Once More, With Batman

Being the Batman geek that I am, I occasionally take the time to sit down and watch Batman: The Brave and the Bold. The latest Batman cartoon is a more lighthearted and Silver Age take on the character, providing as many laughs as high-flying adventure. And, taking its cues from the comic book it's named after, each episode features Batman teaming up with another DC character...usually, some third-stringer who had yet to be portrayed in animation. So it can get really geek-tacular.

Recently, they aired an episode entitled "Mayhem of the Music Meister!" The Music Meister is an original villain created for the show. His power is that he can hypnotize people through his song, and is thus out to conquer the world. Naturally, with a power like that, the writers on the show had an excuse to go all "Once More, With Feeling" and do a musical episode.

The mainstream entertainment media has been geeking out over this episode, mainly because of special guest villain Neil Patrick Harris as the Music Meister. Apparently, no one knew that Harris could sing like that. Apparently, no one remembered that Harris was in the Broadway cast of Rent.

I want to take a moment to geek out about the other powerhouse singer in the episode. In order to defeat the Music Meister, Batman teams up with the legendary DC hero Black Canary. On the show, Black Canary is voice by voice actress Grey DeLisle.

Once upon a time, about a couple years ago, I was googling the names of voice actors in an attempt to learn more about them. (Being a geek who loves cartoons, it's how I frequently kill a rainy afternoon.) I entered DeLisle's name into a search engine, and discovered that voice acting is just her day job. By night, she's a country music singer, and had released a couple of indie albums a few years ago. One critic described her voice as a "Goth-infused Dolly Parton," and with a description like that, you could colour me curious. My next online visit was Amazon.com, where I bought her album Iron Flowers. It's a really good album...very classic country music, more bluegrass in flavour, and I still listen to it quite a bit.

So I'm really glad that she finally got this mainstream exposure, and here's hoping she releases another album soon. (Iron Flowers is her most recent, and it came out in 2005.)

Here she is from "Mayhem of the Music Meister!" singing "If Only," a Disney Princess-ish ballad where sings of her love for Batman:



Here she is, singing live, one of my favourite songs off Iron Flowers, "The Bloody Bucket:"



Hey! And here she is on New Zealand television talking about being a superstar voice actress:



I guess all I'm trying to say here is Grey DeLisle is awesome.