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He is a corrupt Gotham City councilman who was secretly involved with Salvatore Valestra's gang, making him responsible for the events of the movie where Andrea Beaumont became the Phantasm.
Arthur Reeves was initially a lawyer of Carl Beaumont, a financial planner who was affiliated with Salvatore Valestra's mob. Beaumont would refer to Reeves as "hotshot". Reeves also became friends with Beaumont's daughter Andrea and met her then-lover Bruce Wayne. When Beaumont had to flee Gotham with his daughter to escape Valestra, from whom he had embezzled a large sum of money, he turned to Reeves for help. Afterwards, Beaumont kept in touch with Reeves while he and Andrea lived anonymously in Europe.
Years later, Reeves started campaigning for an alderman position in the Gotham City Council. When Reeves' campaign ran out of money, he asked Beaumont for help. Beaumont refused to give him money, however, so Reeves went to Valestra and promised to provide information on Beaumont's whereabouts in return for an influx of campaign funds. Valestra agreed and got Reeves elected, providing the crime lord with a friend in city government to give his front businesses money through city contracts. Valestra also used information Reeves supplied him to locate Beaumont in Europe and sent his personal assassin - who would later become the Joker - to kill him.
Years later, a vigilante known as the Phantasm murders Valestra's associates Buzz Bronski and Chuckie Sol, and Reeves capitalizes on the situation by blaming Batman for the murders and calling on the Gotham police to apprehend the Dark Knight. Although he claims that he wants Batman to be brought to justice for his supposed crimes, Reeves is actually worried that Batman will go after him due to his mob ties. Batman succeeds in evading the police, enraging Reeves.
Joker tracks Reeves down to his office, informing him Batman did not commit the murders, but someone else whom he had personally seen after murdering Valestra. Joker suspects that Reeves hired the Phantasm to commit the murders to hide his connection with the mob, something Reeves adamantly denies. At that moment, Andrea calls Reeves to cancel their lunch date, and Joker realizes that she is actually the Phantasm. He then poisons Reeves with Joker venom, causing him to laugh uncontrollably, to the point that he has to be hospitalized.
Reeves later appears in the Gotham City Hospital, having been driven insane by the Joker's poison. Batman confronts Reeves and demands to know why Joker visited him. Reeves then tells Batman of his connections to the Valestra mob, and that he was the one who sold Beaumont out to them. Disgusted, Batman leaves Reeves collapsing into another peal of helpless laughter.
Batman Adventures[]
Arthur Reeves returns as the main antagonist in the canonical Batman Adventures issue "Batman & Robin Adventures Annual" #1.
The comic book establishes that Reeves was eventually cured of the condition brought on by the Joker venom. Batman interrogates Reeves as to Andrea's whereabouts, but he insists that he does not know where she went after vanishing at the end of Mask of the Phantasm. Reeves suffers an allergic reaction to the toxins Joker used on him, which leave him with a permanent smile and once again drive him insane. Blaming the Phantasm for what had happened to him, Reeves became obsessed with discovering the assassin's identity, eventually discovering that Andrea was the Phantasm all along.
Seeking revenge, Reeves orders the assassination of Bruce Wayne, knowing that Andrea would be drawn back out to defend her former lover. The attack succeeds in drawing Andrea out, as well as another by his henchman Kitsune, and Reeves has Andrea kidnapped while she is with Bruce at Wayne Manor. After inspecting the Phantasm gear, Reeves reveals himself to Andrea as the mastermind behind her kidnapping and explains his motivation for wanting to have her killed. Before Reeves can have Kitsune slit Andrea's throat, Batman bursts in and begins fighting off the henchmen. Reeves hits Batman in the head with Phantasm's claw before doing the same to Andrea. Reeves pulls off the unconscious Batman's mask and, realizing that Batman and Bruce Wayne, two men who had "put him through hell", are the same person, prepares to slit his throat, only to be subdued by Andrea, who has donned her Phantasm outfit once again. Reeves lunges at her, only to find that he is attacking the costume, and falls off the balcony to his death.
Personality[]
Arthur Reeves is quite similar to his associate Mayor Hamilton Hill where both men are concerned about their reputation to the public and have a distaste towards Batman for breaking the law. Unlike Hill, however, Reeves is more concerned about making advancements in his career and getting rich rather than the welfare of Gotham as Reeves willingly allied himself with the Valestra Crime Family (Salvatore Valestra, Chuckie Sol, Buzz Bronski) and Hill eventually decided to respect Batman because of their dedication to serving Gotham (Hill has shaken hands with Valestra at some point, but that was during a news conference. Hill might have been unaware of Valestra being a mobster as shows no traces of corruption and strongly values human life as when Hill objected to Napier's plans to bomb an entire city once since there were people there. Hill was also even willing to pay a fortune to the Napier thinking Napier wanted money until he realized Napier just wanted to kill everyone).
While Beaumont considered Reeves to be a friend and advisor, Reeves was treacherous against his boss as he was willing to hand over his location to the Valestra Crime Family (Reeves lost money after his first campaign and pleaded with Beaumont for a bailout. Beaumont refused either because he didn't have enough money to support Reeves after paying back the Valestra mob or because Beaumont feared that the Valestra mob would trace everything back to him if he helped Reeves. Because of that, Reeves willingly went to the Valestra mob and told them where Beaumont was hiding. Reeves however, claimed he never knew what Beaumont was doing with them, and that he never meet Velestra beforehand and that all they wanted was their money back. The movie never confirms nor denies that claim, so if Reeves was in fact locked out of the loop, he never intended for Beaumont to be killed. As gratitude, the Valestra mob gave Reeves the financial boost he needed and helped him become a councilman. Reeves thought he was doing the right thing since all the mob wanted was their money back since Beaumont embezzeled it from them, but Reeves was unaware of this: Beaumont did pay the mob back, but they still wanted to kill him). Reeves destroyed Andrea Beaumont's life despite being in love with her and Reeves still thought her father was still alive after betraying her father's location to a mafia gang whom he knew was murderous.
Reeves is shown to have a sense of humor as he mocked Bruce Wayne at a party Bruce invitied him to about Bruce having bad luck with women and how Andrea left him. Later after Reeves was helping Andrea with her finances, Reeves then attempted to make advancements towards Andrea after mocking Bruce about it only for Andrea to politely decline.
Reeves is shown to be a quite vain, arrogant, selfish, and narcassistic young man. Reeves was not only corrupt and a puppet to the mob but was also quite nervous and anxious when his life would be threatened. For instance, he began to sweat and pant when the Joker was threatening his life, proving that he clearly was scared and desperate for his life. He would do anything to save himself and did not care about what would happen to others.
Abilities[]
High-level intellect/Master lawyer/Expert investigator: Before becoming a member of the city council, Reeves was a lawyer for Carl Beaumont at his firm and a personal assistant of his. His ability to use the legal system to his advantage allowed Reeves to aid himself as well as others only if there was something in it for him. In the Batman Adventure comics, Reeves was also a capable investigator as he was able to deduce Andrea Beaumont's identity as the Phantasm when he blamed her for his problems after being disfigured by the Joker.
Network: As a former city councilman, Reeves had multiple contacts to businesses, police departments, and government officials. As a member of the Valestra mob, Reeves had multiple contacts in the criminal underworld as he was able to use them to find out who the Phantasm was and send multiple mercenaries after Bruce. In the Batman Adventure comics, Reeves was still shown his contacts in the underworld even after his career was destroyed.
Expert hand-to-hand combatant/Expert Knife Wielder/Stealth: In the Batman Adventure comics, although he is not a martial artist similar to Bruce as well as Andrea, Reeves can fight vigilantes in unarmed combat as long as he has a weapon in his posession, such as a gun or a knife. Reeves was also shown to have excellent skills in stealth as he was able to ambush Bruce and Andrea at some point without them knowing in the Batman Adventure comics.
Trivia[]
While Arthur Reeves' mainstream comics counterpart was never the nicest individual (vehemently opposing to Batman's vigilantism), he was largely regarded as comic relief instead of a genuine villain. Up until his appearance in Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, after his initial debut, Reeves was featured as running for mayor on an anti-Batman platform but would ruin his own campaign by publicizing hoaxed photos from Rupert Thorne which depicted Batman as a mob boss, leading Reeves to retire from politics in disgrace. His incarnation of the DC Animated Universe, however, is more selfish and arrogant who, despite his initial kindness, backstabbed his former boss in exchange for the necessary money to finance his political campaign despite possibly knowing Salvatore Valestra's intentions and ordered a manhunt against Batman without proofs that he was killing Valestra's mobsters just for the sake to not lose his money, making this version of the character far worse and darkest than his mainstream counterpart.
Ironically, in the comics, the candidate who ran for mayor against Reeves and ended up wining due Thorne's intervention was none other than Hamilton Hill, who was corrupt in comic book continuity and on Thorne's payroll, whereas the DCAU incarnation of Hill is never depicted as corrupt but rather as an effective law official, being represented as the contrary he was in the comics in a similar vein to Reeves. Coincidentally, Hart Bochner, the actor who voiced Arthur Reeves in the film, is the son of the late Lloyd Bochner, who voiced Mayor Hill in Batman: The Animated Series and The New Batman Adventures.
Reeves closely resembles Harvey Dent, before his pre-disfiguration in "Two-Face". Unlike Dent however before his disfigurement, Reeves was a mob puppet while Dent was fighting to keep the city clean until Rupert Thorne shattered his life.
Ironically, Joker poisoning Reeves, proved to be a mistake on the Joker's part. Because it left a trail that lead to Batman learning the Phantasm's identity. Despite Reeves history with the Beaumonts, up until then, Bruce had no reason up to that point to suspect Reeves has any involvement in the mob murders. Right before the poisoning, he had just discovered Joker was Valestra's hitman. Bruce correctly concluded that Joker thought Arthur was involved and the subsequent interrogation of Reeves at the hospital, revealed that Reeves betrayed Carl Beaumont to Valestra, meaning that Carl was dead and Andrea had lied to him, allowing him to learn that Andrea, was the Phantasm, and Joker, was the final target.
