BATMAN : BRAVE & THE BOLD (tv series )

[timothy]

I've checked my post and my thread's and the forum's and there is to my acount a thread disscussing this show.
so here we go :

tonight's episode was hosted by of all character's
BAT - MITE realy, realy OMG !! three short stories they go from the worst batman story ever to weird al and scooby - do .

 

[Christopher]

"Bat-Mite Presents: Batman's Strangest Cases!" was pretty wild. The famous MAD Magazine "Batboy and Rubin" parody, the Lord Death Man story from the Batman manga, and a faux New Scooby-Doo Movies episode -- quite a bizarre mix. Shades of TNBA's "Legends of the Dark Knight," but much crazier.

Bold of them to open right up with "Batboy" without explaining the gag. I guess I'm not a fan of the MAD style of humor, though, since this was just okay. The "Bat-Manga" segment was very Speed Racer-esque in the animation and dubbing. I liked the gag at the end about the American dub glossing over character deaths. "I'm sure he parachuted to safety." And the Scooby segment was, well, fairly authentic, right down to the '70s-style animation/coloring mistakes.

Voice-wise, Corey Burton has achieved what's probably a unique distinction: playing both Batman and the Joker in the same episode (in the manga and Scooby segments, respectively). Plus Jeff Bennett played "Rubin" and Penguin, Frank Welker played "Batboy" and '70s Batman as well as Fred and Scooby, and Grey DeLisle was Japanese Robin as well as Daphne. But Diedrich Bader, BB&B's regular Batman, wasn't absent here; he played Lord Death Man and the "Creepy Usher" in the Scooby segment. A lot of chances for the actors to stretch. Also, Scooby-segment Robin was played by Jason Marsden, which is the second time he's played Robin -- or rather, he played Burt Ward in the biopic Back to the Batcave.

I was disappointed, though, that they couldn't coax Casey Kasem out of retirement to play Robin (and Shaggy) in the Scooby segment, and that they didn't cast a Batman actor who could do an impression of Olan Soule, Hanna-Barbera's Batman in the '70s (and Filmation's in the '60s). Welker's Batman just sounded like Welker's generic bombastic-hero voice.

 

[timothy]

so that is where the first story comes from I had no Idea . I found it very confusing.

 

[Jetfire]

Wrong forum and I could have sworn there was already a recent thread in SF/F about this show.

[edit] Here: http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=139264

and you posted in it!

I thought the show leaned more torwards the golden age than silver age . and what was with all the squinting the eyes . I mean lperry , lex, and superman were squinting . And look at lois and jimmy so golden age . though I do agree that meteropolis did seem 90's superman animated show .

 

[timothy]

I could'nt find it . so I started a new sorry .

 

[Starbreaker]

The other thread is barely a week old. It would have popped up in a simple search.

 

[Admiral_Young]

^ Exactly. There are actually two other threads for Brave and the Bold. The one Jetfire referenced above and the one that we were using for last season. Not to mention the fact that this should be in science fiction and fantasy...sigh.

 

[Christopher]

Could this be merged into one of the existing SF&F threads?

 

[the G-man]

I was disappointed, though, that they couldn't coax Casey Kasem out of retirement to play Robin (and Shaggy) in the Scooby segment, and that they didn't cast a Batman actor who could do an impression of Olan Soule, Hanna-Barbera's Batman in the '70s (and Filmation's in the '60s)...

Or, better yet, get Adam West.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

I was disappointed, though, that they couldn't coax Casey Kasem out of retirement to play Robin (and Shaggy) in the Scooby segment, and that they didn't cast a Batman actor who could do an impression of Olan Soule, Hanna-Barbera's Batman in the '70s (and Filmation's in the '60s)...

Or, better yet, get Adam West.

True, but the voice was funny enough in its own way I didn't mind.

I was disappointed with the Scooby Doo segment just because it wasn't that far removed from the original Scooby Doo episodes with Batman. I would've preferred something really new. I did like the twisted Scooby Snack trap and Shaggy looking for a share of the takings.

Not being familiar with the apparent Mad magazine parody I thought the opening segment was pretty wild and the Speed Racer-esque Batman was fairly entertaining.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, Adam West would've been a good way to go, but still wouldn't have been quite authentic, since he never did Batman for Hanna-Barbera until the last year or two of Superfriends. At the time of the Scooby-Doo Movies (or within a few years), West and Burt Ward were doing Filmation's Batman series while Soule and Kasem were playing the roles for H-B. (Which has a certain symmetry to it, since Soule and Kasem did Filmation's first Batman cartoon in the late '60s while West and Ward were doing the live-action show.)

I'm trying to think who today could pull off an Olan Soule impression. Corey Burton could probably have done it.

 

[Christopher]

Surprised this hasn't been moved to General SF & Fantasy yet... it might be getting more attention there. I tried to find it there on Friday and was puzzled by its absence until I remembered it was in TV & Media instead.

Anyway, the theme of the past two weeks seems to be bringing back obscure Fawcett Comics villains now owned by DC. Last week featured the Marvel Family and a bunch of Captain Marvel villains, including the bizarre Mr. Mind character and his Monster Society of Evil, which was the first supervillain team consisting of pre-existing villains uniting against a superhero. It was offbeat, but I didn't care for it much, largely because it tried cramming too much into a single episode and treated everything too superficially. I think this is maybe the downside of the producers knowing that the show is going to end soon -- they're determined to cram in every obscure nerdy reference they can in the time they have left. The Superman episode had the same problem.

"Joker: The Vile and the Villainous" was more effective, tighter in focus. It was a clever idea, doing an inversion of the show's premise where the Joker was the "hero" who teamed up with a guest star and Batman was the antagonist. I loved the way Batman was approaching his heroic scheme with the syntax of a supervillain cackling about his fiendish plans -- monologuing about how his master plan would soon be complete, appearing on TV to warn criminals about his doomsday weapon against crime, etc. And it was clever to team the Joker up with the Weeper, another obscure Fawcett villain and his opposite in style. Getting Tim Conway to voice the Weeper was a nice touch. Although I read up on the Weeper on Wikipedia, and the original version in Bulletman comics was far more disturbing than the comic treatment here. This was a guy who'd show up and tell people that their children were dead or their businesses had burned down or other false tragic news in order to get them out of their homes so he could rob them or follow them to where they kept their valuables. This was a guy who set off tear gas at a parade and killed dozens of people. That's nasty. But then, the Joker's been portrayed in a far more malevolent fashion than how he's treated here, so I guess there's a parallel there.

 

[Too Much Fun]

I was really excited about this show when it started. I thought it was what "The Batman" should have been. My logic was, if you're going to do a new Batman show, it's pointless if you're going to just have a pale retread of "Batman: The Animated Series".

Here was a show that went in the opposite direction of that series with a much lighter tone, while at the same time remaining respectful of the character, and doing stories that were less realistic, but still had cleverness and good characterizations/character development.

I really loved the first appearance of Bat-Mite and this show's interpretation of The Joker, as presented in the two-parter about a sort of Batman version of the Bizarro world involving Owlman and The Red Hood. I eagerly awaited the next episode to spotlight The Joker - "Emperor Joker". What a disappointment that episode was.

I liked its unique version of Harley Quinn, but with the surreal nonsense like The Joker killing Batman over and over again, it was overkill. At that point all rules and plausibility got thrown out the window and I gave up on this show. It just became too much of a dumb cartoon where 'anything goes' and there endeth my brief fascination with and interest in this show.

 

[Admiral_Young]

^ Joker killing Batman over and over again was based on the comic "Emperor Joker" where Batman is continuously tortured and killed. I love the fact that "Brave and the Bold" has an "everything goes" mentality and honors the entire history of the character.

 

[Too Much Fun]

Yeah, that reminds me, I forgot to mention part of why I've soured on this show is I think it's pandering to comic fans too much. This may sound absurd since Batman is, after all, a comic book character first and a TV or movie character second, but I'm not that keen on adapting comic characters to another medium with slavish devotion to the source material. That's part of why "Sin City" left me cold.

I don't think just because something works in a comic, it will work in another medium. I prefer these comic book characters being adapted into TV and movie stories that take inspiration from comic stories while tweaking them for the medium rather retaining all the wacky surrealism that works in comics.

The "everything goes" mentality may work for others, but to me it just makes it hard to take the show seriously or really care about the characters. If they have no human vulnerability and can do anything and survive anything, there's just nothing to get emotionally invested in it, and I need that to enjoy TV, even in animation.

 

[Mr Light]

They killed off several characters. B'wana Beast sacrificed himself in the Darkseid invasion episode, and I remember a couple other characters dying in several episodes in a row.

 

[Christopher]

They killed off several characters. B'wana Beast sacrificed himself in the Darkseid invasion episode, and I remember a couple other characters dying in several episodes in a row.

Yeah, it got very dark and violent for a while there, rather startling for something that looks like a "kids' show." Even Justice League never had this high a body count.

Let's see, we had:

Spoiler: B:TB&TB death toll

Episode 37: "Chill of the Night!": Thomas & Martha Wayne, Lew Moxon, Joe Chill
40: "The Siege of Starro! Part 2": B'wana Beast
42: "The Last Patrol!": The entire Doom Patrol
44: "Menace of the Madniks!": Ted Kord (previously referenced in episode 8)
45: "Emperor Joker!": Batman, repeatedly
49: "The Knights of Tomorrow!": Bruce Wayne and Talia (imaginary story)
51: "Bat-Mite Presents: Batman's Strangest Cases!": Lord Death Man (suuuuure he parachuted to safety!)

 

[Professor Zoom]

They killed off several characters. B'wana Beast sacrificed himself in the Darkseid invasion episode, and I remember a couple other characters dying in several episodes in a row.

That was actually a really sad moment. I liked what they did with B'wana...

 

[Christopher]

And it was the Starro invasion episode, not Darkseid.