Why I love Kevin Conroy’s per­for­mance in Bat­man: Mask of the Phantasm

If your ears have ever been blessed by the voice of the late Kevin Con­roy – per­haps through any of the count­less ani­mat­ed shows, direct-to-video films and video game fran­chis­es in which the actor played Bat­man over the last three decades – you’d quick­ly be able to recog­nise that deep, soul­ful tone of his. For a first-time lis­ten­er, it’d be easy to mis­take the actor’s voice for that of a jazz croon­er tucked away in an under­ground speakeasy rather than a fre­quent face on the com­ic con­ven­tion loop. But for many oth­er peo­ple around the world, the mere whis­per of his words con­notes a whole flur­ry of emo­tions, one that evokes both an elu­sive mag­net­ism and an irrepara­ble sense of grief that have become hall­marks of the Dark Knight char­ac­ter ever since.

When Bat­man: The Ani­mat­ed Series first pre­miered, there was lit­tle indi­ca­tion the show would intro­duce what is wide­ly regard­ed today as the defin­i­tive take on the hero. Up until that point, the character’s per­cep­tion in the pub­lic eye was at the mer­cy of its live-action adap­ta­tions; first with the campy, tongue-in-cheek 60’s series led by Adam West and then lat­er with Tim Burton’s 1989 epony­mous block­buster star­ring Michael Keaton. It wasn’t until Conroy’s voice first graced the air­waves in the autumn of 1992 (in an after-school children’s show no less) that tele­vi­sion audi­ences would first famil­iarise them­selves with the character’s inher­ent­ly mature themes, rais­ing the main­stream pro­file of both men sub­stan­tial­ly in the process.

As is the case with any iter­a­tion of the icon­ic hero, the ani­mat­ed series’ suc­cess hinged on the per­former who would end up por­tray­ing the Caped Cru­sad­er through­out the show’s three-year run. The hon­our would ulti­mate­ly go to Con­roy, a Juil­liard-trained the­atre actor who had pri­mar­i­ly done guest spots on sit­coms and soap operas before being cast as Bat­man. The thes­pi­an approached the role as an ​“arche­typ­al hero” in the same way he would play­ing Ham­let dur­ing his days at the Old Globe The­atre in San Diego. In addi­tion to the rave reac­tions Conroy’s per­for­mance received, the ani­mat­ed show would quick­ly prove to be both a crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial jug­ger­naut; its rapid suc­cess led to 1993’s Bat­man: Mask of the Phan­tasm, a the­atri­cal­ly released fea­ture film that con­tains the actor’s finest hour as the character.

The film, rolled out on Christ­mas Day 30 years ago, is told in a bifur­cat­ed struc­ture that switch­es between past and present, with its dra­mat­ic ten­sion cen­tred around Bruce Wayne’s inner con­flict between set­tling down and liv­ing the life his par­ents envi­sioned for him or con­tin­u­ing his mis­sion of jus­tice as Bat­man. The last time Bruce saw Andrea Beau­mont, a child­hood friend and a fel­low mem­ber of Gotham high soci­ety, she left him heart­bro­ken by walk­ing out on his mar­riage pro­pos­al – a deeply emo­tion­al scar­ring that would final­ly pro­pel him to com­mit to his hero­ic man­tle. Ten years lat­er, Andrea strolls back into town look­ing to set­tle some fam­i­ly busi­ness once and for all. On the same night, a new masked vig­i­lante called the Phan­tasm begins to haunt the streets of Gotham, mur­der­ing a local crime boss and fram­ing Bat­man in the process.

Mask of the Phantasm’s twin nar­ra­tives allow Con­roy to flex his tal­ents across the character’s two dis­tinct per­sonas, anchor­ing one of the most heart­break­ing ren­di­tions of the hero’s ori­gin with his wrench­ing vocal per­for­mance. ​“I’ve always thought Bat­man was the real char­ac­ter, and Bruce Wayne was the dis­guise,” the actor explains on a fea­turette that accom­pa­nies the recent­ly released 4K remas­ter of the film, ​“for Bruce, he has to play the soci­ety scene…he’s the bach­e­lor in town.” It’s an approach that’s evi­dent in the flash­backs we see of Bruce and Andrea’s courtship, Con­roy deploy­ing a bounci­er, more ener­gised tone to sig­ni­fy the lift­ed emo­tions of Wayne in the days before his descent into obses­sive vigilantism.

While the film’s two sto­ry­lines are ini­tial­ly pre­sent­ed as sep­a­rate strands, one fol­low­ing Bruce in dis­tant mem­o­ries and the oth­er shad­ow­ing Bat­man in the cur­rent day as he tracks down the Phan­tasm, it quick­ly becomes appar­ent to The World’s Great­est Detec­tive just how inter­twined these events tru­ly are. As Bat­man works to uncov­er the iden­ti­ty of the Phan­tasm and clear his name in the present, Conroy’s voice switch­es to a notice­ably low­er reg­is­ter, not quite to the same degree as some of his grun­tier live-action coun­ter­parts, but coarse enough to audi­bly sig­ni­fy his character’s inner anguish. In the film’s most dev­as­tat­ing scene, a lovesick and inter­nal­ly con­flict­ed Bruce Wayne vis­its his par­ents’ grave, tear­ful­ly con­fess­ing his doubts about his quest for vengeance. ​“That scene at the grave was [when] I realised ful­ly that you can’t fake Bat­man,” Con­roy recounts in a 2017 oral his­to­ry. ​“You can’t just make a deep, husky sound with your voice. You have to base it in the pain of his child­hood each time or it doesn’t sound right.”

Bruce’s trau­mat­ic youth would become a point of return for Conroy’s many per­for­mances as the char­ac­ter, the actor util­is­ing his own expe­ri­ences as a gay man to bet­ter con­vey the strug­gle of some­one lead­ing two very dif­fer­ent lives. ​“I often mar­velled at how appro­pri­ate it was that I should land this role”, the actor details in an auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal com­ic released by DC just before his death. ​“As a gay boy grow­ing up in the 1950s and 60s in a devout­ly Catholic fam­i­ly, I’d grown adept at con­ceal­ing parts of myself. Of putting aspects of myself in a sep­a­rate box and lock­ing it away.”

Despite the self-admit­ted sim­i­lar­i­ties between him and his most famous char­ac­ter, Kevin Con­roy and Bruce Wayne pos­sess two entire­ly dif­fer­ent rela­tion­ships to their icon­ic lega­cies. Mask of the Phan­tasm ends with Bat­man doomed to roam the streets of Gotham for­ev­er, his one chance at hap­pi­ness slip­ping away as she sails out of the har­bour for the very last time, con­demn­ing the hero to a life of suf­fer­ing in the shadows.

It’s a strik­ing­ly bleak con­trast when com­pared to Conroy’s own con­nec­tion with the role – an hon­our bestowed on the actor that he seem­ing­ly nev­er grew tired of up until his final days in the record­ing booth. If the Bat Sig­nal serves as a con­stant reminder of Batman’s omnipo­tent pres­ence perched high on the rooftops above, Conroy’s many out­ings as the char­ac­ter like­wise allow him to live on in the minds of audi­ences for­ev­er, that bel­low­ing voice of his echo­ing from our screens for the rest of eternity.