Batman: The Animated Series Vol. 2

I bought this at the Big Red One screening, for Mark Hamill to sign. He does the voice of The Joker, and other voice work for this terrific cartoon show. He signed it "Jokingly Yours, Mark Hamill," which is pretty cool. But I kind of had buyer's remorse afterwards. Money's tight these days, and would I really watch a cartoon show enough to warrant a $25 purchase? ($30 without my tight employee discount).

It turns out, I was delightfully wrong. I haven't stopped watching these DVD's since I got them home last night.



I knew this show was really good. They were still running them all the time on Cartoon Network until recently, although even then they'd show stuff from the inferior later seasons. This box set is made up of the second season, and it's probably the most consistant group of episodes in the show's catalog.

What makes the show so great is a combination of factors, which I'll elaborate on below, in order of importance.

1) The Animation

This is arguably the best-looking American animated show ever made. (Obviously, I haven't seen enough Japanese televised anime to make this statement international). I'd say "Futurama" probably comes in second, but I far prefer the visual style in "Batman." I also love how they went period with the animation style, but didn't bother to write the dialogue in an antiquated style. We get that old-school 40's feel - art deco lettering, bad guys with tommy guns and fedoras, classic cars - but the writing feels contemporary.

There's some cool insidery stuff about the animation, like it was drawn with a black background instead of white, giving it a grittier, darker feel, but I dont' really understand exactly how that stuff works. All I know is that with Bruce Timm's designs and a large group of outstanding artists, this "Batman" feels more true to the character and tone of the comics than any other TV series, movie, anything based on the character.

2) The Storytelling

They didn't try to jazz up the "Batman" saga or make it easier for young kids to digest. Amazingly for a weekly network TV cartoon show, the writing team (headed by the marvelous Paul Dini) was allowed to stay true to the gloom-and-doom tone that has always defined "Batman." The show takes its time, develops themes, bothers to give the villains personalities and motives, instead of just cool new weapons. Rewatching these episodes, I'm frankly astonished by the maturity of the storytelling.

I saw an entire episode today, called "Perchance to Dream," in which the Mad Hatter straps Batman into a mind control device that causes him to have an episode-long dream in which his parents never died, and he's marrying Selena Kyle (who has never heard of Catwoman). That's weird, trippy, heavy stuff to lay on a young audience, and the episode handles the material so nimbly, it's like a revelation.

This season also contained the Emmy-winning two-part episode "Robin's Reckoning," that introduces the Robin character in about the freshest way possible. Shrewdly realizing that audiences already know the outline of the Robin origin, that his trapeeze-artist parents were murdered by gangsters, causing him to move into Wayne Manor as Bruce's boy ward. So writer Randy Rogel tells this story briefly, in flashback, while relating an entirely different adventure in the present. It comes off beautifully, and lends this portion of the show an epic kind of feel.

3) The Voice Talent

A lot of the "Batman" cast is made up of regular voice-actors who aren't really famous. But just about everyone does an incredible job, in terms of character. Timm's drawings and Dini's writing certainly did a lot of the heavy lifting, but man, some of these voices are perfect. Obviously, Hamill's Joker ranks as the show's most enduring, popular character, and he does fantastic stuff here with the part (particularly that eerie, screechy laugh that neither Ceaser Romero or Jack Nicholson ever actually nailed). I liked Nicholson a bunch in Tim Burton's Batman, but Hamill at this point kind of owns the role.

And Kevin Conroy is terrific as Bats. He doesn't really do anything terribly different than Keaton, Kilmer or Clooney. He speaks in a warm, casual, friendly tone as Bruce Wayne and gets deep and gravely as Batman. But the guy just plain sounds like a superhero. And I have no idea what he looks like in real life, so his voice exists for me only as Batman, which I'll admit helps a bunch.

Also of note are Arleen Sorkin as Harley Quinn, who first appears in the Season 2 episodes and went on to become one of the show's most beloved villains, Richard Moll, who absolutely inhabits Two-Face in a way Tommy Lee Jones could never dream, and David Warner as Ra's Al Ghul.

And that brings us to our CRUSHED BY INERTIA WEIRD COINCIDENCE OF THE DAY:

My brother mentioned Zach Galligan's classic 80's film Waxwork in the comments section on the Paris Hilton article just yesterday. That film featured a supporting turn from Mr. David Warner. Coincidence? I think so!

So, there you go, my take on why these "Batman" episodes rule, and why I haven't been able to turn this DVD off in two days. Seriously. I've watched only one movie in the last two days because of these cartoons (the mediocre The Last Shot, the review of which will probably pop up tomorrow, if I get around to writing it).