Batman: The Caped Crusader

There is the one true Batman and then there is everything else.

The one true Batman? He’s the Bruce Wayne you grew up with, the one from the comics that you read at just the right time, or the TV show you watched when you were a kid. 

For me that puts him squarely in the 1990s with Michael Keaton on the big screen and Kevin Conroy in Batman: The Animated Series. This is the perfect Batman, and anybody who says differently is wrong. 

However, plenty of people connected with Christopher Nolan’s battrilogy, and some people really liked Affleck in Zack Snyder’s update. The Snyder kids aren’t that vocal about it, you would have to ask them cause they are so shy. 

I have a friend who is old enough that he had no idea that Adam West’s Batman was meant to be a joke. It wasn’t a joke in his childhood chum. 

I loved Batman: The Brave and The Bold because I’m always down for a fun take. But it’s funny that I’m starting to see love for the show out in the wilds of the Internet. And I looked back and sure enough it’s about 10 years old which means that the 7-10-year-olds who found it and embraced it are making memes of it as they navigate their last years of high school and first years of college. 

Ultimately, when I encounter something like The Caped Crusader I think of it as an Elseworld title. That’s DC’s brand for stories outside the regular comics world. 

Batman becomes a vampire! Superman’s capsule lands in Russia! Wonder Woman fights for humanity long after all the other heroes have died!

The fun of those things most of the time is to see a slightly different take not only on the hero but on the supporting cast. I’m pretty sure in one of these things they made Jim Gordan, Jack The Ripper. But maybe I dreamed that up?

All the side characters get reimagined or injected into the narrative in cute little ways. But it gets lazy too. You hear a character’s name and you have an immediate reaction to that character not because of any writing or voice acting or directing but because you have a years or decades-long connection with that character from past stories. 

I was amused when Jim Corrigan showed up in The Caped Crusader but as the first season of the show ends Corrigan and several other characters are just hanging around — unfired guns hanging on Chekov’s wall. 

Given that Bruce Timm was involved I  thought, or maybe just hoped, that it would be a continuation of The Animated Series. It is very much not that and that’s probably the right call. 

There is a 15-year span of stories from the first episode of Batman The Animated Series until the last episode in that world in Justice League Unlimited. Every permutation was examined and adventures were had and we all probably shouldn’t go home again. 

So what is this? It has a lot of strong elements from the Batman incarnation as he originally appeared in the 1930s. The suit and design work feels very much like the Golden Age of comics. It also uses a trope from the animated series where the technology everyone uses seems dated, especially phones. 

It’s also a bit mean, or perhaps deadly. Characters get killed here in ways I don’t remember happening in other Battoons. I think death did happen in the animated series too but it didn’t seem like such a possibility for all the characters like it does here. 

The show has a main story and an ongoing arc that culminates in the finale. Ultimately, it feels a little stingy with the rollout of Batvillians. We get new takes on Harley Quinn, the Penguin, a classic (I assume) take on Clayface, and a throwaway called Firebug. 

Gangster Rupert Thorne is around and the Gotham PD are presented as corrupt as they were in Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Batman Year One.  

There is a tease at the end for you know who but it’s next season’s problem. The show spends most of its energy telling another origin of Two-Face. But this origin is so similar to every other origin of the character I frankly don’t understand why the creators put all their chips in on that bet.    

The tragedy of Two-Face, or the modern take on the character, is that he is close with Bruce Wayne and Jim Gordan, and Batman. As a district attorney, he joins the secret fight against crime and corruption in the early days of the Batman, Gordan partnership. 

And then he becomes the victim of a crime and then the good guys lose him to madness. It’s a heck of a strong Batman story (the best version is in Batman: The Long Halloween by Tim Sale and Jeph Loeb) but it doesn’t quite work here.

This Harvey Dent is a little too slimy and this Batman is a little too aloof to pull off the pathos. 

You could argue, I suppose, that the shock is in how the series resolves the Two-Face story but it was a long way to go without much of a reward. 

What I found funny — about my own reaction to this material — is that the change that upset me the most was the presentation of Harvey Bullock. You wouldn’t think it would bother me as Bullock was presented as a straight-up bad guy/corrupt cop in Burton’s first Batman movie. 

But in the animated series, he’s not corrupt, or maybe not as corrupt as the other cops. And while he has no love for “the freak” (those are his words and not mine) he’s still a good cop and one of Gordon’s trusted partners. 

And here? Well, he’s just one of the bad guys. I wonder if it’s because he and I share a body type that I was left so disturbed by this.

Ahh, but it’s just an Elseworlds you know. They’ll do something else with old Lt. Bullock next time. 

And this version of The Bat is an unusual take with decent little bat stories. I killed it in a weekend and despite all my yammering and complaining I had a good time. 

What more could you want? 

In 5 or 10 years everyone will get together and do something else. I surely would enjoy an ongoing Gotham by Gaslight Batman in the 1800s. Think of how cool the Court of Owls would be in that time period? Or maybe a Batman Beyond Beyond. Terry McGiniss’s kids are probably out there somewhere ready to fight the good fight.