Batman

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.

I couldn’t be more excited about the upcoming Batman : Arkham Asylum video game. For the next ten days, consider me checked out of any kind of coherence.

I’m so excited about Arkham Asylum that I’m saving up money for a very expensive gaming system so I can actually play it, as there will be no release for Nintendo’s Wii. Who needs financial responsibility when you can live out your Batman fantasies in a pseudo-realistic fashion? Early reviews of Arkham Asylum have declared it to be an incredibly solid experience – which might make this the only Batman video game, out of at least thirty based on the character, that doesn’t completely suck.

It’s true, the Caped Crusader has had a very inauspicious video game history, having received some of the lowest game scores in the history of gaming. As if us Bat-fans haven’t suffered enough because of Joel Schumacher. Somehow, the intensity of the Bat-mythos has never been translated into an interactive experience successfully. It’s also worth mentioning ‘Superman 64‘ usually appears in the top three of every ‘worst video game ever made’ list, so perhaps the superhero experience just isn’t meant to mesh with the home consoles. Or picky nerds.

The Batman video game franchise extends even before the original Nintendo, which is often regarded as the first true powerhouse of at-home gaming. In 1986, ‘Batman‘ (above, left) was released to early computers, and was a kind of ultra-simple isometric hunt and fight game. Two years later, ‘Batman : The Caped Crusader’ (above, right) was released as a simple side-scrolling adventure, battling The Joker and The Penguin. At the time, both were fairly well reviewed, though I’m inclined to doubt the timelessness of these games – even as a hardcore 8-bit collector who can still find value in the old 7-UP Cool Spot Othello ripoff, which is the kind of game that happens to you when you don’t make a very specific Christmas list for your grandparents. Both of these Batman games can still be picked up for a few dollars each.

The NES picked up on the Batman action in 1989 as the first Tim Burton movie was released, with a game simply called ‘Batman‘ (above, right). This was one of the earlier video games that I can remember playing, and at the time, it was exceptionally difficult – which is not an uncommon sentiment among oldschool gamers. The NES would see two more Batman video games. ‘Batman : Return of the Joker’ (above, middle) was released in 1991 and is the only video game to focus on the 1970’s style comic Batman in his classic blue & greys. It’s regarded as a respectable entry into the Batman series, and has nothing to do with later games of the same name. In 1993, ‘Batman Returns‘ was released for the NES to coincide with the movie of the same name. Again, all of these are only worth a few bucks. ‘Batman Returns’ also has the distinction of being one of a few games that Nintendo released on NES and Super Nintendo at the same time, in different variations based on the capabilities of each machine.

All of these games also saw similar releases on other systems, from the Game Boy, to the Sega Mega Drive, the Atari ST and many different home computer systems, all with slight variations. The purpose here is to focus on the larger, more mainstream consoles, or else I’d be delving into the strange world of Batman carts for the Leapfrog.

What I’ve skipped over is Atari’s Batman arcade game (based on the first movie also), which was released in 1990 and has not seen an official home console release. Batman is one of the rarer arcade games in existence, with less than a dozen known to exist in the whole world, which means that I want one pretty badly in my imaginary game room. Some sources report that the game was released as a ‘conversion kit’, which meant that you’d have to plug it into a standard gaming cabinet for yourself, and that only 1000 were made. Other sources actually picture a uniquely sculpted cabinet and make mention of it being an original dedicated machine. Loose pricing estimates around the web place the value at around $1500 for an authentic, unmodified copy, but I suspect that the demand for this particular cabinet is greater than that. Along with the Simpsons arcade game, this is a lost classic.

The Batman pinball machine from Data East, also based on the first movie, runs about $2500 on a good day, but averages closer to $5000. It’s just one of a few subsequent Batman machines, which include ones based on Batman Forever and The Dark Knight, though the only way a Batman Forever machine would be justifiable was if it spat out a coupon at one million points to personally punch Schumacher in the groin. I know, the sentiment is tired and played out by every geek with a keyboard, but I’m still working on getting over it all.

By 1993, Batman games continued to thrive on all manner of systems. The Game Boy saw the release of ‘Batman: The Animated Series‘, which was not duplicated on any other system. This was the first game to be based on the popular animated series, a theme that was continued in 1994’s ‘The Adventures of Batman & Robin‘, which was released on the SNES, Sega Mega CD, Game Gear and and the Mega Drive Genesis at once, each version of the game having very unique features. As a Batman fan, I’m inclined to want all three, especially because the Sega CD version is said to have a ‘lost episode’ (not unlike the Futurama video game), which consists of at least 13 minutes of cut-scenes between the action. Even if the normal creative crew didn’t fully create these scenes, they use the original voice actors and represent a story that was never told in the regular series, whereas other iterations of the game are heavily based on the show.

Like most Batman home games, these have no special value and can usually be snagged for under ten bucks.

By 1996, we venture into the dark, sad time when the Batman franchise got pointy rubber nipples, and even stiffer dialogue. Stay tuned. There’s too much Batman for just one post.

You’d think that DC Comics and Warner Brothers would eventually run out of old Super Friends cartoons to put onto DVD. You’d think that Wonder Woman has lassoed every kind of dinosaur and/or alien invader, and that every Justice League member had faced their own evil doppelganger, or that Superman would just freakin’ stop putting himself in Kryptonite-likely situations. You’re thinking wrong.

The most recent DVD set from Warner Bros. is called ‘Super Friends : The Lost Episodes‘. While this might imply that there are a handful of episodes that never aired due to the show ending, or because Wonder Woman was animated without a top for a few seconds, these are definitely all episodes that saw the ol’ TV screen long ago. This collection of 24 episodes consists of a series of cartoons that were animated as the previous Super Friends series was ending, and were later shoehorned into the ‘Superman/Batman Adventures’ show in 1983 – but ‘Super Friends : Stuff That They Showed After The Main Show Was Over’ just didn’t have the same ring.

Once again, I must admit that Super Friends aired before my time – which is not to say that I didn’t experience my own Cartoon Network reruns, back when CN was a paragon of innovative cartoon revolution and classics. This batch of episodes seems to embody everything that I love about the Silver Age of comics, even more so than any of the previous collections. It’s not too long before you get Jayna turning into a giant crab to battle space robots the size of toys, and Superman being forced to garden by the awesome Mr. Mxyzptlk (which the show pronounces ‘Mix-Ull-Plik’… for shame). The screencaps for just about any scene in this collection are just beautiful examples of how absurd and great these cartoons were. They might not be the most amazingly plotted, voiced, or illustrated, but they provide more than enough ‘What The Eff?’ moments to make me happy.

It’s not as if the Super Friends are ever going out of style, either. Mattel recently offered a Zan and Jayna action figure 2-pack exclusively at San Diego Comic Con that people went insane over – and even more so when the remaining 2-packs were sold without their pet monkey, Gleek, on Mattel’s website later. And Gleek is definitely one of the most reprehensible things to ever happen to animation. Aside from that Bratz cartoon.

The DVD set is light on bonuses, featuring only a couple of scripts that can be downloaded from the internet using the DVD, but at this point, I’m sure that the extra features have been exhausted. To the best of my knowledge, and using the wisdom of TVShowsonDVD.com, WB has one more Super Friends related set to release, entitled simply ‘Super Friends’. This iteration featured teenagers Wendy and Marvin, who were precursors to Zan and Jayna, and was the very earliest Super Friends cartoon from 1973.

Pick it up. We’re almost at a point of completeness when it comes to collecting these old JLA cartoons, and even if they hold no nostalgia for you, they’ll be sure to tickle your modern animated sensibilities into submission.

I can’t say that I’ve ever had an intense desire to go to San Diego Comic Con.

I mean, NYCC was a stroke of genius, placed during the cooler months, significantly cutting down on the omnipresent geek-funk that tends to accumulate in these spaces, no matter how well ventilated – but San Diego in the summer seems to only spell a complete and devastating olfactory nuclear air strike. I don’t do well in crowds, even if it means a brief and pathetic glimpse down the costume of the chick dressed like Black Cat.

So, I’m at home in New York, and while I can’t purchase the many, many exclusive items that are now being sold to the itchy masses present at SDCC, my legions of Facebook, Twitter and blogophile friends make me feel like I’m actually there. The economy has made me cut back on my own collecting, as I’m sure that it has for many people, but there are a good handful of things which I’ll still unquestionably buy. Usually, these things have ‘robot’ or ‘Batman’ in the title. Here are a handful of collectible revelations that have come forth from SDCC and which are currently ganging up on my wallet before they senselessly beat it into a coma.

First off, I’m in love with the announcement that DC Direct has made regarding the continuation of their Batman Black & White statue line, after diverging into statues of Batman’s villains recently. I’ve collected all of the Batman statues, because they epitomize exactly why I love Batman by showcasing the many artists who’ve drawn and defined Batman, from Bob Kane to Bruce Timm and beyond. The newest addition to the collection will be a Batman by Frank Quitely, stoic and serious as the man’s artwork. The only other time that Quitey’s art has been figure-ized was in an earlier set of DC Direct figures, where his Superman and Superwoman drawings were made plastic.

Sideshow Toys is always pretty exciting, as they hold the reins to most of the greatest collectible licenses out there, but the favorite thing I’ve seen is the gloriously goofy 12” Punk Zombie from their original ‘The Dead‘ line. With original lines completely failing in the current toy market, it’s stellar that Sideshow have dug in their heels and are adding more to their ongoing collection of zombies. My Butcher only just arrived in the mail yesterday, and I’m sure he’ll look awesome with the Priest, the Prophet and the Babysitter. Ash Wood’s Les Mort 13 will lead them, and Mr. Bean will wander into their legions and, somehow, fit in.

Also on the list of ‘things you should give me’ are the full-sized Darth Vader bust with the removable helmet, and the 1/2 scale Iron Man in his movie armor. They’re only about $1200 and $2000, respectively

Mattel will continue my personal favorite ongoing line, DC Universe Classics, and by wave ten, I’ll finally be getting that Doom Patrol Robotman that I’ve always wanted – as well as a 3 3/4” scaled Doom Patrol JLU four pack, which has me just about wetting myself. I’m a really, really bad geek when it comes to silver age comics. These will all be exclusive to either Wal-Mart, Target or MattyCollector.com.

Unfortunately, a few ‘collectors’ were a bit too grabby at SDCC, and reports of one-of-a-kind designer toys and prototypes going missing seemed to flood in, the most notable two being Chris Ryniak’s Stitch custom figure (seen above), and Andrew Bell’s O-No Sushi prototype (seen below), both vanishing within moments of each other on Friday night. The news spread on Twitter and Facebook instantly, but there’s currently no word on whether or not either were recovered. This, combined with stories of stolen purses at the recent Otakon has made me really question whether or not these events are the safest places to bring things that you care about.

If Con culture does anything, it makes you want to spend money like crazy, which can only be a good thing in this wacky economy. I’ll be pumping a few bucks into the nerd sectors for the next few months, and hopefully, a few gracious patrons of the arts will pump a few bucks back into me. Hey, I had a piece in the Mez-Itz art show (upper right figure at this link), so I’m getting there. Soon enough, I’ll have the safe haven of a booth to retreat to there. Wish me luck.