Batman: The Animated Series

I've been thinking about getting the dvds now that they're out, but I'm afraid that it won't seem as good as when I was a kid.

Harley Quinn was definitely a TAS creation -- I remember it being a big deal when they decided to introduce her into the comics (during NML, wasn't it? In the Dini-written one-shot? Or had she appeared before that?)

Batman Beyond had a couple things going for it (mostly the theme song), but they weren't enough, unfortunately.

And yeah, it probably is the darkest American kids cartoon anyway -- can't vouch for anything else.

The Batman Cartoon I Would Like To See: Batman's Planet, on which Batman, Robin, a couple of smart-alecky/trouble-magnet teenagers they've just rescued in the first scene of the pilot, and someone else (Batgirl? Poison Ivy? the Joker?) get accidentally stuck on another planet and have wacky misadventures while trying to find their way home.

(Surely someone else remembers Gilligan's Planet.)

The original cast members voiced their own characters.

(There should be a DVD collection, one or two episodes of each.)

1) Crotchety Old Bruce Wayne. Just fantastic. Old and wizened, but still every bit as dangerous as he once was (if not more, sometimes). Choice bits: the recent JLU time-travel episode, where old Wayne pushes Batman aside, because the interrogation wasn't going fast enough, and a great episode of BB where Terry is looking at various bits of junk in the Batcave. He comes across the DKR exo-suit; Wayne just smiles and says: "Heh. Gave me a heart attack."

2) There's a huge sense of loss hanging over the series. Why did Wayne give up? Why isn't Barbara Gordon talking to him any more, and actively discouraging Terry to continue being Batman? And the Robin costume in the cave…(all answered in Batman Beyond: Return Of The Joker, a rather brutal children's film)

As long as Terry was kept to the sidelines, it was a decent show.

Anyway, I really must get some of these boxsets, because I can't remember much of individual episodes anymore. There's a great one where the Scarecrow traps Batman in a dreamworld, and supposedly an episode where Dini takes the piss out of Joel Schumacher, which sounds awesome.

My favourite part of the series is Mask of The Phantasm, which I think is The Perfect Batman Film. The Joker! The World's Fair! Bruce getting a love interest that makes sense! Lightning across the Waynes' Grave! Much better than rubber nipples!

xpost

I've only seen one episodes of the new Teen Titans, because I can't get past the anime-ishness of it

There was another excellent meta-episode where they were chasing a geeky villain through various television shows; the villain's magic put-me-in-tv techonology caused brain-melting radiation to come out of the television, prompting a hilarious scene where Robin is shouting at the "camera", "TURN THIS OFF! TELEVISION WILL ROT YOUR MIND! I'M SERIOUS!!!" They ended up victorious because Beast Boy was a bigger TV/movie nerd than the villain they were chasing and ended with a completely sarcastic non-moral.

And yeah, I definitely can't fault them for the anime thing, if I were the target audience I'd probably love it. It's not the kind of anime I grew up with, so it's just distracting.

Somebody at Marvel should get in touch with the guy who created Samurai Jack and does Clone Wars - Tartakovsky (something like that). Give him free rein. A Fantastic Four cartoon, done right, that would be worth watching. Oh no, wait, I saw that - it was called the Incredibles.

I would love it if somebody would let Bruce Timm make his version of Conan. The sketches alone are beautiful...

two seconds to THE FINGER!:
http://www.jlanimated.com/editorials/jlu/arrow2.jpg

Green Arrow is ALWAYS saving grocery stores. And convenience stores. It's like Spidey with bank robberies.

What's his voice like? Cause the beard implies that he sounds like Dr Quest.

I don't know what Dr. Quest sounds like.

You'd recognize it if you heard it, most likely. The actor did a lot of other voice work. (I'm looking him up now.) (Holy crap Johnny Quest was played by Tim Matheson.)

Hm, he -- Don Messick -- is one of those voice actors who sounds different in a lot of roles (he played both Boo Boo and the Ranger on Yogi Bear, for instance ... and Scooby Doo, Atom Ant, half the Smurfs, and Muttley!) -- but the Ranger voice is pretty close to Dr Quest. So's Papa Smurf, come to think of it. Except Green Arrow would not sound like Papa Smurf.

*smurffinger*

Anyway, cast list for guest voices on JL/JLU:
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0275137/guests

"Legends: Part 1" Episode: #1.16 - 21 April 2002:

Corey Burton= Dr. Blizzard (voice)

Jennifer Hale= Black Siren (voice)

Neil Patrick Harris= Ray Thompson (voice)

Jeffrey Jones= Sir Swami (voice)

William Katt= Green Guardsman (voice)

Udo Kier= The Music Master (voice)

Ted McGinley= Tom Turbine (voice)

Michael McKean= The Sportsman (voice)

David Naughton= The Streak (voice)

Stephen Root= Cat Man (voice)

Tom Sizemore= Metamorpho (voice)
Patrick Duffy= Steve Trevor (voice)
Michael Ironside= Darkseid (voice)
Ron Perlman= Orion (voice)/Clayface II
Rob Zombie= Ichthulhu (voice)
Efrem Zimbalist Jr.= Alfred Pennyworth (voice)
Brad Garrett= Lobo (voice)
Kin Shriner= Green Arrow (voice)
Edward Asner= Hephaestus (voice)/Granny Goodness
Jason Hervey= Dove I/Don Hall (voice)*
Fred Savage= Hawk I/Hank Hall (voice)*
Wonder Years Powers...ACTIVATE!
Jeremy Piven= The Elongated Man (voice)
Tim Matheson= Max Lord (voice)
Dennis Farina= Wildcat I/Ted Grant (voice)

Sorry about that.

Oh shit that's Inara from Firefly (and according to Tep, possibly Joss's Wonder Woman)! Yeah, she's great.

it’s easy to nitpick it away but it’s heart is def in the right place and the performances are charming

It's fun! Definitely goes off the rails In the last half hour, but without retroactively ruining the whole movie. Looking forward to the next one.

I love that the praise for the most highly-acclaimed DC movie is still saddled with qualifications (which, TBF, is also true of every decent non-MCU Marvel flick). But I'll check it out.

i mean it’s no mask of the phantasm, that’s fer sure

Well, I'd feel bad giving it a 100% thumbs up as it's not a 100% great movie. But like Biz says, the flaws aren't dealbreakers - whereas e.g. I still wish I could get back the hours of my life I wasted watching Dark Knight Rises. I had a similar feeling about Homecoming - charming but too long.

Oh man, Homecoming was fantastic! Completely exceeded expectations.

But this is not the place!

To give DC props, they are still treating the DCAU with the respect it deserves. BTAS is coming out on Blu-ray early next year, and they're surprisingly still releasing trades of the companion comics (my faith in their follow-through on that front being super low, having gotten burned most recently on the Sandman Mystery Theatre reprints which they cancelled after a whopping two collections).

Is the Superman show any good? It's the only one I've never seen.

Oh yeah. That, All-Star, and the first several years of Byrne & co.'s reboot are pretty much all the Superman I'll ever need.

STAS started off kinda slow but got real good by the end in my memories, same thing with Batman Beyond

I especially dig how Kirby's Fourth World stuff slowly encroaches upon the light-hearted Superman adventures taking place in the foreground.

Wonder Woman was so dull and slow and colourgraded and not-about-a-woman that I walked out halfway through and saw The House instead

same with the justice league cartoon - started slowly then knocked it out of the park when it became unlimited

that's true. though i'd say even by season 2 of JL they were killing it, like with that 2-part Joker ep

the Justice Gods one was also S2 i think

If we want to make this a recommendation thread for the best DCAU episodes, I wouldn't complain.

I decided to watch the recent Wonder Woman movie at motel room rental prices and fell asleep halfway into it. Such are vacation mistakes.

BTAS is still excellent every time I feel the need to rewatch. The balance of the animation style, noir tropes honored and subtly commented on, the little quips that paint Batman as self-aware, sometimes tragically, make it age well.

HFS @ Hopey Glass cameo in Batman, someone was having a lil fun at the animation studio that day

wait waht

I forget which episode it is but bruce wayne puts someone on a bus at the end of the episode and one of the other riders on the bus is v clearly Jaime’s Hopey.

I think it’s “I Am the Night”

I noticed it a few nights ago while watching w my daughter but only just now remembered i meant to post about it cuz it was p unexpected

huh, awesome!

I'd about say Batman: The Animated Series might be the best version of Batman done. It ties together so many of the things from the comics in the right tone.

kevin conroy is def the best batman ever

ok it wasn't that episode and it wasn't some random character it was the Penguin and Hopey's cameo is at about 4:05 here: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x50of14

ha! no chance that’s not supposed to be hopey

It's definitely Hopey, check the coat:

http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q166/iagainstcomics/hopey%20style/hopey5.jpg

Now I'm visualising a Love & Rockets animated series that would probably never happen in a million years.

*wistful sigh*

jaime’s style would work so well in animation too

Hopey had a cameo in the tie-in Batman Adventures comics as well!

That is *definitely* her. Nice spot!

iirc Cameron Stewart's 00s run on Catwoman is basically him doing Jaime for two years

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/how-paul-dini-and-mike-mignola-changed-mr-freeze-forever-plus-other-revelations-from-the

I did not know that Mignola was in any way involved in BTAS!

The blu-ray set is a thing of glory.

https://imgur.com/gallery/D02OcwO is glorious and now I just remembered Herman von Klempt in HB and so this makes perfect sense.

I've never seen the whole series, but I pretty much think the cartoon might be the best take on Batman ever. It is a perfect balance in many ways.

The TV show is the best Batman, and Mask of the Phantasm is still the best Batman movie.

I've long said (perhaps even itt) that if DC-related material can't meet or exceed the quality of the DCAU, the people involved probably just shouldn't bother.

Still, they persisted

Has anyone seen the 2017 animated feature “Batman vs. Two-Face” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6142314/)? My son has watched it a few times.

It’s pretty bad, but also weird/sad — the voices are performed by Adam West (shortly before his death), Burt Ward, Julie Newmar, William Shatner (as Harvey Dent), etc. So while it’s “cool” that they used the OG actors (plus, uh, Shatner), and got work for those folks, their voices do not exactly match the (young) characters... particularly in the case of West, who sounds unwell and geriatric. So it’s bizarre and somewhat grimly humorous to hear these voices coming from the animated 1966 Batman crew.

(One other odd thing is that Warner apparently doesn’t control the rights to the ’66 Batman theme music, and couldn’t bother clearing it? — so they have use a dumb knockoff of it, like any other fakey production.)

Warner had nothing to do with the show, so it's absolutely fine that they don't control the rights to the theme music

Sure, but it’s odd they would create a new movie set in the 1966 world, and go so far as to cast the OG actors for “authenticity,” yet give it an “off-brand” feel by imitating the theme rather than paying to use it.

How much was the fee, and what proportion of the overall budget was that?

Let me check my records... oh wait, I didn’t work on the production. Why you dragging me on this, LOL?

The theme is one of the most beloved and iconic aspects of the old series... whatever it cost to clear, perhaps it would have been more worth the expense than whatever it cost to hire Bill Shatner (who has nothing to do with the property)? Is his involvement drawing anyone to this thing? Meanwhile, when the knockoff music plays, it just sounds dumb and leaves you thinking, “huh, they cheaped out.”

I’m just saying it’s the opposite of “odd”!

I mean, we’re talking about a direct-to-video feature whose idea of a clever in-joke is a Catholic hospital called “Our Lady of Perpetual Irony,” so maybe I’m expecting too much. But the casting implies the movie will be “going the extra mile,” when it really stalls out at least 14 miles short of Gotham City.

I loved and still love B:TAS and the other DCAU series (well, most of the time), but I've never been particularly impressed by any of the animated specials that have come out since then. It's pretty disappointing seeing that on some occasions some of the same people were involved. The execution always seems half-assed.

man these blu-ray remasters are gorgeous huh

Worth buying if I have all the DVD boxes?

if you’re a btas stan and you’ve got the cash, definitely - the episodes look extraordinarily crisp and clear

check this handy comparison video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LZJ-HJsWHk

i'm a sucker for these remasters when they're done well. they even managed to make TNG look beautiful!

yooooo Bruce Timm made an animated Sgt Rock short film!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtwZvaLbwnI

And Phantom Stranger too!
https://www.comicsbeat.com/dc-showcase-phantom-stranger-first-look/