Fox Censors Stopped Batman: The Animated Series From Turning Bruce Wayne Into A Vampire
No one likes censors, but the ones over Fox always seemed to get an especially bad rap — especially back in the '90s. "The Simpsons" killed the Fox censor in the intro to "Treehouse of Horror VIII," and numerous absurd Standards and Practices notes have come to light over the years, including one from Fox Kids' "Spiderman: The Animated Series" which demanded Spidey not "harm the pigeons" when he landed on rooftops.
In fact, "Spiderman: TAS" showrunner John Semper Jr. recalled in an interview how by the time his show debuted in 1994, "there was a LOT of censorship at Fox." The company had seen their mega-popular "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers" banned in Canada and were more stringent than ever, especially when it came to kids' programming. As Semper recalled:
"When I watch the older episodes of 'Batman' that first aired on Fox, they do all kinds of things that we couldn't do. By the time Spidey came on, Fox wouldn't let us do anything like that. No fists to the face, no realistic guns, no fire, no crashing through glass, no children in peril, no mention of the words death, die, or kill."
In reality, "Batman: The Animated Series" was heavily censored when it arrived in 1992 — the writers just found clever ways around it. Similar to "Spiderman: TAS" There was famously a list of nine things they couldn't show, all of which were immortalized in an infamous illustration designed by Henry Gilroy and Bruce Timm and tweeted by Mark Hamill himself. They included guns, drugs, breaking glass, alcohol, smoking, nudity, child endangerment, religion, and strangulation. And while the writers found clever ways to get around a lot of these, there were some things that they simply couldn't get past Murdoch's watchdogs.
The unmade vampire episode
Despite having a lot of creative freedom, co-creators of "Batman: TAS," Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski often had to yield to the pesky Fox censors. In an interview with ScienceFiction.com, Timm explained how he'd always wanted to do an episode where Batman was transformed into a vampire:
"There's a character in the comics called Nocturna! And it didn't get much past the idea phase, we floated it past Fox Kids and they said 'Nope! No Vampires!' and I said, 'Well what if he wasn't really a Vampire?' And they said, 'No Vampires!'"
Timm even got as far as designing his version of Nocturna, the villainess from the comics whose unfortunate run-in with a radioactive laser resulted in a pallid complexion and sensitivity to light. But according to writer and producer Alan Burnett, in Timm's vision of the character she actually was "a vampire, which would've involved bloodletting, which was a huge no-no for kids' TV."
It seems that this was one breach of Fox's rules that "Batman: TAS" writers couldn't sneak past the censors. Previously they'd tried tactical cuts to get around showing actual punches, and, as Dorkly explains, "censor decoys" designed to distract from the actual stuff the writers wanted to keep in. But Nocturna and Timm's vision of turning Batman into a vampire was shut down before it could even get to a stage where he could deploy his decoys and clever cuts.
Timm eventually got to do vampire Batman
Years after "Batman: TAS" ended in 1995, Timm would work on the story for the 2015 animated movie "Justice League: Gods and Monsters" — which just so happens to share part of its name with phase one of James Gunn's new DCU movies. Timm's movie took place in an alternate DC universe where he could create wildly different versions of DC's heroes and villains. Asked about the project in an interview with Den of Geek, the writer and artist recalled how he had read a quote from Batman creator Bob Kane, who said that "Batman is half Dracula and half Zorro," which he credits as the origin of his desire to make the Dark Knight an actual vampire.
Recalling his attempts to do just that on the '90s animated series, Timm clarified that he'd only ever got as far as Nocturna's design before being told "no" by Fox, and that in his original plan, Nocturna would have turned Batman temporarily into a vampire. Unfortunately the idea was nixed so quickly that he never even came up with a design for vampire Bats.
Thankfully, he got to see his idea come to life in "Gods and Monsters" where Kirk Langstrom becomes a vampire version of Batman. In the DCU proper, Langstron was the scientist who became Man-Bat after testing his bat mutagen serum on himself. Man-Bat was the villain in the very first "Batman: TAS" episode, "On Leather Wings," wherein Langstrom becomes the grotesque beast before being saved by Batman in what is arguably a more upsetting visual than any vampire Batman would have been. Still, at least Timm eventually got to see his vampire Batman vision come to life, even if it took 20 years.
Vampire Batman vs. Morbius
Considering the dark and foreboding style of "Batman: TAS" and the fact that Langstrom's horrifying Man-Bat transformation was given a pass, it's kind of crazy to think that a vampire storyline was ruled out before it had even started. It would have fit the tone of the show nicely, and could easily have been one of the best episodes of "Batman: TAS". Alas, the Fox censors were clearly keen not to have another one of their shows banned.
Over on the Marvel side, John Semper Jr. did manage to get a vampire episode of "Spider-Man: TAS" past the censors, which has become a point of pride for him. In episode 6 of season 2, Morbius shows up, but only because of some compromises that were made — namely, that the villain would only drain people's blood through suction cups on his hands. In an interview, Semper explained:
"It was so successful that we decided to stretch it for two more episodes. I have a good relationship with Broadcast Standards and Practices, in that I recognize that what they're trying to do is important, and philosophically I am not opposed to what they're trying to do. I think there were writers on 'Batman' who decided that they were going to wage war against Broadcast Standards and Practices. I think that's an unproductive attitude."
Shots fired! Meanwhile, Timm remained unfazed by the whole thing, telling ScienceFiction.com: "["Spider-Man: TAS"] did that really lame one right? He had like suction cups on his hands? So that was fine. Like if I wasn't going to do it properly, I wasn't going to do it."
Ouch! If nothing else, at least the Fox censors helped stoke the most amusingly lame rivalry in entertainment history by getting Semper and Timm all riled up.