On Saturdays at midnight, James Tucker is always in the same place — settling in to watch Noir Alley, TCM’s programming block dedicated to the brooding cinematic genre. He’s a bit of an aficionado — as he says, a “noir-ista.”
That lifelong passion now informs his day job as executive producer and coshowrunner of Prime Video’s Batman: Caped Crusader, an animated take on The Dark Knight’s early days prowling Gotham’s seedy streets in the 1940s. Season one played into traditional noir elements while pushing the envelope with character twists, like a daring interpretation of The Penguin as a woman (Minnie Driver). Initially, Tucker and fellow producers Bruce Timm, J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves didn’t know where the series would land. But given its streaming home, season two — which premiered in July — didn’t have to cater to broadcast censors and young audiences the way Tucker’s personal favorite, Batman: The Animated Series (1992–95), did. So, Tucker wanted to go deeper into noir.
“People may find this season a little darker and more nihilistic,” he says. “Noir-istas will know what I mean when I say I wanted to bring the Detour into the show.” He’s referring to a scrappy 1945 Poverty Row film now seen as a cornerstone of the genre. It’s steeped in the kind of antihero vibe Tucker wants Caped Crusader shrouded in, to show Batman’s darker days.
As showrunner, he’s intensely involved in all aspects of the series, but Tucker says it’s hard to break his early professional habits. “I still am a character designer at heart; that hasn’t changed,” he says. With that in mind, he shares with emmy contributor Hunter Ingram some of the tools that keep his mind and his metaphorical pencil sharp.
IPAD PRO AND APPLE PENCIL
Tucker has been around for every era of digital animation over the past three decades, from the days of hand-drawn sketches delivered by Xerox to drawing with a mouse on Mac computers “the size of a TV.” Today, he does his best work with these mobile but powerful tools. “I will take the largest one they have,” he says of his preferred, 13-inch screen size, “and I’m very low-tech, so the pencil feels the most natural in my hand.” ($1,299 for iPad Pro, $129 for Apple Pencil Pro, apple.com)
PROCREATE
Animators have their pick of creative apps, but Tucker keeps it simple — and Procreate packs the right punch: “I get easily overwhelmed, so for the user interface, just getting a drawing done, banging out a concept and putting pencil to paper, this is the best one of the bunch.” ($12.99, procreate.com)
1970s BATMAN COMICS
These have long been his crash course on the caped hero’s lore. “They reprinted all the old stories in the back of those comics, so they were like a Batman history lesson. I could see how he was interpreted through the eras.” (Batman in the Seventies anthology, $45, penguin.com)
DHPO CERAMIC FRENCH PRESS
Coffee has long given creative minds the jolt they need each day. Tucker brews a pot every morning: “I’ll usually make a pot and sip on that until about noon, but I’ve learned I have to cut myself off. I can’t drink four cups a day like I did when I was in my 30s.” ($49.99, dhpot.com)
AIRPODS
When Tucker heads out for his morning walk (daily goal: 10,000 steps), he uses Microsoft Word’s “read aloud” mode to listen to Caped Crusader scripts on the go. The robotic voices may not be ideal, but “hearing the dialogue out loud is helpful,” he says. ($249 for Apple AirPods Pro 3, apple.com)
Batman: Caped Crusader is now streaming on Prime Video.
This article originally appeared in emmy magazine, issue #10, 2026, under the title "The Dark of Knight."
