It's the 25th anniversary of Batman: TAS, if you haven't heard, and just about every pop culture blog on the web is doing some form of tribute, to which I boldly say: why shouldn't we also do exactly that?
It's really hard to overstate how important Batman: TAS is to comic fans of a certain age. Born in 1988, I grew up in an era where the Batman comics were pretty weird (Jean-Paul Valley, anyone?), and the Tim Burton Batman movies were....unique. As a 4 year old I wore out my VHS tape of Batman 89, but Batman Returns was a weird, creepy movie about a black bile spewing Penguin that featured roughly 11 minutes of screen time for a Batman that does barely anything remotely qualifying as heroic. Granted, I watched it 40 times out of brand loyalty and because we were poor and I owned like five movies total and thus watched them all over and over, but if those two movies had been the only Batman material that young Kyle had to consume, it's highly unlikely my life long obsession with the character (and subsequently comics in general) would have taken hold. Fortunately for you all, later that year Batman: TAS debuted and gave us the best version of the character that has ever been.
Others will go over what made this show great, from the animation style to the outstanding theme and scores by Shirley Walker to the voice acting of Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill, but the key to its success has always been that it is pure, distilled Batman. From the start of the show he's already well established as Batman, he has a Robin, Alfred is forever at his side, and his working relationship with Jim Gordon is the mutually beneficial partnership that it should be, not the cartoonish oaf of Gordon from the Burton/Schumacher movies or Batman '66 whose first response to any problem is to throw up his arms and cry for Batman's help. The show never allows itself to get convoluted by continuity issues or comic book sideplots. Batman fights crime, and he does it well. The show also gives a Bruce Wayne that is haunted by his past and driven by his obsession, yet he dates, has a friendly rapport with both Robin and Alfred, and is an active participant in the running of Wayne Enterprises. This is not the broken psychopath of Frank Miller, just an honest-to-god superhero driven to do good as a response to the evil act that changed his life. In short, this show is everything we love about Batman and it will endure forever because of that. Without further ado, here are my five favorite episodes of Batman: TAS and its successor show The New Batman Adventures.
DISCLAIMER: these are just episodes of the shows, not the movies that are in the same continuity, or else I'd just write Mask of the Phantasm 5 times in a row.
5)HEART OF ICE
Pretty much any Best Of list for this show or really all Batman stories should include this episode, and with good reason. Heart of Ice took a gimmicky D-list Batvillain from the 50s and gave him maybe the most tragic origin story for a Batvillain not named Harvey Dent. One can't help but feel for Victor as he attempts to wreak his vengeance on the bean counters who kept him from researching the cure for his wife's disease, yet the episode still shows the difference between a man like Fries, who lets his desire for vengeance consume him, and Bruce, who lets it drive him to help others. The subplot of Bruce dealing with a cold and Alfred's attempts to get him to practice self-care is also a wonderful demonstration of their relationship.
4) OVER THE EDGE
I mentioned above that one of the best things about TAS is how perfectly it nails the Gordon/Batman partnership, and no episode demonstrates that more than this episode which imagines the consequences of that partnership ending. After Jim Gordon finds out that Barbara was Batgirl only when she dies in his arms, Gordon blames Batman for her death and launches a war to bring down the Dark Knight. It is absolutely terrifying how ruthlessly efficient Gordon is at figuring out the truth about Batman's identity (and I'm always a fan of the interpretation that Gordon knows and looks the other way) and bringing the whole operation down. The best versions of Batman, like TAS and the Nolan movies and many of the current runs of the character in the comics, are the ones that show how his "lone vigilante" façade is really just that, and he relies on allies and friends to serve as support and moral checks on his worst impulses. This episode shows that without that support system there's no Batman at all.
3) LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT
The greatest love letter ever written to the Bat mythos. Several Gotham kids take turns telling stories from friends-of-friends and the like about their encounters with Batman and what he's "really like." The stories of course play homage to different iterations of the character throughout history, from a Batman '66/Adventures of Batman and Robin Dick Sprang era Batman skit replete with BIFFs and POWs to a faithful adaptation of the battle with the mutant leader from The Dark Knight Returns, this episode shows just how much range the character has and the parts of him that can appeal to people of all ages and attitudes, while remaining at his core the same hero with the same ideals. Also the bit where they laugh at a kid named Joel who is standing in front of a "shoe maker" store when he suggests the Batmobile can drive up a wall is still great.
2)WORLD'S FINEST
Okay, I'm cheating. This is technically 3 episodes and it's also technically part of Superman: TAS (which is also the best Superman we've ever gotten and yet it's often overlooked). I don't care, this is the only Batman/Superman movie we ever really needed. Everything about it is perfect, from Batman easily deducing that Clark Kent is Superman because Superman always saves Lois Lane (and asking Lois out in order to get Clark's attention/torment him), to Joker's nearly successful plan to assassinate Superman in return for 1 Billion dollars from Lex Luthor (a plot that makes 10,000x more sense than the plot of BvS), to the moment when Clark realizes Batman knows his identity, uses his super vision to spot Batman watching him through his binoculars, and sees Batman smile and wave back at him.
This episode is really perfect in its treatment of the friendly rivalry between the two, as Superman gets ample opportunity to show just how easily could crush Bats if he needed to, while Batman gets the opportunity to show how well he's anticipated every possible contingency if that scenario came to pass. In the end, though, they both see how perfectly suited the other is to handle the particular problems of Gotham City and Metropolis, and how what works for one won't work for the other. The superfriendship to end them all is formed, and that's the way it should be.
1)JOKER'S FAVOR
While not the first Joker episode of the series, this is the episode that I consider to be the most influential in introducing the modern conception of the Joker as the paradoxical agent of malicious chaos-who-is-also-a-master-planner that would influence later versions of the character like Ledger's terror-philosopher and Scott Snyder's nihilistic murder clown. This is a children's cartoon that introduced a version of the Joker that would stalk a man for years for shouting at him in a traffic jam. Joker agrees to let the man, Charlie, live in return for a favor, payable at a time of Joker's choosing. Years after Charlie has moved across country and changed his entire identity, Joker calls in the favor and makes it clear there is no escape from the clown prince. The great favor Joker requires? Holding a door for Harley Quinn (to allow her to place a bomb in the room and kill everyone in it, including Charlie, because with the Joker it's never that simple). Batman: TAS is the show that highlighted everything that makes Batman a great superhero, but this episode drives home why the Joker is the scariest villain of them all, given his ability to turn a mundane encounter into two years of complete terror for a random person who had the misfortune of getting stuck next to him in traffic one day.
In a lot of ways the last 12 years have been a golden age for Batman, with an average of 3-5 Batman titles in the comics each month, four blockbuster movies featuring the character that have made billions of dollars, multiple shows and animated films, and the overall mainstreaming of comic books and superheroes. None of this would have been possible, however, without Batman: TAS. In our minds we will always know what Batman should be, because this show gave it to us, and it will probably be the standard by which all future Batmen are judged for decades to come.
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