I think we often neglect the importance of media in this day and age. When somebody says “Kevin Conroy left a lasting impact on myself and my childhood,” they aren’t just talking about youthful nostalgia and escapism. I can’t speak for everyone, but these characters informed much of who I am today. Not just my interests and hobbies, either, but we don’t develop in a vacuum and much of what I saw and read as a kid informed my very morality; my understanding of justice, decency and altruism. And that’s coming from a kid who went to church 4 times a week for the first decade of his life.
You take so much and I don’t think you even realize it, but we’re all creatures of habit. Car guys like cars because they watched their dads or hung around in the garage helping handle lug nuts, baseball fans love the game because it evokes memories: of little league, of games and hot dogs and the raw enthusiasm of the crowd. Maybe it’s a controversial opinion, but what we watch informs who we are…and Kevin Conroy informed who a hell of a lot of people are. It’s ironic that the most human Batman of all time was literally 2 dimensional, but that’s the truth of it.
He embodied the role with pathos and a sense of awareness that few others have even managed to scratch the surface of and he did it from a sound booth, having much of what he physically brought to the role relegated to the confines of half hour behind the scenes retrospectives in DVD bonus features. I don’t know. I said it earlier on Facebook, but he’s not just the Batman on TV, he was the Batman in our brains and the way he relished it in real life on the convention circuit and outside was a joy to experience. Few people get to be Batman, few people get to define Batman, and Kevin Conroy understood the importance and the value in that.
It could’ve been very easy for a classically trained Juilliard Alum whose contemporaries included the likes of Robin Williams and Christopher Reeve to develop a sense of cynicism about that career trajectory. To be a voice actor; to be relegated to being “behind the scenes;” hell, to stop and think for a moment that “I was trained in Shakespeare at the most prestigious acting academy in the US and I’m grunting 15 takes into a microphone because my director told me a Crocodile Man just knocked the wind out of me.” That wasn’t Kevin Conroy. Part of what made it such an enduring performance, as well as an enduring production, was the fact that everyone gave it their all. They didn’t tone it down or self-censor, they just told good stories that people, adults and kids alike, would want to watch…and we did.
Conroy brought his education and his talent to the role and he defined a Batman that had so many facets. People often talk about the three faces or his Bruce Wayne. The true self, who was Batman, the facade, the Playboy dullard, and the real Bruce, who we saw banter with Alfred and Robin and fall in love with Andrea Beaumont, but they also fail to acknowledge the development that occurred over time. The subtle nuances and changes he brought to the role when he embodied, say, an octogenarian Bruce in Batman Beyond, or the way we progressively watched him slip headlong into darkness and the Batman persona through The New Batman Adventures and Justice League. He developed a character and I don’t think, from 1992 onward, he ever finished developing it.
I truly believe that, had Kevin Conroy lived another 20 years, we’d have had another 20 years of Kevin Conroy as Batman, or, as long as he could do the voice. He understood the stewardship he had over the character and he not only welcomed it, he relished it. I had the pleasure of meeting him only once, but his presence was infectious. I hadn’t even met him, yet, and I was already shaken when, while turning a corner, I heard the booming echoes of “I AM VENGEANCE! I AM THE NIGHT! I AM…BATMAN” fill the Convention Center and be met with whoops and hollers and a round of applause. It was just…wonderful.
And I think that’s what’s so heartbreaking about it. They say to “never meet your heroes,” but Kevin Conroy was Batman. He was grace and class and kindness and you felt in his presence the same sense you felt in his performance. I’m devastated and I can’t begin to express what a tremendous loss this is.
