The Batman

The Batman follows Bruce Wayne who's in his third year of his career as masked crimefighter "The Batman" whose public presence is that of an urban legend. As we follow a relatively green Batman in his early days we see his first encounters with noted villains, the development of his relationship with the Gotham Police force from public enemy number one to alliance and even witness the origins of his partnerships with Batgirl and Robin.

Running from 2004 to 2008, The Batman was in a unique situation as it was the first Batman related show to be made that would not be related to the DC animated universe or the Kevin Conroy portrayal of Batman that had been the standard since his debut in 1992. The show featured a radical departure in art design with Jeff Matsuda of Jackie Chan adventures forgoing the traditional noir-ish art deco approach in favor of a more "Americanime" design that had been popularized through shows such as Jackie Chan Adventures and Cartoon Network's Teen Titans series. Needless to say The Batman sparked the ire of many fans who didn't appreciate the departure from the previous decade's standards established for the Dark Knight (ignoring the artistic departures in Batman TAS season 4, but I digress) and the show has something of a mixed reputation because of that. While I don't think the show is worthy of most of the derision it's received, I do acknowledge it has flaws that have a tendency to make themselves noticed.

As the show begins in its first season, it's very much a reintroduction to the characters and lore. As opposed to the Batman of Batman TAS who already had a Robin sidekick who was late high school or early college aged, the Batman of The Batman is relatively new to the world of crimefighting often having to work around the police instead of with them and avoiding media and public attention when possible. The reintroductions of various villains are where the series begins to stumble. Because the show now focuses on Bruce/Batman's ongoing growth in conjunction with typical "villain of the week" stories, The Batman has a tendency to truncate villain introductions and arcs for single episode storylines. Some villains don't even get an introduction such as a rather overdesigned character called Gearhead, and others seem to have undergone change simply for the sake of change. Easily the biggest downgrade of the series is the character of Mr. Freeze who in TAS was a tragic figure who spoke eloquently and conveyed a mixture of rage and despair that made him one of the most rich characters on the show. Mr. Freeze in The Batman is now a generic thuggish bankrobber who makes ice puns in a deep gravely voice and dresses like a pro wrestler. This results in Mr. Freeze being one of the most boring characters on the show and feels like it was done solely for the sake of not inviting comparisons to TAS. On the one hand I understand why they did this, but on the other they took a well-constructed character archetype and replaced it with nothing. I'm not opposed to different interpretations of the Character of Mr. Freeze. George Sander's humorous interpretation of the character from the 60s Batman show was silly but still had a level of class that made the character engaging. Here Mr. Freeze felt like one of the generic goons from the show given a voice and ice powers. Kevin Michael Richardson's Joker was also a sticking point for me (but for other reasons I'll get to). Not only do I not like the design, but Richardson's heavy voice doesn't feel like it fits with Joker's madcap delivery style and feels grating. But even taking aside my dislike for the show's interpretation of Joker, the series used Joker way too much. Of the 65 episodes made of The Batman, a little over 20 of them feature Joker or are related to Joker. In comparison TAS consisted of 85 episodes and used Joker 15 times. Joker is a good villain, but when you over rely on one particular villain it ends up leaving your show feeling very repetitive.

The visuals of the show are also rather mixed. While the color palette is more diverse going for a richer display of colors for Gotham than the red and black of the previous series, the show diverges from the more grounded aesthetic of TAS in favor of more exaggerated character designs. For the most part the style works reasonably well and is unintrusive, but there are notable missteps taken. Joker in The Batman doesn't have the style of the TAS Joker and instead of being a funhouse mirror interpretation of comedians like Jerry Lewis and Don Rickles, Joker in this series has an overdesigned "deranged" aesthetic of a straight jacket, long hair, an overly angular face, and bare feet. Riddler has a similar issue, while I like Robert Englund as the voice of Riddler his androgynous figure with a costume based heavily on Marilyn Manson just feels at odds with the voice and the character. It's not unthinkable that a Marilyn Manson inspired costume could work for some of Batman's Rogue's Gallery, but it would need to be someone like Scarecrow or Anarky who have a sense of theatricality to their characters. Riddler isn't "theatrical" he's a know it all who prides on "knowing it all" so the costuming choice doesn't mesh with the character.

With the criticisms out of the way, we can get to the real meat of the show which is the continuing plot threads. While Batman TAS was and remains a good show, it cannot be overlooked that the show was mainly designed in mind with the stories being (relatively) stand alone adventures that didn't require any particular viewing order. The Batman takes a different approach and while the episodes don't work as well as stand alones they do work as parts of a greater whole telling season and multi season long arcs that culminate in satisfying crescendos. Each season for the most part focuses on continuing characters and plot threads who see some level of development for a later payoff. This is where The Batman's strength lies as a TV show, it feels like there's movement of something bigger in the background even if the villain of the week doesn't lead to much satisfaction. We see Bruce/Batman grow in his relationships with his friend/mentor Alfred, see him develop relationships with members of the police during his time as a wanted fugitive laying the groundwork for cementing their partnership, and we see his taking on new partners and becoming less of a brooding figure of myth and more a symbol of un relenting justice for those who've lost hope of getting it. Even some villains (such as Clayface and Hugo Strange) are introduced better here than in TAS because they're established over several seasons worth of development which makes their payoff all the more satisfying. I think in a way this boils down to the main criticism of this show which I also think is it's biggest asset that sets it apart: The Batman is about what it says, The Batman and his growth as a person and hero and this means there's less time devoted to establishing the villains and giving them depth (at least in villain of the week format).

The Batman is a complicated show. It stumbles in many areas (especially in comparison to TAS), but it also succeeds in many other areas not previously explored by giving us an overarching narrative that felt like it was building characters and situations. The development wasn't always as smooth as it could've been, but the show did find a unique approach to the characters and lore that I do think makes it worth a viewing. Like pop cultures staples of James Bond, Godzilla, The Universal Monsters, and too many others to mention, with a historied character like Batman there have been many interpretations of the character and I'm sure there'll be many more to come. This isn't the "definitive" Batman, but it's still a unique approach that deserves to be looked at for what it is, a different approach to classic material.

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!"

Batman has a more slick animation in this series that focuses more on style and snazzy moves and action rather than heavy storyline. The Clayface storyline is one villain that is more in depth as far as plot and is well done taking a few twists and turns. Most of the villains he comes across know some martial arts which make for more formidable opponents. It is a change from Batman TAS and manages to have faster paced action and a few reinterpreted villains yet still maintains Batman's struggle to fight crime yet maintain his sanity. As one that loves Batman TAS, i still find The Batman lots of fun as it focuses on the action and gadgets a lot more and i find it quit amusing to even see penguin have a few martial art tricks up his sleeve (he does have an explanation) and i like his cronies. The series later turned a more camp style with an intro that sounded like the 60s Batman TV show which i wasn't too hip on yet the series still had some excellent episodes. I say quit fighting about which animated series is better and just enjoy both for what they give.

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.

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