The Bat

I've been on a Batman kick lately pretty bad. I've been reading the comics for the first time (Knightfall storyline), and started rewatching the old Animated Series from 1992. It was on FOX in the afternoon, if I recall right, and is still considered to be a great iteration of Batman. It was a different kind of cartoon at the time and featured more adult themes than other cartoons at the time, including drug use and people actually getting killed every now and then. It was dark and gritty, and it wasn't unknown for episodes to have an unhappy ending.

One of the better things it featured were making some of the villains just normal people who were pushed too far or made a poor life decision. Sure, there are a few villains who are just criminals or thieves but they were notorious for fleshing out classic villains more. For example, they came up with the idea of Mr. Freeze being a tragic character who was out to cure his dying wife instead of being a cold-themed mad scientist (his first episode actually won the show an Emmy for his performance).

Another thing I love, is that it has a fully orchestrated soundtrack with each episode done as if it were an animated film, with the music actually matching the onscreen action, and even going so far as to give themes to characters. I also looked up that they would record the entire dialogue for the show with every actor in the room. This let them have more realistic reactions to each others dialogue, which helped the show tremendously.

Anywho...

Most of the villains have very specific themes that let most people know who's involved with the crime being committed. But sometimes Batman doesn't seem to realize it. Case in point, I saw an episode involving plants acting up, and Batman was SHOCKED to find it was Poison Ivy. Seriously, who did he think it was? The OTHER plant-based villain in the show? Or whenever Joker breaks out of prison, Batman never seems to find him until after he commits a crime, but his hideout is always an abandoned carnival, or a toy factory, or something even close. I'm just saying if he knew what he was doing, the first place I'd check would be any carnivals, circuses, or toy factories, or toy stores, or what have you, because the odds are he would be at one of those (also, Gotham City sure looks like it has a bunch of abandoned carnivals).

Finally, for the uninformed, Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) was the voice of the Joker. He does a fantastic job on that performance (Ron Perlman also does a voice for Clayface, which is a pretty good episode too).

I'll probably have more Batman posts later, but for now, this is all I got.