Batman

Most fans of the modern DC Animated Universe will tell you that there’s no finer example of the genre than the one that started it all.

1992’s Batman : The Animated Series stands as an amazing example of what animation can do, and how to properly translate a comic book character to any kind of screen, small or large. It’s really hard to match the depth and quality that Batman : TAS brought to audiences of geeks, kids, and geek kids alike.

The most recent version of Batman realizes that this is an impossible goal, and so it doesn’t really make any attempts towards this degree of resonance. Instead, ‘The Brave and the Bold‘ skews towards the campiness of the 1960s television show and the goofy charm of Adam West’s Batman. One-shot team-ups with favorite DC heroes against an array of obscure bad guys culled directly from silver age comics appeals to toy makers, kids, and comic book purists alike. It recaptures the essence of oldschool comics as the entire comic book oeuvre becomes darker and grittier over time – and it’s awesome.

‘The Brave and the Bold’ is a title that DC Comics has been using since 1955, originally referring to a series of comics which took place in pre-modern times. After about two years, the title re-focused on being a launchpad for experimental and new characters. After another two years, the series focused on interesting hero team-up stories, and by issue #67 until issue #200, The Brave and the Bold was a book about Batman teaming up with other heroes to fight crime – not unlike this animated series.

Within the first few episodes, we’re already treated to appearances by Deadman, Green Arrow, Plastic Man, Red Tornado, Clock King, a weird version of Toyman called “Fun Haus”, and Gorilla Grodd, among many other great characters. The series doesn’t dwell on the tragedy of Batman or the greys and sepia tones of the original show, though the implications of his parents’ murder are presented in an incredibly chilling black and white Christmas flashback. Instead, Batman focuses on effortlessly fighting his way out of a series of science fiction scenarios with other DC heroes, all of whom inevitably help him become a better Batman through their own emotional development as superheroes.

It’s borderline cheesy, but in the context of kids’ TV and 1960s comic books, it’s a highly effective synthesis of positive qualities which makes for a really good TV show. It’s a shame that the show has already been scheduled for cancellation after the third season in order to refocus on a ‘darker’ Batman again.

The first DVD set, “Season One : Part One”, includes the first 13 episodes of the 26-episode season. Three smaller DVD collections have been released previous to this, but those contained identical content to what is found here. This is a very inexpensive way to get them all in one place – for around just $15, and they’re definitely worth watching, if only to test your knowledge of weird DC Comics history and remember where comic books came from.

Any Bat-fan who knows anything is aware that Neal Hefti composed the legendary and recognizable Batman theme song. Even if you’re not a fan of Batman, or know that he’s actually millionaire socialite and business magnate Bruce Wayne in disguise, you can probably sing the Batman theme song from the 60s.

While we are still not allowed to own the original show on DVD, countless Batman theme song albums have been released. There was a small but powerful surf rock mini-industry based around various bands recording and re-recording the Batman theme song during the 1960s, and as a result, there are more ‘Batman Theme’ albums than I can count.

The soundtrack works of Neal Hefti extend beyond his work with Batman, however – but not as far as one might expect. Hefti spent much of his time as an accomplished jazz trumpeter and composing for big bands.

During a recent trip to a Westchester, NY Salvation Army location, I patiently waited while a portly, grey-haired man reached and strained himself around the considerable record collection, revealing his lacy, pink underwear in the process. The Salvation Army is always an interesting, marginally frightening place to visit.

Once I started leafing through the albums, I picked out a couple of James Bond soundtracks, anything with attractive or half-naked women on the cover, and the score to ‘How to Murder Your Wife’, because I recognized Hefti’s name.

Later investigation revealed that this particular album was never released as an individual CD. It had made its first digital appearance in The MGM Soundtrack Treasury, a limited edition boxed set of 20 CDs released by Film Score Monthly which currently sells for around $400, and also includes Hefti’s ‘Duel at Diablo’ soundtrack alongside 18 other albums.

Later, this soundtrack was remastered by Kritzerland and released paired with Hefti’s ‘Lord Love a Duck’ score. This was released in an edition of only 500, and now sells on the secondary market for around $40. Surprisingly, this limited availability has not significantly increased the value of the original LP, which is easily available on eBay – and apparently, rummage sales.

Very few of Hefti’s soundtracks have made it to CD, so if you ever see one at a tag sale, it’s probably worth picking up. While ‘Duel at Diablo’ and ‘Lord Love a Duck’ seem to be the most valuable Hefti soundtracks, owning them on vinyl might be the only chance you ever have to hear them – even if they’re not worth much.

This week has been composed of a whole lot of cards from Rittenhouse, but it’s important to get back to the moment I fell in love, and of course, it has everything to do with Batman.

I buy a lot of cards in the hopes of scoring some nice chase pieces with original artwork or autographs, but Batman Archives is a series where I can enjoy every card. Rittenhouse chose 63 covers out of over 700 Batman comics to display on a series of thick, glossy trading cards for Batman Archives. Not just comics where Batman has appeared on the cover, like Detective Comics or Justice League – this set is exclusively Batman covers, starting with issue #1 in 1940, and each one is a little work of art.

Having just purchased five comic book frames, I’m on the lookout for a few really great comic book covers to purchase and display so that girls don’t talk to me anymore. This is an excellent starting point.

It’s very interesting to watch the character of Batman turn into a dark, angry figure from his bright, silly origins. The evolution of the Batman logo is also great to see, as well as the simple way that comic art has evolved into this complex, hyper-detailed portion of fiction. Early comic book covers were often filled with exposition and narrative, misleading statements or depictions of what was going to happen inside, and generally more strange than the comparatively simple, literal covers of today.

The front of each card includes a very crisp mini-reproduction of a Batman cover, while the back redundantly includes a snippet of the same cover and a listing of which issue the cover has come from (which is also on the front of many cards anyhow as a natural detail on the cover). Unfortunately, there are no panel snippets from the same comic, and all artists go uncredited, which doesn’t seem like it would have been a very difficult detail to include. A little bit of sleuthing will reveal all, though, and a complete collection of Batman covers can be seen at Cover Browser, though of varying quality.

Additional cards in this set include a handful of Tim Sale ‘Dark Victory’ cards, lenticular cards, retro cards printed on cardboard stock, and of course, sketch cards. I scored a very well-made upside-down Robin by a man known only as ‘Jeff’ from my box. I’d like to see what else this artist has done, but I’m not sure how to weed out the website of a man who goes by one common name.

Rumor has it that Rittenhouse is done with DC products. In the event that this is true, pick up some of these if you’re a Bat-nerd, because they’re actually very cool cards.

I have made absolutely no secret of my gushing, nerdly adoration of the Justice League animated series. Repeatedly. To the point of annoying the bejesus out of everyone here, no doubt. In short – it’s the greatest thing to happen to cartoons in, well, forever.

Building upon the epic stylings of the Batman and Superman animated series (masterpieces both), the Justice League animated series took all of this and added in just about everyone in the DC Universe. It brought obscure characters to the forefront of battles, threw in mentions of just about everyone else, spawned the most extensive comic-based action figure line ever, and really told meaningful, smart stories. So smart, in fact, that episodes aired in prime time and in a letterboxed format. That’s the kind of ‘classy’ we’re talking here. It’s rare to encounter a cartoon that can be defined as ‘powerful’, but this is one.

And I have to be completely honest here – I always cry like a baby during the episode ‘Epilogue’. Not only does it depict the perfect Batman, but it’s one of the best five television moments ever created.

This is not to say that the series didn’t have a few clunkers. Any show that depicts a ‘war world’ usually puts me to sleep, but the rest of the series more than makes up for it. Episodes featuring Batman singing, a Wonder Woman pig, and an episode where the JL is turned into kids that actually doesn’t suck all add up to a great experience. The series even manages to tie in the largely forgettable Batman Beyond series and give it some relevance to the bigger narrative scheme.

Justice League : The Complete Series, handsomely encased in a tin container, includes every episode from Justice League (2001 – 2004) and the follow-up series, Justice League Unlimited (2004 – 2006), despite just being called ‘Justice League’. This includes 91 episodes over 14 discs – and packaged in a much narrower set than all four previous DVD sets. These DVDs reproduce all of the bonus features that were originally included in the originals, except for ‘And Justice For All’, a mini-documentary about the transition between the two related series. This is replaced by a completely new documentary called ‘Unlimited Reserve’, which covers a lot of the same ideas anyhow. Even the images on the DVDs themselves are identical to the original releases, so you’re not missing any detail, really.

This whole set, which spans an insane 2062 minutes (which I include because the box says so, despite being a tremendously impractical way to measure time), can be purchased for around 70 bucks – less than half of what the original four sets would set you back.

It’s probably the best investment in an animated series you could make today, because they’re pretty endlessly rewatchable, have some amazing voice talent (seriously, Scrubs’ Dr. Cox as The Atom!), and hell, they’re just really good. It’s nice to see them all so respectfully gathered into one mega-set, especially because they’re so sequential and relevant to each other. Plus, as a 28 year old male with cartoons on your bedroom shelf, having them in a tin is slightly less repellant to the opposite sex.

We’ve explored ten full years in the history of Batman as he appeared in his tiny, pixelated, fightin’ form, between 1986 until 1996. Batman has probably appeared in more video games than you’ve realized, so check ‘em out here.

By 1996, the Super Nintendo was the gaming system of choice in North America, having been around for five full years and gaining a well-deserved stranglehold on the hearts and souls of our nation’s youth. My nostalgia for the 8-bit is only matched by my love of the variety that 16 bits brought us. Faster response times, more complex controls, larger images, sexy graphics, rotating polygons, and games that spanned gigantic worlds – all things that added amazing things to gaming.

I’d be remiss to not note Batman’s appearance in Justice League : Task Force on the SNES, a relatively simple Street Fighter-like game in which you could choose one of a few core Justice League heroes to battle your way to Darkseid. This was in 1995, and Batman’s third appearance on the SNES. It was certainly LIKE Street Fighter, but it was no Street Fighter.

In 1996, the world suffered through Batman Forever, as well as the games that came with it, versions of which appeared on the Super Nintendo, the Sega Mega Drive, Game Boy, Game Gear, and even the PC. This is yet another game that focused on punching things into submission and some unbearably awkward controls on certain systems, but at least the option to play through as Robin was an option, or to play with two players at once – a gaming rarity that always invited more social gaming aspects, or chucking the controller at your friend’s head, knocking out a tooth and your parents making you hug. Ultimately, this was the beginning of the darkest phase of the Batman series video games, and the last time Batman would appear on the SNES. A similarly titled arcade game was released both in arcades and for the PlayStation and the PC.

In 1997, the movie-centric Batman & Robin was released for the PlayStation, exclusively. While it’s the first game where you can actually wander around Gotham completing missions instead of being pushed through sequential screen after screen, it’s also commonly regarded as a completely miserable game to play. Perhaps the stigma of the movies just weighed too heavily on it for the game to be properly enjoyable, but it’s an easy game to skip. As the Batman franchise recovered, there were no more games for three years. Yes, the game sucked so hard that it actually created a vacuum.

During this time, DC attempted to reboot the concept of Batman after it was so brutally beaten into idiocy with the premiere of Batman Beyond, an animated show on Saturday morning TV. 2000 saw the release of Batman Beyond : Return of the Joker (no relation to the previous ‘Return of the Joker’ game), again based on a movie. There was a simultaneous release for Nintendo 64, PlayStation and Game Boy Color, and took a step back into side-scrolling, face-punching action with some minimal third-dimension action.

For the next five years, it seems like we were hit with a rapid succession of completely forgettable Batman games, each one more desperately trying to capitalize on Batman and the idea that a more realistic, immersive gaming experience would create a better game.

I had a Game Boy Color, only because I happened to acquire every Game Boy that ever existed for one reason or another, but the system seems to be a forgotten, between-systems attempt by Nintendo at coming close to what the Game Gear offered years before. Batman : Chaos in Gotham came out in 2001, but remains forgettable. Batman also got a racing game with Gotham City Racer in 2001 for the PlayStation, though putting Batman in a racing game is the equivalent of putting him on your underoos. He’s equally relevant in either place.

I should also mention that none of these games, just like the first batch, have any notable value and can usually be snagged for under ten bucks, so it’s an easy collection to assemble. If you want to make it more challenging, aim for video games that still include their original packaging and manuals (which are usually more expensive), or if you want to shoot for the holy grails of gaming, sealed boxes. They’re out there, but not particularly on my radar as I try to amass the rest of my NES collection.

Batman : Vengeance (2001), Dark Tomorrow (2003), and Rise of Sin Tzu (2004) and Batman Begins (2005) all appeared on the ‘next gen’ systems, some scoring less than one point out of ten, though Batman Begins was praised for having amazing graphics – albeit a poor story and crippled AI.

Perhaps it’s the inherent awesomeness of Lego, but 2008’s Lego Batman was generally well received, and the last Batman-centric game to be released before Arkham Asylum comes out in a week. Batman as a Lego guy followed up on games like Lego Star Wars and Lego Indiana Jones. Can Lego American Graffiti be far behind? Lego Harry Potter and Lego Rock Band have been confirmed, and I sincerely hope that the Rock Band iteration doesn’t involve jamming the word ‘Lego’ into classic rock songs to make it relatable. ‘Black Lego Sun’ and ‘Psycho Lego’ are things I don’t need.

Batman made an appearance, although an incredibly strange one, in the fighting game Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe. It’s like that unexpected moment when you find out that pretzels and chocolate, two things that are great in their own right, actually taste pretty great together – owing largely to the animation, great graphics and solid fight engine that’s built into the game. He was also a core playable character in Justice League Heroes (2006), a kind of fighting quest game that traversed a variety of terrain as you managed your heroes through battle, sometimes directly, and sometimes indirectly… and which I gave up on after I was continually killed by thugs for no apparent reason.

So, that’s the history of Batman as a video game character. It’s not all bad news, but I’ve always taken any Batman game as a significant investment risk, inasmuch as the fun I’d get in return for my money was potentially minimal. They’re not worth picking up at a tag sale unless you’re really into Batman, because it’s doubtful you’d ever get a solid return on eBay, but it’s Batman. And that, as you know, if good enough for me.