Batman: The Animated Series Recruited A B-Movie Legend For Scarecrow's Redesign

The Scarecrow, aka Dr. Jonathan Crane, is my favorite Batman villain. I've always been drawn to his eponymous motif, his horror-twinged stories, and how he contests Batman for the title "The Master of Fear." Hence, though "Batman: The Animated Series" holds a special place in my heart, I've always been disappointed that Scarecrow wasn't an A-list player.

Crane is the antagonist in only three episodes and in each one is mostly an obstacle for Batman to develop against. In his villainous debut, "Nothing to Fear," Batman is dosed with Scarecrow's Fear Toxin and haunted by an apparition of his father, leading to the Dark Knight's most famous line. In "Dreams in Darkness," the Fear Toxin drives Batman temporarily insane and he's locked in Arkham Asylum. He must escape both his physical and mental prison before Scarecrow can poison Gotham City.

"Batman: The Animated Series" has many superlative takes on villains; Mark Hamill's Joker needs no introduction, while the show invented Harley Quinn and reinvented Mr. Freeze. Clayface, Poison Ivy, and Two-Face all had stirring characterization, but Scarecrow was left in the dust — until season 4.

That season, relaunched as "The New Batman Adventures," featured a revised art style with updated character designs. The crew used this chance to give Scarecrow his due, with a new look and a new voice: that of Jeffrey Combs.

Jeffrey Combs is a legendary genre actor. If you've watched any "Star Trek," you can probably pin his face (probably because he's always worn heavy makeup) — he's played characters from the slimy Weyoun in "Deep Space Nine" to the semi-friendly Andorian Shran in "Enterprise."

If you're not a Trekkie, though, Combs is most known for B horror movies. The most famous of them all? "Re-Animator," a 1985 zombie movie based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft. Combs plays Herbert West, a medical student who wants to cure death like a modern Victor Frankenstein. Rather than the lightning and alchemy Frankenstein used, West relies on a "Re-Agent" of his own making — a glowing green liquid that, when injected into corpses via a syringe, reanimates them. However, West can't control the results; despite being the cause of all the movie's mayhem, he winds up less of an antagonist than his revenant creations.

West is a rather similar character to Jonathan Crane; a mad scientist ostracized by his academic peers for dangerous experiments. In Scarecrow's "Batman: The Animated Series" debut, he vengefully tried to burn down Gotham University after being let go (that's why you get tenure before terrorizing students).

Combs' background in horror and mellifluous voice made him a natural fit for Scarecrow, especially since with "The New Batman Adventures," the crew wanted to make the villain, well, scary.

Scarecrow's design evolution was detailed in a behind-the-scenes DVD feature, "Interactive Arkham Asylum." Series co-creator Bruce Timm and writer Paul Dini agreed the villain hadn't been as frightening as he should be. He actually went through two designs back in the original series; a simple ghoulish mask in his debut and then a scraggier, Jack O'Lantern-inspired look with an underbite.

Timm decided to downplay the scarecrow motif in his new design, instead drawing Crane as if he were undead. The mask was still crooked, but the texture was leathery and the eyes were featureless white bolts. He ditched the red shirt for a black overcoat, while the flesh on his arms had the gray discoloration of a zombie. He became more physically imposing too, with broader shoulders and a wooden stick for self-defense.

The result resembled Leatherface dressed like Harry Powell from "The Night of the Hunter." The cherry-on-top was a severed noose draped around his neck. "He looked like a hangman who had been cut down and had gone off to terrorize people," Dini said. "We weren't even sure if there was an actual guy in the suit."

Once the new design was chosen, the decision was made to recast. Henry Polic II, the original voice, gave Scacecrow a serviceable villain voice with a Mid-Atlantic accent, but not a terribly distinct one. Director Dan Riba and Voice Director Andrea Romano recounted watching the voice "come to life" in "Interactive Arkham Asylum," knowing they'd struck gold. "[Combs'] whispery rasp was so scary," Riba said.

Unfortunately, Combs only played Scarecrow in one episode: "Never Fear," based on the comic story "Fear for Sale" by Mike W. Barr and Alan Davis (published in "Detective Comics" #571). Scarecrow develops a new drug that removes fear; when Batman is exposed to it, Robin has to keep him from going over the line into lethal crimefighting. The episode teases Scarecrow's new look, initially keeping him in shadow until a commercial break halfway through.

Scarecrow later appeared in "Over The Edge," but had no lines and, thus, no Combs. The actor has since voiced other comic characters (Romano brought him back as The Question in "Justice League Unlimited") but he deserves another shot at Scarecrow too.