Revisiting Batman: The Animated Series

Among the animated DC offerings on HBO Max is Batman: The Animated Series, the seminal series from the 90s.  The most interesting thing about it is that while it was animated, it wasn't really geared towards kids.  When it started in 1992, Fox aired it in primetime, albeit I think at like 7:30pm on Sundays or something like that.  The way the series was drawn was to keep the noir-ish air of the Burton movies.  The first and third seasons even used the Danny Elfman theme from the movies as the theme song.

Maybe since they had comic book writers like Gerry Conway, Marv Wolfman, and even long-time Batman writer/editor Dennis O'Neill write episodes they weren't hugely different from what you'd have found in Batman comics, more the grittier "Bronze Age" of the 70s & 80s than the 40s-60s.  It wasn't too grim-and-gritty but not as campy as the old Adam West show or Superfriends either.

The first two-part episode involves Batman teaming with Catwoman to find and defeat a female terrorist known as Red Claw.  The show doesn't start with Batman's origin; in fact it seems to be after Batman has been established for about 10 years.  The third episode is the first I remember seeing.  It's about a scientist using an experimental drug to become Man-Bat, who inadvertently frames Batman for his activities until Batman can track him down.

Most of the next episodes bring in a lot of the well-known Batman rogue's gallery:  Joker, Mr. Freeze, Clayface, Scarecrow, Poison Ivy, and Mad Hatter.  At the start Harvey Dent is a normal guy, but then there's a two-part episode to turn him into Two-Face.  The Penguin shows up a bit later in while the Riddler doesn't show up until about 40 episodes in.  Ra's al Guhl is introduced in a two-part episode a while into it.  Bane turns up in a second season episode that's sort of a truncated version of the Bane origin and Knightfall story from the comics, albeit with a different ending where Bruce Wayne defeats Bane by turning up his Venom until he ODs on it.  

A really odd thing is how Dick Grayson as Robin just shows up in the 19th episode.  Scarecrow is poisoning athletes to bet against them--including Dick's college roommate, who's a quarterback--and Dick just basically shows up in the Robin costume.  It's not until a little later that they go into Robin's origin and he appears sporadically throughout the 65 episodes of the first season.  Though most of it is just Bruce and Alfred.

But then about 8 episodes in season 2 the title changes to The Adventures of Batman and Robin and the theme song changes for the rest of that season.  So obviously Robin is in it a lot more than the first season.  There's also a two-part episode to introduce Barbara Gordon as Batgirl, in a gray costume with a blue cape not so different from Batman's.  

Between season 2 and season 3 was the movie Subzero, which probably after Mask of the Phantasm failed at the box office was released straight to video.  Unlike Mask of the Phantasm, Subzero is basically just a longer episode of the series with a little better animation on the vehicles.  The story involves Mr. Freeze kidnapping Barbara Gordon to transplant her organs to save his wife Nora.  The strange thing about this movie is that it's a Batman movie and yet Batman is hardly involved.  It mostly focuses on Freeze, Barbara Gordon, and Dick Grayson.  I think the former colleague Freeze kidnaps to do the transplant surgery gets more screen time than Batman.  It was definitely not as good as Phantasm but better than Batman and Robin that came out around the same time.

Then things change again with season 3.  Not only does it go back to the original opening and theme song, but the drawing style is cruder, Batgirl has a black costume with a yellow cape, and there's a new Robin with an all-red costume and yellow cape.  It's kind of confusing as the first episode is a holiday episode where the new Robin is just there.  It's not until the next episode that we get his origin.  While his name is Tim Drake (the third Robin in the comics) his backstory and general attitude are far more like Jason Todd, the second Robin who was famously killed off until being revived as the Red Hood.  I'm not sure why they chose to do that.  Then a few episodes later Dick Grayson shows up with longer hair and in his black with blue symbol Nightwing costume.

But while season 3 looks more kid-friendly and was airing in the kids animation block, the stories remained more adult friendly.  In one particularly dark episode, Batgirl is hit with Scarecrow gas and dreams her own death, upon which Commissioner Gordon finds out Batgirl is his daughter and then learns Batman's secret identity.  Gordon goes to war against Batman, going so far as releasing Bane to try to capture the Dark Knight.  What's neat though is that in the end Barbara goes to her father to tell him her secret identity only to find out that he already knows.  Most of the time we think Commissioner Gordon is a dupe, so it's neat to see he isn't such a dumbass not to know what his own daughter is up to.

Another fun episode that season has three kids speculating on what Batman is like.  One kid tells a story that's done in animation more like Superfriends.  Another kid tells a story that's like Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, focusing on Batman's fight with the mutant leader.  Besides copying the drawing style of that book, they had Michael Ironside do Batman's voice to go along with it.  The episode ends with the kids stumbling on the Firefly going to burn down a building until the real Batman shows up to stop him and save the kids.

An earlier episode that also paid homage to Batman history had Adam West voice an actor who played a character called the Gray Ghost, an old favorite of Bruce Wayne.  When a crazed fan starts reenacting episodes of the show, Batman and the Gray Ghost have to team up to stop him.

One unfortunate thing about this otherwise really good series is it's the origin of Harley Quinn.  She starts off as just a henchwoman of the Joker.  It took a few appearances before they started in with her "tragic" (and nonsensical) origin story.  The full version of that was the final episode of the series.  The only episode I didn't watch was "Harley's Holiday" because I really can't stand her.

The series is also the origin of another villain:  Condiment King!  In one episode the Joker is drugging contestants of some comedy special so he can be #1.  One of the comics dresses up in a costume with ketchup and mustard guns to hold people up.  The character showed up in an issue of Tom King's recent run of the Batman comic and in the Harley Quinn TV series and in a Lego game.

Besides Robin, Batgirl, and Nightwing the only other superhero team-up was one episode late in the third season when Supergirl comes to Gotham on the trail of Livewire and teams up with Batgirl.  I assume this was after the Superman cartoon had started to air.  There were also guest appearances by Zatanna, Jonah Hex, Etrigan the Demon, and Clarion the Boy Witch.  The former two didn't really have any superpowers; Zatanna was just a normal illusionist and Jonah Hex an elderly bounty hunter. 

There are a few references in the series to Tiny Toon Adventures, like a couple of times when someone in the background is reading a Tiny Toon comic book.  Both series were WB projects on Fox around the same time co-created and written by Paul Dini.  And conversely there were a few times when Batman would show up on Tiny Toons.  Looking up Dini's Wikipedia page, he got his start by writing episodes for most of the cartoons my family watched in the 80s like He-Man, Transformers, GI JOE, Smurfs, Rainbow Brite, and Jem.

One other minor criticism is that a lot of episodes seem to rely on some variation of knock-out gas, which does not really exist.  Like the old Adam West show, a lot of the episodes also rely on Batman walking into a trap and escaping.  When you binge watch, you really start thinking Batman is kind of a dumbass.

A Fun Fact I noticed starting with the first two episodes is there are a number of actors from Star Trek series and movies who do voices for characters in this show including Kate Mulgrew, Rene Auberjonois, Diana Muldaur, LeVar Burton, Brock Peters, Jeffrey Combs, David Warner, and Ron Perlman.  Mark Hamill was the voice of the Joker and has reprised that role on several occasions since then.  Roddy McDowall of the Planet of the Apes movies was the voice of the Mad Hatter, so there was representation of three big sci-fi franchises.  Melissa Gilbert was the original voice of Barbara Gordon/Batgirl, though when Batgirl became a regular in season 3 they changed to someone else.  There were some other recognizable names in various episodes like Jean Smart, Ernie Hudson, Richard Moll, Seth Green, Sela Ward, Adrienne Barbeau, Helen Slater (the original live action Supergirl), and Michael McKean.

Anyway, this was a fun series and really set the standard for superhero cartoons.  I don't know if it was the first superhero cartoon aimed more at adults than kids, but it is the most well-known.  There have been several Batman animated series since then but only one is THE animated Batman series.