Batman

Batman is Batman - let's get that straight. Now for details - The Batman cartoon is a brand new animated incarnation of The Caped Crusader. The biggest difference between this take and Batman: The Animated Series from the 1990s is that this show relishes being a cartoon, and relies on action, while the previous Batman cartoons were heavy on story content, and wanted to be taken more seriously than the average cartoon.

People have a right to make comparisons, but this cartoon is great in its own right. Batman/Bruce Wayne is in his late twenties, and some of his foes are younger too. Wayne Manor looks like its in Gotham City and not on the outskirts. There's no Commissioner Gordon, but there is Chief Rojas. But all of the things that define Batman are present: the costume, the Batmobile, the Batcave, etc. This time around, Batman has his own operating system - The Batwave, that powers his headquarters and vehicles.

Rather than downing this version of Batman because its doesn't appeal to a mature crowd, take the time to see it for yourself. You might enjoy the show.

Other than the strange character designs, I don't see why so many people are bad-mouthing this show.

This is the lay down: Millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne (good voice work from Rino Romano) witnessed his parent's brutal murder by an unknown gunman, and vows revenge against crime by donning the scary image of a bat. This series depicts Bruce in his third year as The Batman. The police still do not recognize him as a hero, but a criminal vigilante and are trying to capture him and find out who he is.

The famous James Gordon has yet to appear in the picture, so the GCPD is headed by a non-nonsense police chief named Angel Rojas (played by Edward James Olmos), whose top priority is to capture Bats. Batman is also pursued by police detectives Ethan Bennet (Steve Harris) and Ellen Yin (Ming-Na). Bennet thinks Batman is a hero, but Yin thinks otherwise.

Since this is Batman's "early years" as The Dark Knight Detective, the "costumed freaks are just now showing up. Our caped hero finds himself clashing with the likes of The Joker (brilliant voice talent from Kevin Michael Richardson), Mr. Freeze (a cold-hearted Clancy Brown), The Penguin (Tom Kenny), and Catwoman (Gina Gershon) and other familiar bad guys for the first times in his career.

The journey goes on as Batman struggles to elude police capture and save the city from evil rouge villains.

"Bring On The Batman!"

I fought this show for a long time. I would have been like all the others complaining about what they did wrong and this looks like jackie chan yada yada yada and hey I loved batman TAS as much if not more than everyone else bashing this series. I'm not going to write a book here but just consider the DC comics "elseworld" series. It take a different look at batman, superman etc. no one complains about that. Try reading dark joker the wild, batman red rain, gotham by gaslight all these show batman and the joker in a different light so why the harsh words here. Can't we just enjoy the show? If you can just get past TAS this cartoon really is not that bad.

John

I'm 26-year-old and when I was about 10, there was a cartoon on Saturday mornings about some teenage kid, who whenever he ate something hot, a pepper or hot sauce, he would turn into a red talking Corvette. I'm not sure what the name of the toon was, but let me tell you, even at that age I knew the show sucked ... yet somehow even now I'd much rather watch that piece of crap than "The Batman."

The direction of this series and writing (Dear god what have you done to the Joker!?) are about as fresh and good of an idea as putting nipples on the batsuit.

I'm not really sure at what point it was deemed necessary to make every cartoon resemble Anime or why the fights and characters in this series all resemble Pokimon crap ... but seriously WB just stop it. I know you're all about the money, but now especially with the new Batman movie coming out (and it already looks dark and good) this is the time to turn it back around and make the cartoon dark and gritty again. Get Conroy and Hamill back while you still can. Leave the Japimation card dueling, wrestling, hong-kong fooey crap cartoons for the kiddies.

Argh, It's like so many people had done so much work for nothing.

Since the "Batman" TV show in the 60's, there has been an ongoing effort with comic book artists and even a couple of filmmakers to return the Dark Knight to his roots, rather than the "Pow!, Bam!" stereotype Howie Horwitz gave him and pretty much all comics. In such efforts, these people had brought up some of the finest pieces in fiction, the extraordinary stories by Dennis O Neal and Neal Adams, "The Dark Knight Returns" by Frank Miller, the first two Batman films by Tim Burton, and of course the fantastic "Batman: the Animated Series".

So now I look at the new "The Batman" on WB, with Adam West and Frank Gorshin as regular voices, all of the old voices and character designs thrown out in favor of the stylization from "The Jackie Chan Adventures" and ostentatious gadgets and vehicles that scream "Toys Toys Toys".

The methodical pace of "TAS"(The Animated Series) has been replaced by a rapid-fire quick change motif, suiting ever increasing attention spans, I'm sure. While in TAS, physical action might sometimes take a back seat to the stories,"The Batman" overflows with Kung Fu, Slow Motion, and Dramatic rapid-Fire Jump Cuts.

The Characters have been "Updated', Batman is no longer square jawed, but has a triangle for a head, Comissioner Gordon is gone. The Batcave has gone back in time about 35 years and is complete with Batpoles and the Apple-red support beams that were prevalent in the old Adam West TV show. The Joker now sports a colorful straight jacket and hair the size of Beachball rather than his stylish purple suit of years past.

While the 'Extreme' approach may appease those with no exposure to engaging storytelling, I prefer TAS, which had strong, character driven stories, a cinematic style complete with orchestrated music, references to the best of all the batman representations, not just Adam West, and most importantly, looked like an actual movie, not a toy commercial.

'The Batman' has flashy animation, color keys that don't variate, CGI, and a ton of flashy camera techniques. But I say that it's all frosting and no cake.