We’re still reeling from the passing of the indelible Kevin Conroy, the voice of Batman for over 30 years. It seemed unthinkable that we’d never get to hear a new project which featured his distinctive growl as the Caped Crusader. Well, luckily, the folks at Rocksteady Games also felt this way, and knew we all needed to hear him again. During the Game Awards 2022, a new cinematic trailer dropped for the long-developing game Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Entitled “Shadows,” the teaser has the members of the Squad (who are fighting against a Justice League gone homicidal) run across the Dark Knight who has a very familiar voice.
All the way back in 2020 during the first DC FanDome event, we saw the teaser trailer for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. (Back then, the title didn’t have a colon; how times change.) It showed the various members of the Skwad in a destroyed Metropolis gearing up for a big battle. The dun-dun-dun moment of that one was Superman. Here, the members (Harley Quinn, Deadshot, King Shark, and Captain Boomerang) drag an unconscious Flash into some kind of dark store room or garage.
Naturally, Boomer wants a piece of the Flash, and in fact accidentally carves off a hunk of Speedster with his slicey-dicey boomerang. Awhoops. Unfortunately, no sooner has this happened than someone creeps into the shadows. It’s Batman! Harley says hello and tells her fellow bad-but-good-guys that it’s okay! Batman doesn’t kill. Well, that’s normally the case, but something is clearly off here. We see Bats, with dark, spidery veins on his face. He’s been toxified or something.
The teaser ends, gloriously, with Kevin Conroy saying his most-quoted line from Batman: The Animated Series.
“I am vengeance.
I am the night.
I. Am. BATMAN!”
It’s enough to give people chills on its own, but knowing Conroy has recently passed, plus the message “Thank you Kevin,” really choked us up. Conroy, as you well know, voiced Batman in Rocksteady’s genre-redefining Arkham series of games, which introduced a new generation of kids to the most perfect voice ever to don the proverbial cowl.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League launches May 26, 2023, on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.
