Friday, December 8, 2023

CROSSOVER MADNESS


 


Going by the logic of my discussion of superordinate and subordinate ensembles in ICONIC BONDING PT. 4, the first episode of the first season, "Pilot," qualifies as a crossover in that this show introduces the show's versions of Penguin, Catwoman and Riddler as permanent members of that superordinate ensemble. 

ADDENDUM: I neglected to add "The Court of Owls," whose presence is only implied in the first episode, but who are later identified as the killers of the Waynes. They too are "crossovers" only for the first episode, albeit by implication only.

There are only two other crossover possibilities. One is the minor character of Victor Zsasz. In the comic books, he's an independent serial killer, but the TV series, emulating the film BATMAN BEGINS, turned the character into a hitman for the mobster Carmine Falcone. In the show he also works under Oswald Cobblepot, aka the Penguin, In both capacities, he's semi-bonded to the service of his bosses, and so is subsumed by their natures, just as, in Kirby's NEW GODS, villains like Kalibak and Desaad are subsumed by the long shadow of Darkseid.

The other potential crossover appears in just one episode, "The Blind Fortune-Teller," where Gordon and company encounter Jerome Velaska, a circus clown who confesses to murdering his mother. Had the show's producers never done anything more with Velaska beyond this episode, I would deem him to be merely an unreasonable facsimile of the Joker, not unlike a similar one-shot figure in Season 2. But at the start of Season 2, Velaska gets bumped up to full supervillain status, and that makes him a "strong template deviation" of the original character, not just a doppelganger. 

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