Kevin Conroy and the Power of Voice Acting
A personal reflection on the most prominent Batman voice actor the impact voice acting can have.
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My sister ran up, panting. “Kevin Conroy is dead!”
I nodded, solemn. I’d caught wind of the news before her.
“Kevin Conroy is dead!” she repeated sharply, emotion threatening to crack her in two.
I nodded again, inhaling deeply.
“I…” She shook her head. “How did it happen? Do you know?”
“Cancer.” It had taken our cousin, too. I wondered how Conroy’s own cousins felt.
Later in the evening, I gestured for my sister to come sit down. I had a video pulled up for her — for us. It was a clip from the Justice League Unlimited episode “Epilogue,” in which Batman (voiced by Conroy) is tasked by Amanda Waller (voiced by CCH Pounder) to euthanize Ace (voiced by Hynden Walch), a young girl with reality-altering powers. My sister and I had watched the show together as kids, so we knew what was coming.
We cried anyway.
As someone who’s watched a cornucopia of animated shows and played through countless video games, I’ve experienced the ups, downs, and in-betweens of voice acting…
