Batman At 80 - Batman: The Animated Series

I was a teenager when this series started, arguably too old to be watching a cartoon on Saturday morning kids TV but, let’s face it, a) I was (and am) your geeky nerdy type who’s not going to miss out on comic-y stuff and 2) you’re never too old for cartoons. Let’s get straight into this one.

What’s Good About This One?
A logo fades into a pair of searchlights. The stylised silhouettes of criminals frame an exploding bank doorway. A hero’s vehicle springs into action. A similarly silhouetted rooftop battle ensues. The hero is victorious and stands framed against the night sky by lightning and thunder. No title is shown. You know who this is.

It’s without a doubt one of the greatest title sequences ever and is so confident that it doesn’t even need to display the programme's title. It sets the tone for the show to come, both in terms of mood and animation. It comes after the 80s when a lot of animation was farmed out to cheaper overseas animation houses with a generic look.

It redefines / introduces a number of Batman characters in ways that still linger to this day. Mr Freeze’s tragic backstory of the scientist transformed by an accident while desperately trying to find a cure for his dying wife was then retrofitted into the comics and the character of Harley Quinn (recently portrayed by Margot Robbie) was an original creation for the series who then found her way back into the comics*.

A whole universe spun out of the show in the form of Batman Beyond**, Superman The Animated Series and H=Justice League, all of which interlink. In fact, Justice League even has a “final” episode set after the end of Batman Beyond with a closing shot that mirrors the opening shot of the first Batman: The Animated Series episode (I say “final” because it got unexpectedly recommissioned for another series after that so it’s not actually the final episode even though it was intended as such).

It’s a high benchmark not just in superhero animation but in cartoon in general and, thanks to its retro-styled setting, it stands the test of time pretty well. The series has recently been remastered for BluRay and it looks pretty damn good.

So there you have it. A whistle stop tour to some of the Batman things I have enjoyed over the years. I’m sure that there are plenty of things I’ve left out but that’s a lot of Batman to cover.

Happy birthday, Bruce Wayne. Here’s to the next 80…



* Funnily enough, during the No Man’s land storyline mentioned yesterday.

** Bizarrely titled Batman Of The Future over here as we’re clearly too dense to comprehend the original title...