A new free documentary on the making of Batman The Animated Series. I watched it with my kids back in the nineties, how did that become almost three decades ago!, and fell in love with it. Set in a queer mixture of thirties and ninety styles, the show captured the essence of what has made Batman such an enduring pop culture icon for over eight decades: great villains, a compelling, driven hero and costumed derring do combined with a traditional detective mystery.
Best Batman, best Joker, and iconic Alfred!
What I loved was that yeah, he was broken– but he’d mended himself, too.
Loved this and the “sequel” Justice League. Like, you have no idea. Would watch it religiously after school every chance I got.
The episode “beware the grey ghost” demonstrates so well why storytelling is failing today, because it is a story about respecting and honoring the past, even as it respects and honors the past of Batman.
Have an autograph from Kevin Conroy, he is the True Batman.
Both Justice League Animated and Superman Animated were great companion series. Loved when Superman and Batman would guest star in the other series.
I rewatched the series a couple of years ago and I was shocked by how much the series changed to accommodate Superman. Yes, the Superman and Batman team ups were great. But they came at the cost of removing the ambiguous setting from Batman and making it more of a generic nineties superhero setting, since Superman wasn’t in a weird 30’s/50’s/90’s/Future mishmash world. Even the sky changed from a perpetual mix of black and brown to a perpetual dark red.
‘Calendar Girl” is one of the best episodes of TV I’ve ever seen. I also remember really liking the evil Superman, which beat out every superhero-turns-from-good thing that’s been done since.
The best Justice League stories are the ones that let the characters bounce off each other.
Batman works best as the sassy member of the team.
https://imgur.com/gallery/Lj3dH
Oh and while I mean to take nothing from B:tas, Batman Brave & the Bold did have its own unique charms.
Justice League had THE best Green Lantern, front and center. 😀
Speaking of the Brave and the Bold: You remember the one where Batman broke both his legs and all his ribs and Martian Manhunter had to keep him knocked out and locked up so he could heal? So Green Arrow, Aquaman and somebody else, Plastic Man? dressed up like the Bat to keep Gotham’s criminals cowed?
Outrageous!
The show probably has the best take on the Joker. It’s the only one that really exemplifies the “monster clown” aspect of the character. Other works tend to go hard towards “monster”, with a grim almost humorless joker, or “clown” with a character that is goo goofy to really be scary. But the Animated Series’s joker is a character who is just as likely to hit you with a pie in your face, or brutally beat you to death, depending on which he thought was funnier at that particular moment. Even when he seems polite you know that things could go south at any moment, and the Joker wouldn’t even really notice a difference in his own behavior. Mark Hamill’s performance certainly didn’t hurt either.
Agreed.
There’s nothing mere about that mortal!