IN MEMORIAM: Kevin Conroy (1955-2022)
Kevin Conroy is the reason that Batman is my favorite superhero.
Michael Keaton might have been the first one I saw, but I was too young for that movie…and of course, The Joker scared the hell out of me. I could watch Adam West in reruns of Batman ‘66, but that was my parents’ Batman, not mine.
September 5, 1992, 10:30am, WKBD-TV50, Detroit, Michigan. That’s when Kevin Conroy became MY Batman.
We had seen previews. There were plenty of commercials. If you’re a millennial, you know good and damn well that how your weekend went depended on how early you woke up on Saturdays, because all the good cartoons came on before 11am. If you slept in until or past 11, all you had left was Looney Tunes, which was crap because those came on during the week on other channels, and just like that your weekend was absolutely ruined.
That wasn’t going to happen this time. September 5, 1992 I was up and ready at 10am. In fact, I was so ready that I had a VHS tape ready to record the first episode, “The Cat and the Claw, Part 1.” I remember being irritated that it was “To Be Continued,” but you bet your ass I was ready the next Saturday to watch and record Part 2, and that was just the beginning.
When Batman TAS became an afterschool 4:30pm show, it was daily appointment TV for me, no questions asked, and in many ways it’s still the definitive version of Batman I’ve ever watched in my life, not just because of the comic lore, the Dark Deco animation and the great storytelling, but because of the voice of Kevin Conroy, who made arguably the most indelible mark on the Caped Crusader of any Batman actor in history.
Imagine being tapped to play the iconic character of millionaire Bruce Wayne and his seemingly demonic crime fighting alter ego, and having to find two distinct voices to do it without the benefit of a post-production voice changer. Imagine having a Batman voice that is so definitive, so powerful, so visceral, that it perfectly fits the visual representation of the character as well as the historical lore of his utterly terrifying and intimidating presence to an entire city, especially its criminals.
Now imagine doing this so well for so many years, while being one of the best and most mild-mannered human beings on the face of this Earth.
That was Kevin Conroy, through and through.
A lot of times when talking about an iconic character like Batman that has had multiple interpretations across various mediums, played by multiple actors over the years, you might separate the animated versions from the live action versions because that’s just not a fair fight. How could animation compare with live action, or vice versa depending on your preference?
Conroy’s Batman, along with Mark Hamill’s Joker, are the exceptions. If someone asks who’s the best Batman and your answer is Kevin Conroy, there’s no further argument or conditions. It’s a wholly accepted answer, at least among rational fans of the character. That’s how impressive, demonstrative, and unforgettable his portrayal of the Dark Knight was in Batman TAS, the rest of the DC Animated Universe, the Arkham video games and other Batman involved properties he was a part of.
He even had fun with it, entertaining crowds with table reads at comic conventions, doing spoof skits with other voice actors like Tim Daly, the voice of Superman in Superman The Animated Series, or one of my favorites, his commentary of a Batman ‘66 clip as old Bruce Wayne alongside Will Friedle’s Terry McGinness in Batman Beyond style for the very first DC Fandome event in 2020.
To millennials and Gen Z, Kevin Conroy is arguably the most definitive Batman of our time, because he’s the one we grew up with, the one that was the most badass, and the one that arguably did it the longest since he kept the mantle going well past his own initial series and into other shows, movies and games. When we read Batman comics and picture his voice in our heads, it’s probably his, because it was that damn good and as much as we may enjoy the other Batman actors, his voice just fits the character better than anyone else we’ve heard in our lives, and without question…it’s a voice we’ll miss terribly, but not one that we’ll ever lose, because we have years of his voice talent as Gotham’s watchful protector to remember him by.
Rest in peace, Mr. Conroy. You have always been MY Batman, ever since that fateful Saturday morning, September 5, 1992, on WKBD-TV50, in Detroit, Michigan.