During his crime fighting career Batman has encountered a fair share of supernatural threats, including witches, werewolves, various assorted ghouls, and even vampires. With Halloween upon us, I figured it would be nice to do a short rundown of Batman’s run-ins with the latter, (usually) blood-sucking creatures, in cartoons over the years. The list is in chronological order, abd this is not supposed to be a tier list for the episodes and movies mentioned below. Likewise, it is possible I might have missed a couple, but without much further ado, here are some of the most memorable toons where Batman had to go up against vampires.
Superfriends. “Attack of the Vampire” (1978). In this story Dracula awakens and starts turning others into vampires using some magical dust (this was a “Saturday morning cartoon” after all). Another method of turning people into vampires was shooting rays out of his eyes, a trick his newly created vampire minions were likewise able to perform. The Super Friends – including Batman & Robin – investigate and some of them even end up being transformed into vampires themselves. It’s pretty much in line with the rest of these Super Friends episodes, it has it’s certain charm but it is a bit silly, for lack of a better word, but that’s not exactly supposed to be a complaint. It’s a decent way to waste time and offers some neat designs for the Super Friends vampires. Plus, Batman plays a pretty big role here, so it is a fine addition to this list.
A slightly different vampire appears in a later Super Friends short, “Voodoo Vampire” (1980). This animated short mainly focused on Batman & Robin teaming-up with Black Vulcan to stop an African vampiress from turning more people into her slaves. This time, the beams to turn people into vampires are shot from their fangs, which sounds and looks a bit too silly, but it is what it is. There’s really not a lot to comment on the cartoon other than maybe that Batman is turned into a vampire this time, but again, it’s one of Batman’s animated confrontations with a vampire, so it belongs in this list.
Fast-forward to around a quarter of a century later, and we find The Batman Versus Dracula (2005), perhaps the first cartoon that comes to many fans’ minds when talking about Batman fighting vampires, as far as animation goes. The direct-to-video movie was a tie-in to The Batman animated series that was being produced around that time. As such it features the same character designs and even voices for the main characters. That is, Rino Romano as Bruce Wayne/Batman, Tom Kenny as Penguin, Kevin Michael Richardson as Joker, and Alastair Duncan as Alfred. Newcomers are Peter Stormare as Dracula, and Tara Strong as Vicky Vale.
The story centers on Dracula awakening in Gotham City, and turning Penguin into his slave, then feeding on other citizens (including Joker, briefly) leading to Batman having to investigate these supposed kidnappings, only to end up being considered the one responsible for it all. Also included are scenes of Batman starting to doubt himself and thinking he’s getting swallowed up by Dracula’s legacy. This was also a more supernatural themed adventure for this particular version of the Batman; the show at that point didn’t really touch on stuff like this, despite the occasional super-powered rogue Batman had to face during a normal day. The movie going straight-to-video also helped it be a bit more… mature than the show airing on Kids WB at the time. Nothing really of what would be considered R-rated animated material nowadays, but it has its fair share of creepy imagery and lots of blood spilling out. Vampire bites aren’t directly shown but are heavily implied.
The movie does a pretty good job at keeping the focus on well, Batman’s fight with Dracula, while also squeezing in other characters and sub-plots, like Joker and Penguin (who in hindsight were a bit over-used on the series) as well as Introducing Vicky Vale as a potential love interest, not only for Bruce Wayne but also for Dracula, more or less. The animation is slick and the action scenes are engaging enough; seeing Batman having to confront the undead leads to some pretty cool visuals. As for Dracula himself, he’s more than a match for the Dark Knight and their encounters usually seem a bit more violent than you’d expect. Without spoiling everything – for those reading the article that might have not seen the movie yet – it should come as no surprise that Batman gets the upper hand when a certain new device having to do with sunlight, invented by Wayne Enterprises is mentioned.
Overall, this is probably one of the most fun and action-y Batman animated movies made so far. It’s become a sort of tradition for many (myself included) to watch it every year around Halloween. On a tangent, it’s also fun pairing it up with the classic Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man live-action movie, when time permits.
Next up we have Batman: The Brave and the Bold, the animated series mostly inspired by the “Silver Age” of comics, though it took cues and concepts from many other eras, merging all of them into a pretty unique cartoon. The episode titled “Shadow of the Bat!” from 2011 (not to be confused with the episodes with the same title from Batman: The Animated Series, which introduced Batgirl), features vampires, because why not. In this situation Batman is aided by the Justice League International to subdue the vampiress Dala (who technically was artificially transformed into one, but still counts). Soon enough Batman starts showing signs of vampirism as well. It’s one of the few cartoons out there to really depict Batman as a vampire, and in a pretty serious way. On the other hand, most of the humor here is found from the other heroes (i.e., Booster Gold, Blue Beetle, Fire & Ice). Their reactions to Batman’s sudden change are pretty entertaining and of course it all builds up to a confrontation between them. Martian Manhunter puts up the best fight and with a bit of help from the Demon Etrigan manages to save the day… or night, or whatever. The episode also has that cliche “was it all a dream or not” kind of ending, but it works for the most part and is an entertaining watch.
Justice League: Gods and Monsters (2015) is an “Elseworlds” project; it features rather unique and completely different takes on Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, as well as a plethora of other characters from the DC Universe. Case in point, this version of the Batman isn’t Bruce Wayne… he’s Kirk Langstrom, and to top it all off, he’s a vampire! Voiced by Michael C. Hall. Before the main feature the franchise also offered a series of animated shorts focusing on each member of this version of the Trinity, and Batman’s short had him fight with an alternate Harley Quinn. Within the movie, he’s one of the main characters and his backstory is presented rather well during certain flashbacks. Without spoiling everything, his connection to the villain of the movie makes things a bit more dramatic than you’d expect and as a result, more entertaining I suppose. There’s not a lot to comment on this vampire Batman but he had a pretty cool and slick design and it’s an interesting enough idea that works within this alternate universe. I also can’t really do the movie justice by only focusing on Batman’s role, while also trying to avoid adding many spoilers. This movie needs to be seen to be believed. It’s just too bad the series never really got a follow-up, despite there being plans for at least a few more animated shorts. The potential for these new versions of existing characters, plus further developing this Trinity, seemed limitless at the time and one can hope this wasn’t the last time we visited this universe.
And perhaps the most recent example as of this writing, occurs in Batman: Caped Crusader. In this more “noir” take on the Batman and his world, Batman has to fight a young girl who seems to display signs of vampirism. Natalia Night (voiced by Mckenna Grace) who drains the energy from her victims, and shows up in the episode aptly titled “Nocturne”, from 2024. It’s a creepy enough episode that doesn’t feature an actual vampire, but comes close enough. The episode also features a group of kids as her victims, all of them designed to look like some of the various folks that took on the codename of Robin throughout the decades in the comics. It is also worth noting that the character of Natalia/Nocturna was intended to appear as a vampire in an episode of Batman: The Animated Series, back in the early ’90s but the censors wouldn’t allow something like that.
Honorable mentions: all of the times Batman becomes some sort of bat-demon. Examples include Justice League Action, or the animated movie Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham from a few years ago. There are probably more such instances out there and while most of them have pretty cool designs they are not exactly vampires, so they weren’t included in the article above. Otherwise, the classic character of Man-Bat would have also been mentioned a bunch of times already considering how often he’s appeared in cartoons, either as an opponent or ally to Batman. And as mentioned, the “Elseworlds” Batman/Man-Bat composite character.
And that’s about it, at least for the moment, in regards to Batman’s animated confrontations with vampires. Leave a comment below if have anything else to add, point out anything that wasn’t covered in the article above, or maybe even suggestions for a similar article, about Batman’s fights with a different type of monster (werewolves, maybe?), for next Halloween!
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