by OL » Mon Mar 22, 2010 3:59 am
Gotta agree. Batman TAS is hard to beat (though my actual favorite thing to come out of DC animation was Justice League Unlimited season 1; still, same writers and directors making it).
The one that came after it, "The Batman", was just too "new age-y" to be any good. Tried way too hard to be cool. They fucked up all the villains by trying to put new spins on them, and it just never worked (the Joker is not now, and will never be, a fucking kung-fu monkey man. Period).
And the "Brave and the Bold" series they've got now is just too gimmicky and dumb. It isn't horrible like The Batman, but it is intentionally cheesy and relies entirely on guest characters too much. Meh.
Batman TAS, however, was made by legitimate fans of the comics, and they tried to incorporate everything that was appealing about Batman and his villains into it. They also weren't as tied down to corporate demands as they are now. Nowadays, it's all about selling toys and marketing toward imbeciles, rather than making a genuinely good, lasting product. Yeah, I don't know if another cartoon can ever possibly top (or even match) the legacy that Batman TAS carved out for itself.
100+ episodes of goodness, plus crossovers in the Superman series, then a regular role in the two Justice League series...
No one will ever create a bigger, more impacting Batman adaptation than all of that.