I almost forgot, on Sunday night I ended up seeing possibly the greatest thing to ever have been on a Super Friends episode; The Scarecrow was messing around, using his Fear Gas (or actually some sort of strobelight plastic skull that hypnotized people into experiencing messed-up exaggerations of their deepest fears, BUT I DIGRESS) to rob banks and generally inconvenience a lot of people all over the place. At some point, the Batman gets a face-full of Fear Strobes and starts flashing back to the night his parents were killed.

For a kiddie cartoon episode, it was actually kind of dark.

Anyway, the most amazing thing came right after the first time that the Scarecrow clocks Batman with the Fear Laser or whatever. Batman ends up STANDING STOCK STILL in an alleyway, surrendering to total shock and bewilderment, as rigid as a statue. In pursuit of the Scarecrow, Robin turns the corner to see Batman paralyzed with fear - he walks up to him and gently touches Batman on the shoulder, asking "Batman, what's wrong," and then ...

...then there's a closeup on Batman's shocked, terrified, stock-still face, and suddenly - HE ERUPTS INTO WILD TEARS. And this was from when Hanna-Barbera was hiring out to Korea for the animation, so it's totally Lupin III-era Japanese style roaring rivers of unbidden tears, just rolling in a broken faucet of weeping. IT WAS SO REWARDING, he's in his mask, just standing there and WHAM, HERE COME THE WATERWORKS. Then he turns on his heel and runs so amazingly desperately fast away from Robin, like so embarrassed he couldn't stand it. NO ONE UNDERSTANDS EMO BATMAN.

It was the least Batman thing I have ever seen Batman do. I tried to capture the spirit of the moment as best I could ...