I’ve watched all 10 Batman animated series over the years (you can view the list here). So when I heard about Batman: Caped Crusader I considered not watching it. But I read some reviews and the fact that Batman: Caped Crusader was aimed at a more mature audience than those other animated series intrigued me.
I was also interested in the setting of the series: the 1930s. No computers, no high-tech, no cell phones. Batman: Caped Crusader is a stripped down, high production values series with a keen sense of the classic Batman. This 10-episode series starts out with the Penguin in the first episode and we also meet an early incarnation of Harvey Dent, the young aggressive District Attorney.
The Rotten Tomatoes scores are Tomatometer 98% and Audience 67%. I’ve only watched two episodes, but I like the retro vibe. Are you a Batman fan? GRADE: Incomplete but trending towards a B+
No, not really. I did read the comics when I was a kid, but other than the car, it did nothing for me.
Jeff, when I was reading BATMAN comics in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Batman and Robin were more like detectives than Super Heroes. The stories were clever and the artwork was dazzling!
I did read them as a kid as well as Superman. And I’ve seen a few of the movies. I admire how you are able to recapture your youthful enthusiasm for comics and then turn around and read a difficult text next. I am somewhere in the middle. When I first met Phil his Dad had a newsstand as well as a luncheonette and he carried every comic. How I would have loved that a few years earlier.
Patti, I was an avid comic book reader in my youth. Today’s “comics” (aka, graphic novels) strike me as violent and occasionally terrifying.
Not all, but a lot. But, then, that makes them sometimes interesting. While THE KILLING JOKE is one of the most uncharming of Batman comics I’ve read, but even that was better than Christopher Nolan’s films, or those of a number of his predecessors such as Joel Schumacher.
Todd, the big difference between the Batman comics I grew up reading as a kid and the current graphic novels is…nobody died in those old comic books. Plenty of people die in the BATMAN graphic novels.
Who knew the Penguin wore lipstick and earrings? I’m not an animation fan, with the exceptions of Max Fleischer’s old SUPERMAN cartoons and (thanks to watching with our two-year-old granddaughter) BLUEY. I liked the wacky old Batman comics of my Silver Age youth, stayed with the series for a couple of years after the “new look” reboot in 1964, and lost interest sometime before the Bronze Age debut of Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams.
Fred, my love of those wacky old Batman comics parallels yours. I wasn’t a fan of the “reboot” in 1964 and moved on to reading more paperbacks.
Well I was an Adam West Batman kid and absolutely crazy about the show at the time and I still have a big soft spot for it. 20th Century Fox had some of the best designers and effects people in the business and I still think they had the coolest Batcave and Batmobile ever not to mention the best cast of guest villains of any incarnation. You really can’t beat Burgess Meredith, Frank Gorshin, Julie Newmar, Cesar Romero and Vincent Price (and I’d toss Otto Preminger and Victor Buono a bone too).
My exposure to comic books was largely limited to whatever my older brother had laying around and the few Batman titles I read at the time never did much for me. I worked in a college bookstores in the eighties so I had glimpses of the big Frank Miller Dark Knight which did nothing for me. Frankly, the adult comic book dudes I’ve had to deal with over the years have thoroughly soured me on the medium. I understand the appeal and the potential for graphic storytelling is there but so much of it just seems purile if not infantile.
I know that some of the animated Batman series have their admirers and I’ve loved animation all my life but these have just never appealed to me. To each their own. I’ll admit that the noir approach sounds cool and I’ve always ever thought someone should do a black and white Batman set in the forties (when the Batmobile was a sedan with a big Batman mask over the front grill). You could shoot it on the Warner Brothers backlot for a dime and go all German expressionist with the lighting and it could look amazing. Alas writers and directors are so full of themselves these days they’d go all “edgey” and suck the fun out of it.
Byron, I’m with you on adult comic book dudes. And I love your idea of a Black & White Batman series set in the 1940s! But Hollywood is obsessed with color and Special Effects–and money. Perhaps when Batman, like Steamboat Willy (aka, Mickey Mouse) becomes Public Domain, some rich fan with advance Artificial Intelligence computers will generate a Batman series like that!
I can’t think of any animated comic book characters I’ve liked! The old Fleischer Superman cartoons are the exception, but everything else looks cheap and flat to me!
Bob, there have been more flops than successes in the animated comic book character arena.
My favourite character has always been Phantom: The Ghost Who Walks. No other hero comes close to him. I did see Dark Knight where Heath Ledger was the Joker. The Batman made no impression. I have seen scenes of Val Kilmer playing Batman/ Bruce Wayne and liked them but haven’t seen the full movie.
Neeru, the Phantom was a fixture on the newspaper comic pages for years. I eagerly read about The Ghost Who Walks each day for years. WORDPRESS has been blocking my comments on your blog. Can I email comments to you and you could post them to your blog?
THE MASK OF THE PHANTASM, a full-length feature produced by the BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES crew, is still the best Batman film I’ve seen, and better than almost any of the segments of the series. I was and remain fond of the Adam West ’60s series and its spin-off film (and even the cross-over series THE GREEN HORNET), but have only spottily seen the animated series since. However, the recent live-action series GOTHAM and PENNYWORTH (which is still Very peripheral to Batman, dealing with Alfred P.’s earlier life in an alternate history UK) also average much better than the recent films.
I mostly enjoyed early ’70s BATMAN and DETECTIVE comics (the latter with Man-Bat as a backing feature!), much more than most of the DC hero comics except for THE SPECTRE…but I was interested in horror comics even more, so Jonah Hex in WEIRD WESTERN TALES was of interest…such Marvel characters as the Hulk and Werewolf-by-Night were likewise Almost as good as the horror titles.
Todd, I enjoyed the Adam West BATMAN series. Silly, but fun.