The New Batman Animated Series Changes EVERYTHING
The latest DC animated show, Batman: Caped Crusader, is shaping up to be something special.
It's close to three years now since Batman: Caped Crusader - an animated series based on DC's Dark Knight and co-developed by Matt Reeves and Batman: The Animated Series producer Bruce Timm, among others - was formally unveiled, but things around the show are finally starting to heat up. An exclusive report from Entertainment Weekly last week revealed several new images from the series and also detailed a fresh synopsis, confirming that this incarnation of Bruce Wayne will differ from any other we've seen on the big and small screens, and in a way that provides plenty of cause for excitement.
That's no small praise either, given that Batman himself boats a lofty reputation in the animated medium. The aforementioned BTAS, which Caped Crusader alum Timm co-created alongside the likes of Eric Radomski and Paul Dini, is largely responsible for that legacy. With the late Kevin Conroy as the Dark Knight and Mark Hamill as the Joker, the team at Warner Bros. Animation set about creating a Fleischer-inspired art-deco masterclass that offered what could reasonably be considered the definitive take on Batman.
BTAS spawned a wave of less well-known but still just as seminal spinoff series, including Superman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, and Justice League, forming a beloved corner of DC's stable known as the DC Animated Universe (DCAU for short). Animated shows based on DC Comics have come and gone since, and while there have certainly been highlights, none have come close to matching the mythos BTAS spawned in 1992, which gives a good idea of the boots Caped Crusader is looking to fill.
And fill them it seems to be doing - not in a way that feels imitative or safe, but instead fresh, inventive, and truly unique. With Reeves and Timm aboard and renowned comic book scribes like Ed Brubaker as well, Batman: Caped Crusader is shaping up to be - on paper - something fairly special, taking the World's Greatest Detective back to his Golden Age roots, and departing from most modern screen portrayals in the process...
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