Quotes
Paul Dini Quotes
Batman: The Animated Series
Heart of Ice
Quote: Early in the Batman series development, Bruce and I agreed that while we liked his cold gimmick, Mr. Freeze was otherwise a rather nondescript character. So we played around with the idea that losing his wife had made him dead to emotion. I think we may have thrown some of Vincent Price's Dr. Phibes in there as well, especially in Freeze's determination to revive his wife. After we did the inital development on Freeze, I left Warners for a while to work on a movie. Alan Burnett came on to supervise the writing, and he asked if I would write some freelance scripts. The first one I wrote was "Heart of Ice," as no one had touched Freeze since we had done the early development on him. In writing the story, I thought if Freeze claimed to be dead to emotion, then the last scene should be him breaking down. I worked backward from that idea, setting up the conflict that would get him to that point. I think that was the first episode Bruce directed himself and he knocked it out of the park. Everything came together in that episode, the storyboard, the design, the music, and of course Michael Ansara's great voice. The only bad thing about reinventing Freeze along those lines was that it made it hard to come up with other stories about him. He's not compelled to cause mayhem like the Joker, or to steal valuables like Catwoman. Those characters are easier to write because their motivations are cleaner. Like Man-Bat, Mr. Freeze is more of a victim than a villain - there's nothing they want beyond being normal. Still, I'd rather do one or two good Mr. Freeze or Man-Bat stories than lose what was special about them by overexposing them.
Comic Book Resources
Mad as a Hatter
Quote: One incident that stands out happened while I was writing the "Mad As A Hatter" episode of "Batman: The Animated Series." I wanted the Wonderland amusement park the Hatter uses for his hideout to closely resemble a park called Children's Fairyland that I went to frequently while I was a kid growing up near Oakland. I went to the park to take pictures of the Wonderland area for our artists to use as reference, and was promptly ejected for being an adult with a camera and without a child. It was surreal -- for most of my grade school years I was going there at least twice a month for friends' birthday parties, only to be booted out of the Queen of Hearts card maze 25 years later. Luckily I had my Warner Bros. ID with me and after I explained what I wanted, I was allowed back in. Not only that, they gave me an annual pass. Ironically, it was in my wallet the night I was mugged, so that does tie in to "Dark Night."
Comic Book Resources
Columbine was a discarded Harley Quinn name
Quote: That was one of the many names running through my head when I was creating Harley. I leaned more toward Harley Quinn because Collie would have sounded too weird.
Unknown Angelfire site
Harley Quinn 's Age
Quote: On the series and in comics, I always think of her as about 28, pretty much the same age as Poison Ivy. In the flashback scene in "Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker" I imagine her (as well as the other characters) about three to five years older. He doesn't say it directly in years, but Joker indicates that he, Batman and Harley have been doing their "little run-around" for some time and they are all getting older. So, Harley's anywhere between 28 and 33. Seven years younger than Batman at any rate, whom I always imagine at about 35.
Unknown Angelfire site
Tim Drake
Quote: Where we were at the time, I don't know if the crew liked Jason Todd all that much. I think we looked upon him as the Robin that didn't work out too well when they did that whole Death in the Family thing in 1988. When we did The Animated Series in '92, Jason kind of spoke to us as the Robin who didn't work out and who got himself killed, so let's not do him. So Tim came along, and there were elements of Jason. They hadn't done the redo on Jason yet or figured out the Red Hood. We looked at Jason, he's a circus performer also, and Dick Grayson done over again with a different name. So when Tim came along, we said, "Let's do Tim instead. He seems to be brighter, younger, a more engaging character." It just seemed to work out better for us.
Starburst Magazine
Batman Beyond
Dating History
Quote: I used the memory of some spectacularly bad dating choices as the basis for a Batman Beyond story.
Comic Book Resources
Justice League
Comfort and Joy
Quote: I gave Bruce Timm an aluminum tree color wheel one year for Christmas and that worked its way into a "Justice League" episode.
Comic Book Resources
