larger DCAU, they coulda been Dark Deco.
This time around, we’re taking a look at an iconic, yet lesser-known, DC supervillain, the Gentleman Ghost. First appearing in Flash Comics #88 (October 1947), the most often used backstory for the character was that he was originally James “Gentleman Jim” Craddock, a notorious highwayman in 19th century England who, moments before being executed, vowed to live forever and come back to loot the treasures of those who had condemned him. However, after death, he regained consciousness in modern-day London as an invisible phantom wearing a white suit, cape, and top hat. Most often identified as a Hawkman villain, he did appear as a recurring adversary of Batman in a number of 1970s and ‘80s story arcs, where the Dark Knight initially speculated that his identity of a ghost was an illusion created by a living criminal; it was most likely these appearances that made him a candidate for BTAS. However, it didn’t occur, but while it could be chalked up to network interference, there was a more likely culprit closer to home.
Gentleman’s Agreement
Despite his absence from BTAS, there is evidence that the creative team had a strong initial interest, as a character summary for the rogue appeared in the 1990 Series Bible:
No one, even Batman, is sure if this semi-invisible, elegantly dressed wraith is a real ghost or not. Still, the being known as the Gentleman Ghost has used his powers of dematerialization and levitation to confound the Gotham police on several occasions. (34)
Of the other mentioned villains, the only other pitched character that didn’t appear was Calendar Man, and even he eventually was adapted into Calendar Girl for The New Batman Adventures (TNBA) episode “Mean Seasons.” In addition, the BTAS Bible also provided an early pitch of what would become the “Zatanna” episode, featuring a team-up between the Dark Knight and the classic DC magician:
Gotham’s most famous illusionist, Zatanna, promises to make the Gotham Mercantile Bank disappear on her televised special. The bank disappears, but when it returns, all of the money is gone. Swearing innocence, she is jailed, but Batman’s investigation reveals the crime was the work of the Gentleman Ghost. It isn’t long before wolfish Bruce Wayne comes up with the beautiful Zatanna’s bail bond and although immune to Wayne’s charms, Zatanna is soon visited by Batman, and the two of them set out to track down the Ghost and the money. (38)
However, when the episode debuted on February 2, 1993, the Ghost was eliminated from the proceedings, instead replaced with the rather drab Montague Kane. No information was given for the substitution, save for an article in the January 1994 Comics Scene magazine where, while discussing fellow BTAS no-show Nocturna, the author casually mentioned how Fox “reportedly” rejected a Gentleman Ghost’s appearance (Jankiewicz 47). In that same interview, Producer Bruce Timm gave this general statement about horror characters on BTAS:
We get away with monsters easily. […] Monsters are great, because the network thinks of them as fantasy figures and not things that could exist in real life. [However, f]or the most part, the network doesn’t like zombies, or any living dead people—even though we have one in the second season, a 2,000-year-old zombie sorceress [in the BTAS episode “Avatar”]. […] It’s pretty scary, but the network approved it. (qtd. in Jankiewicz 47)
(And while that was the only official non-appearance, one could also make the argument that “See No Evil” could have been an early Gentleman Ghost episode, but that is unlikely, as the episode actually featured an adaptation of a 1950s Batman villain named Mirror Man, who was a sort of pre-Silver Age Mirror Master. However, the shift away from the mirror gimmick to an invisible man could show some Gentleman Ghost influences.)
While I accepted this bit of trivia back in the 1990s (especially in context of the Nocturna snub), it doesn’t ring true today, as American animation has never had a problem with ghosts. After all, only a few years prior, we had The Real Ghostbusters on ABC (1986-1991), as well as multiple decades of Scooby-Doo shows (including The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, a short-lived series [1985 only] where he fought real ghosts, rather than real estate scammers in costume). Frankly, there was no explanation of the character’s absence until 2017, when Producer Alan Burnett stated in a Vulture article that “[w]e had these three rules [for BTAS]: no aliens, no ghosts, and no Humanitas Awards—you know, no pro-social stories” (qtd. in Riesman). And while they were not as successful with the third of those edicts (“The Forgotten” and “The Underdwellers” come immediately to mind), they were more than successful with the first two. This is the most likely reason I can find for the Gentleman Ghost getting the axe, as the creative team probably omitted the supernatural foe in order to maintain their realistic, non-cartoon universe (I’m guessing R’as Al Ghul and the Lazarus Pit were as far as they were willing to go, and even that was saved until the end of the series).
The Ghost with the Most
While there are uncorroborated claims that the Gentleman Ghost could have appeared on TNBA had the series continued, the specter remained absent until the final season of Justice League Unlimited. Appearing first as a cameo in “I Am Legion,” he literally slipped in under the DCAU wire in the third-to-last episode, “Ancient History.” Voiced by veteran voice actor Robin Atkin Downes, he gave quite a fight to both Green Lantern and Hawkman before the opening credits rolled. And while he was referred to as a “dimensional shifting” adversary, he was not expressly identified as a ghost. Of course, by this time the DCAU was full of aliens, mutants, demigods, and demons, so an ordinary phantom would fit right in.
The Gentleman Ghost would find further fame appearing in Batman: The Brave and the Bold, DC Super Hero Girls, and other DC animated properties until, finally, he would appear in the Bruce Timm-produced Batman: Caped Crusader episode “Night Ride.” Still, he coulda been Dark Deco.
Works Cited
Jankiewicz, Pat. “Gotham Nocturna.” Comics Scene. Jan. 1994. 45-47. Print.
Riesman, Abraham. “An Oral History of Batman: The Animated Series.” Vulture. Vox Media, LLC. 6 Oct. 2017. Web. 1 Nov. 2022. <https://www.vulture.com/article/oral-history-batman-the-animated-series.html>.
Timm, Bruce W. et al. Batman: The Animated Series—Series Writer’s Bible. 28 Nov. 1990. Print.
Images courtesy of Warner Bros. Discovery, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, and DC Comics.
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