Batman: The Brave and the Bold season 2, episode 4: "Aquaman's Outrageous Adventure!"
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Transcript
Batman is trying to pilot his bat-themed plane. Suddenly from the skies comes Hans von Hammer, called here Enemy Ace, who then proceeds to shoot at Batman. They commence to fight in the skies, with Batman managing to graze the Fokker triplane. Eventually Hans gets the upper hand on Batman before he finds himself plane to plane with the superhero, Batman upside down while Hans is upright.
Batman: Stand down, Enemy Ace. Today we must fight a common foe: injustice.
Enemy Ace: Who are you?
Batman: Someone who's not supposed to be here.
Batman: But neither is that cannon.
Batman points to below, as Hans follows this line of sight. We see a giant alien cannon shoot at an off-screen, undetermined object.
Enemy Ace: A weapon that destroys the enemy at such a distance. It is not honorable.
Batman: Will you help me?
Hans nods immediately, and the two planes go down to their new destination.
Transcript
Enemy Ace: We are even, dark knight of the skies. I hope we do not meet again in combat...for your sake.
Screenshots (edited for better visibility)
Character sheets
Head turn by Stephen B Jones (original deviantART link, Jones' portfolio); front and 3/4 rear sheet by Tim Eldred (link to gallery of villains)
Extra
Fan-made wallpapers from Bat Blog!
:: ✠ General Thoughts
WHERE DO I BEGIN?
LOL but seriously, how do I even. When this show first aired, I watched it on and off due to being very busy with university. To the point where I'm pretty sure I could start the series over for a rewatch and there'd be two seasons or episodes that would be new to me. One such episode was this one, where I only found out about it after graduating when doing yet another deep dive for more Hans stuff. Believe me, I squealed, as the kids used to say, when I found out that not only did Hans appear in an animated...anything, but it was a LONG SEQUENCE?! Sure, just the opening before the, uh, opening theme song (Wikipedia calls it a teaser, which sure is a new way to refer to that? Maybe?), but I didn't care. I was HYPED!
Then I heard Hans' voice and I kid you not, the first thing I thought was "aw c'mon, you didn't have to give him the stereotypical German voice!" XD
Yeah, that made me a little eentsy disappointed...and it wasn't even the voice, just the accent. To be fair, yeah, they needed to "show" that Hans wasn't American but German. But also ahhhh, there are Germans who have a little less stereotypical accent! (Maybe this is just me suffering as a German major LMAO)
To be fair part deux, Hans is one of those characters whose "voice headcanon" for me is hard to figure out! I think I told someone once that Johji Nakata would be a fun choice. His English voice is really nice to listen to too, and fits nicely. Here's some more samples: as Albert Wesker from Resident Evil (I've never played this game, sorry...); even a lighter voice like Diethard Ried from Code Geass; and an in between with Toshizou Hijikata from Peacemaker Kurogane.
Having said that, DiMaggio didn't do a bad job! His tone of voice was very good and gravely. It was just the accent that took me for surprise XD Though over the years, it's grown on me. While I am assuming that he was picked because he was there already (he's Aquaman in this series) and he can do a good chunk of different voices, I do wonder if they still had a quick audition just to make sure. Questions that'll never be asked, I suppose!
Everything else is just gravy, to be frank. When Hans comes into the shot for the first time, the design looks stellar. I get goosebumps but then again, I am heavily biased ;) The way they storyboarded the flight too--it's close to perfect, since my standard is (unfortunately) a close to Itano circus style of flying or influenced by that. Of course, you can't do that with planes made of wood and paper LOL But I was so happy to see an idea of how a possible full Enemy Ace animation can look like. And Hans' face is so perfectly this emoji: >:| The head turns and sheet above made me banshee scream because ahhh, they got the nose right (you'll know why it's important once I fill out some page about Hans' design) and his eyes. The plane! The dialogue! The MOOD! He was stern and serious, and extremely confident in his skills, given his warning to Batman. Despite being a small sequence in the grand scheme of things, I couldn't ask for more! And then there's that body shape from Eldred's sheet! That's a great way to make him look scary at first hand.
Another thing I will mention that I didn't like is uhhh the usual calling of Hans as "Enemy Ace." There was only one moment in the Kanigher/Kubert comics where someone referred to him as such, and I'm almost pretty sure it was something that was overlooked, not caught in the editing process--because Enemy Ace is the name of the concept, not Hans' actual codename. He was always called Baron, von Hammer, or the Hammer of Hell. Unfortunately superhero comics are of a certain semantic nature, and most people know him as Enemy Ace, which lends to the whole uhhh self-fulfilling prophecy of calling him "Enemy Ace" in almost every other media...
But I will also squeal about Eldred's character sheet saying "Hans von Hammer aka Enemy Ace," so NYEH! I do, uh, wonder why he's in the villains gallery though. Like, a couple of people tend to put Hans down as a villain, which I'll assume is because from an American standpoint, Germany in WWI WAS the enemy...But he's also clearly not, which is sorta the point. Ah, well. I'm being pedantic, I can live with it.
All in all, I wish there was more!
