Bruce Timm

It all starts with Bruce Timm. If you need to blame anyone for why I am the way I am, blame Bruce Timm. And maybe Swiss Cake Rolls, which you can blame the fat parts on.

In 1992, ‘Batman : The Animated Series‘ debuted. I was 11 years old, and I wasn’t really that into superheroes at all, if you can believe it. My kind of superheroes were made of pixels and fought their way through The Mushroom Kingdom and sometimes had wizardly beards and summoned dragons for magical stuff. Still, something about the serious, dark and brooding atmosphere of ‘Batman’ changed everything, despite its lack of orcs and bugbears. It was a cartoon that didn’t depend on slapstick humor, bright colors, punchlines or any modicum of goofiness, and it got my attention more with a whisper than a bang – and I wasn’t the only one who was hypnotized.

Bruce Timm had come along and revolutionized the way that we thought of animation. It could be beautiful and fluid, and be incredibly simple at the same time. In fact, the less lines and details that there were in a character, the better and more convincingly they seemed to move, even if the details of the character itself were minimized. Timm’s interpretations of characters from Batman to Killer Croc to The Penguin and Catwoman all melded seamlessly with the timeless Art Deco landscape of his Gotham City.

After a few other heroic characters from the DC Universe made appearances in Batman’s show, the collective appetite of an audience of cartoon fans was whetted for more. In 1996, Superman got his own similarly animated show, and in 2001, ‘Justice League‘ premiered, incorporating a larger number of Timm-inspired and designed heroes to the ‘DCAU’, or ‘DC Animated Universe’. This evolved into ‘Justice League Unlimited’ after a few seasons, which ostensibly gained the license to use each and every DC character somehow in any given episode, and it often did. And it was exciting to see a little cartoony Etrigan the Demon or Captain Marvel battling it out across the TV, for the first time in full motion. The minimalist Art Deco style of the characters somehow flowed seamlessly into a more modern environment.

By this time, the series had evolved into an action figure line, and against everything that action figure collectors collectively clamor for and whine about, the series remains a massive success. Sure, they’re in a tiny 4” tall scale, and they have barely any articulation at all, and most of them can’t stand up on their own, but there’s so damned MANY of them. I recently went through my own collection and catalogued them for our Community Section, so check ‘em out. Mattel takes the ‘Star Wars’ approach to making JLU action figures, inasmuch as any character that might have had half of their face appear in a crowd scene once warrants an action figure, and I love it. Recently, the newer figures have been exceptionally difficult to find, so collectors have been raising alarms about this scarcity – myself included this time. I want a Mr. Miracle, darnit, and I’m not paying 50 bucks for a 4-inch Volcana figure – which eBay is asking right now. None of this collecting was made any easier by hard-to-get convention exclusives like Solomon Grundy, and a Green Lantern Hal Jordan figure that Mattel released only to employees at a company party.

The interesting thing about these figures is not that there are so many, but this ‘animated style’ that was originated by Bruce Timm’s artwork has spanned across divides between all manner of properties – things that have never been animated are now being created as sculptures and action figures in this simplified ‘animated style’. Why? Because it’s just so neat. While it defies traditional toy logic to create an action figure or sculpture line that doesn’t immediately match up to an existing property exactly as it appears, it’s happening. Collectors routinely decry anything that doesn’t exactly match with what it’s supposed to be, and yet, these interpretations are successful.

Gentle Giant didn’t go the action figure route, but went significantly more monumental with the animated style, creating an interesting series of mini-statues, or ‘animaquettes’, of a large array of Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Pirates of the Caribbean characters. While I haven’t been sucked into the Lord of the Rings or Pirates stuff (yet), I absolutely fell in love with Animated Darth Vader and Princess Leia… and I have my eye on a Chewbacca and maybe an Emperor.

Pirates of the Caribbean has extended itself beyond these statues and the array of action figures that were created for the franchise’s movies, and suddenly, ‘animated style’ figures have been popping up under the name ‘Swashbucklers’.

The now-defunct Palisades Toys was probably the first company to breach this animated void, when they created their ‘Witchblade Animated’ toys in the early 2000s, despite the fact that the comic series Witchblade wasn’t animated until 2007. Recently, McFarlane toys also added a whole mess of ‘animated’ toys to the world of Spawn action figures, and while ‘Spawn’ was actually a semi-successful HBO cartoon a while back, it wasn’t in the style that these figures appear in. This minimalist design style has been just that infectious.

Time to go pop in some DVDs and fight off the effects of anime destroying Saturday mornings as we knew them.