Summary: Wonder Woman is transformed into a pig following an encounter with Circe, an ancient sorceress with a grudge against Hippolyta. While Batman and Zatanna track down the witch in an attempt to get her to reverse the spell, B'wana Beast and a host of others search for "Wonder Pig," who, in a moment of confusion, escaped and is somewhere on the streets of Gotham. However, to save his friend, the Dark Knight must sacrifice something incredibly valuable in order for Circe to relent...something even he never would have expected to bestow.
JL Mission Roll Call: Batman, Wonder Woman, Zatanna, B'wana Beast, Red Tornado, Elongated Man, Crimson Avenger
Featured Character: Batman
Villain: Circe
Cartoon Network on “This Little Piggy”: “It’s musical mayhem when Batman and Zatanna join forces to save a teammate from a fate worse than death (courtesy of The World’s Finest).”
Paul Dini on “This Little Piggy” #1: “It was fun for me to have one last go ‘round with the Bat, and I’ve never been shy about tossing Zatanna in things, either. Glad a lot of folks liked the singing—that originally came at the suggestion of Bruce [Timm] and Dwayne [McDuffie], but I was happy to aid and abet. Of course, Batsy’s singing has already been well established in the comics; hunt up a copy of Batman #219, Mike Friedrich and Neal Adams’ ‘The Silent Night of the Batman,’ if you doubt. He was a singin’ fool in that one.
“In an earlier version of the script, Batman and Wonder Woman were walking through the Watchtower and talking about what Batman had sacrificed to get Circe to break her spell. Batman brushed it off, claiming it wasn’t important. Then they came into a meeting room where Zatanna was impishly playing back Bats’ performance in her crystal ball for Green Arrow, [Black] Canary, Elongated Man and a couple of others. It was cute, but I think Bruce [Timm] and Dwayne [McDuffie] wanted to bookend the intimate moment between Bruce and Diana at the top of the episode. To my way of thinking, Zee just filled Diana in later on [with] the details. Even super-heroines do the girl talk thing (courtesy of Toon Zone).”
Paul Dini on “This Little Piggy” #2: “It’s easy for me to say, ‘It was all Bruce’s idea,’ and, in fact, most of it was, but that makes me sound like Joe Buckpasser and, besides, I liked the funny musical angle Bruce came up with a lot more than the serious excursion into Greek mythology I originally pitched. […] ‘Piggy’ is still one of my favorite DCAU episodes.
“The ‘Zatanna clobbers Circe with chairs’ bit was a goofy idea I stuck in the script at the last minute; director Dan Riba really made the gag pay off. We got a lot of flack at first from DC over Batman singing, even though I pointed out he already sang in a Neal Adams Christmas story in the ‘70’s. Still, Bruce Timm stuck it out and got them to okay it, even though we had to add a sort of cop-out line that Batman was imitating another singer (courtesy of LiveJournal).”
Paul Dini on “This Little Piggy” #3: “[Here] Batman reveals that he can sing. That sensitivity is what charms Circe into a level she understands and she agrees to lift the curse. Keven Conroy is a hell of a singer; it could’ve been a real step across the live, [but] Kevin really pulled it off (courtesy of ToyFare Magazine).”
Andrea Romono on “This Little Piggy”: “Since 1991, when we first started making Batman, we always joked about making Batman: The Musical because Kevin Conroy, who voices Batman, is a fine singer. In this episode, Batman is forced to do something humiliating in order for a spell to be reversed. And what he is forced to do is sing a song, and he sings it beautifully. You just don’t get to do many musical numbers in Justice League, so that’s really, really fun (courtesy of [website name removed]).”
Bruce Timm on Kevin Conroy’s performance: “If the home video folks ever get around to releasing ‘This Little Piggy’ on DVD, I’ll see if I can convince them to put the ‘complete’ version of the song [‘Am I Blue?’] on it as an extra. There’s really only about ten seconds more of it, but it is beautiful. When he hits that last high-note…Mmm, sweet (courtesy of Toon Zone)!”
Bruce Timm on Whedon influences: “Batman singing in ‘This Little Piggy’ was inspired, in part, by the running karaoke gags on Angel but, whereas their joke was that Angel sang goofy songs like ‘Mandy’ (and not too well), our gag was that Batman’s choice of song was entirely in character, and he nails it. In the same episode, the bullets and bracelets gag was inspired by a bit they didn’t do on Buffy: in the episode (I don’t remember the title) where Buffy was turned into a rat, being chased by a hungry feline, I kept waiting for the Buffy-rat to kick the cat’s ass (courtesy of Toon Zone)!”
Bruce Timm on Batman and Wonder Woman’s flirtation: “We thought it would be interesting to have a minor flirtation going on [and], at a certain point, we didn’t want to completely go down that path, so we started pulling back. We’re not going to do too much more with that (courtesy of ToyFare Magazine).”
Dwayne McDuffie on Batman and Wonder Woman’s potential future: “When Batman Beyond was written, the Wonder Woman romance hadn’t been thought of. Keep in mind that Bruce is an old man in Batman Beyond. He’s had dozens of relationships including, I’m sure, a number of meaningful ones that weren’t referenced in Batman Beyond. Heck, for all we know, Bruce was married for thirty years between JLU and Batman Beyond. None of this necessarily means that he and Diana didn’t get together at some point, or that it wasn’t a good relationship. It just means we haven’t seen it (courtesy of DwayneMcDuffie.com).”
Commentary
Commentary coming soon!
Image courtesy of The
World’s Finest.