DCAU appreciation

[Turtletrekker]

I finally finished the heavy lifting in completing my DCAU DVD collection. I sort of went in reverse-- I got Batman Beyond and Justice League first, then Superman, and now finally, Batman the Animated Series. I was waiting for the right price, which I finally found when I bought all four volumes for $80.

I also have the movies Mask of the Phantasm, The Mystery of the Batwoman and Return of the Joker, so as far as I know, I'm only missing Sub-Zero out of what's available. (Are there any episodes of Static Shock or The Zeta Project available? Netflix? YouTube?) BTW, does anyone know where these movies fit into the shows continuty?

For the longest time, I've said that Batman Beyond was my favorite DCAU show. But given how long it's been since I've actually sat down and watched B:TAS, I am hearby revising my opinion. Batman: The Animated Series is the best super-hero television show ever. Period. Kevin Conroy, of course, is prolific throughout the DCAU, but that's not the same as being the sole starring voice of a show. I was actually reminded of how thoroughly Kevin Conroy owns this role ("I am vengence! I am the night! I am Batman!) and how quickly Mark Hamill's Joker could go from zany goofiness to lethal in a heartbeat ("He killed Captain Clown. He killed Captain Clown!"). Efram Zimbalist as Alfred is perfect ("That's odd. Only vampires loathe daylight more than Batman") and much better than Clive Revell's take from the first three episodes.

It's interesting going from watching Justice League and Batman Beyond, at one end of the DCAU, and then going back to the begining. The animation style changes a lot more than I realized. B:TAS is much darker and grittier than its spin-offs and off-shoots, despite obviously being a similar style.

Anyway, I'm already in the middle of a DCAU re-watch, having recently watched the first seasons of Batman Beyond and Justice League, and will occasionally post my thoughts here. Anyone who wants to talk about and expres their appreciation for the DCAU should feel free to do likewise.

[Reverend]

I also have the movies Mask of the Phantasm, The Mystery of the Batwoman and Return of the Joker, so as far as I know, I'm only missing Sub-Zero out of what's available. (Are there any episodes of Static Shock or The Zeta Project available? Netflix? YouTube?) BTW, does anyone know where these movies fit into the shows continuty?

Off the top of my head, Static Shock takes place around the same time as Justice Leage (because they were produced at the same time) and The Zeta Project is a spin-off of an episode of Batman Beyond, so that show takes place alongside BB.

They're definitely both in the continuity of the other shows as Zeta came back on BB, sporting his new look and with Ro in tagging along (bit of a sideways reference but his "ancestor" also showed up on JL & JLU.) Likewise old Static appeared in JLU, alongside Terry and old Bruce. There were also a number of crossovers within those two shows, so continuity is pretty tight.

[Admiral_Young]

I think I read somewhere that Mystery of the Batwoman is supposed to take place prior to season one of "Justice League". I could be wrong about that. I think that "Justice League/Unlimted" is second place to me following "Batman: The Animated Series" as my favourite series from the Timm'Verse. "Batman Beyond" would be in third place, followed by "Superman: The Animated Series".

[Gotham Central]

I always wondered why the artwork takes a nosedive the with arrival of Superman: TAS/Gotham Knights/New Superman Batman Adventures.

Its really noticeable when you look at the revamped Joker, Ivy and Catwoman. Did the earlier artwork take to long to animate?

[Christopher]

Turtletrekker wrote:

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I also have the movies Mask of the Phantasm, The Mystery of the Batwoman and Return of the Joker, so as far as I know, I'm only missing Sub-Zero out of what's available. (Are there any episodes of Static Shock or The Zeta Project available? Netflix? YouTube?) BTW, does anyone know where these movies fit into the shows continuty?

I put them pretty close to where they came out relative to the shows. In my chronology, Mask of the Phantasm is between the first and second production seasons of B:TAS (i.e. following episode 65, "The Worry Men"). Sub-Zero is shortly after the end of season 2/episode 85 and before the comics miniseries The Lost Years (i.e. before the flashbacks in "Old Wounds"), which also puts it shortly before the debut of Superman in Superman: TAS. And as stated above, Mystery of the Batwoman (and the "Chase Me" short) goes between the end of The New Batman Adventures and the start of Justice League.

As for The Return of the Joker, I believe that came out between seasons 2 and 3 of Batman Beyond, and I have it placed during season 3. It's a bit hard to place because of the flashbacks, which have to be nearly 40 years before the movie and also have to be after the Joker's last appearance in JL's "Wild Cards" -- if not after JLU's "The Greatest Story Never Told," in which Booster Gold refers to the Joker as still at large.

It's interesting going from watching Justice League and Batman Beyond, at one end of the DCAU, and then going back to the begining. The animation style changes a lot more than I realized. B:TAS is much darker and grittier than its spin-offs and off-shoots, despite obviously being a similar style.

Sometimes literally grittier, since they still used physical animation cels at the time and sometimes the cels got pretty dirty. I believe they switched to digital animation around 2000, during Batman Beyond's second season. (These days, the original pencil drawings are still done by hand, but rather than being inked and painted onto cels, they're scanned and digitally inked and painted in the computer.)

Gotham Central wrote:

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I always wondered why the artwork takes a nosedive the with arrival of Superman: TAS/Gotham Knights/New Superman Batman Adventures.

Its really noticeable when you look at the revamped Joker, Ivy and Catwoman. Did the earlier artwork take to long to animate?

"Nosedive" is a matter of opinion. When they brought back the show, they decided to revamp the character designs and make them more streamlined, to take the caricature style B:TAS had pioneered and refine it even further. Glen Murakami did the new designs, whereas Bruce Timm had done the originals. Some of those designs didn't work as well as their predecessors, notably the Joker, but others were definite improvements. For one, the TNBA Barbara/Batgirl was a lot better-looking than the B:TAS version.

[doubleohfive]

Don't forget the Gotham Girls webisodes, available only on the Birds of Prey TV series DVD sets.

[Christopher]

They're also available here:

http://www.worldsfinestonline.com/WF...ulti/episodes/

[SG-17]

Gotham Central wrote:

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I always wondered why the artwork takes a nosedive the with arrival of Superman: TAS/Gotham Knights/New Superman Batman Adventures.

Its really noticeable when you look at the revamped Joker, Ivy and Catwoman. Did the earlier artwork take to long to animate?

If I remember correctly, Timm et al found the original artwork from B:TAS to be too time consuming and too complicated to continue so they simplified the designs. However with TNBA/S:TAS Timm felt that the designs for the Joker and a few others were too simplified so he restored them with BB, ROTJ, and JL/U.

Notice how the B:TAS designs were more rounded and organic. These were hard to animate.



And then with TNBA/S:TAS they became more straight and easier to animate.



Then later with BB and JL/U they found a compromise and returned the Joker to his near-original design.

[Mr Light]

I greatly preferred the New Adventures revamp. I thought the animation looked a lot better, and it was consistently good as well. The original B:tAS had a lot of different companies working on it and some looked good but a lot looked absolutely terrible.

Plus, Batman looked a lot more bad ass with his blacker design than the old blue/yellow one.

As for the shows in general, Justice League Unlimited and Superman were the best. I find Batman had a lot of good episodes but also a lot of truly terrible ones as well; a poor good to bad ratio. Plus, it was just so amazing to see an animated Superman flying around and punching people. Batman Beyond I found extremely uninteresting (though the Joker movie was amazing).

[kirk55555]

Batman: TAS is my favorite of the DC cartoons, and probably the best superhero cartoon ever. That said, its art style when it switched to a more Superman: TAS style was a big downgrade in quality. The style worked for Superman, but made everything look way too cheerful in batman, and made it more unrealistic. The show was still good, and the style went on to fit well with Justice League/JLU, but it just didn't work well with Batman TAS. The Joker was pretty much ruined. I LOVE Hamil's Joker but its painful for me to see him in the Superman TAS style, I'm glad he went back to normal in BB and JL/JLU, even if Batman stayed Superman TAS style.

Besides Batman TAS, I love JL/JLU, really like Superman TAS, liked Static Shock, thought Beyond was very hit or miss (Return of the Joker was excellent, though) and never watched the Zeta Project. I liked Mask of the Phantasm, Return of the Joker and Sub-Zero, but I thought Mystery of the Batwoman was pretty bland.

[Admiral James Kirk]

kirk55555 wrote:

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Batman: TAS is my favorite of the DC cartoons, and probably the best superhero cartoon ever. That said, its art style when it switched to a more Superman: TAS style was a big downgrade in quality. The style worked for Superman, but made everything look way too cheerful in batman, and made it more unrealistic. .

Everything you've said is correct. Anybody who disagrees is wrong. Now I don't have to chime in with my own opinion.

[PointedEars]

I prefer Batman TAS to TNBA, but I really enjoy them both. That being said, the one thing I didn't like about The New Batman Adventures was what Bruce Timm and company did with the Dick Grayson character. They had him and Batman at odds most of the time, and showed that Dick actually punched Bruce in the face and left Gotham for a few years. Eventually the character was just dropped without any goodbye story. It was eventually explained in one line in ROTJ that he moved to another city, but we never saw or heard from Grayson in the DCAU.

One explanation that I've heard concerning this treatment of the character was that Bruce Timm himself hated Dick Grayson and originally wanted to use Tim Drake for TAS, but they went for Grayson because the general public was more familiar with that version of Robin. Does anyone know if that's true? And I wish they would bring back the DCAU, if for no other reason to tie up Dick Grayson's storyline. Maybe they could have a post Return of the Joker flashback animated movie where Batman quits the Justice League, takes Dick's and Barbara's respective costumes from them, and forbids Tim from ever donning the Robin costume again. Essentially, Bruce would be on his own, aided only by Alfred.

[Reverend]

Christopher wrote:

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As for The Return of the Joker, I believe that came out between seasons 2 and 3 of Batman Beyond, and I have it placed during season 3. It's a bit hard to place because of the flashbacks, which have to be nearly 40 years before the movie and also have to be after the Joker's last appearance in JL's "Wild Cards" -- if not after JLU's "The Greatest Story Never Told," in which Booster Gold refers to the Joker as still at large.

IIRC, Bruce Timm has said that the RotJ flashback are the last thing to happen in the BTAS -> JLU timeframe. Meaning that it all happens *after* JLU...not sure if that includes the Ace/Waller flashback from 'Epilogue', but I imagine so.
Likewise the main story of RotJ is supposed to be the last thing in that time frame (save for 'Epilogue', of course.)
'Mystery of the Batwoman' was I think supposed to take place around season 2 of Justice League (there's mention of weapons shipments to that fake county who's name I forget, the one Vandal Savage takes over?)

I recall Timm saying at the time that they always kept the exact timeline deliberately loose, with everything basically taking place in 'Peanuts' time. So it's really not supposed to withstand close scrutiny. Only rarely did they ever specify a passage of time from previous episodes and those instances were mostly in JLU when they started getting continuity happy and started tying in everything but the kitchen sink.

[Turtletrekker]

PointedEars wrote:

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And I wish they would bring back the DCAU, if for no other reason to tie up Dick Grayson's storyline.

Dick Grayson appeared in the Batman Beyond comic series when he became a suspect in the "Hush Beyond" arc. Part of the story included a flashback to the origins of Bruce and Dick's rift.

After sustaining serious gunshot wounds while fighting alongside Bruce, Bruce simply removed Dick's Nightwing costume to protect his ID, called an ambulance and went after the bad guys. He then never visited Dick in the hospital, merely sending Alfred with a note saying that he had a new uniform waiting for him in the cave.

Dick never forgave Bruce and wants nothing to do with him. He is still friends with Barbara Gordon, and while he doesn't like the idea of a new Batman so much, he does respect Terry. We also find out that Dick is listed as Bruce's sole heir in his will.

The new Hush turned out to be...

... an escaped Cadmus clone of Dick.

[CorporalClegg]

I love the DCAU. I really wish they'd get it up on Netflix. I haven't watched most of it in years, and I really want to, especially the "Timm-verse."

They have a lot (most) of the animated Marvel stuff, but it's just not in the same league.