Batman: The Animated Series

[lhb412]

[jellydonut25]

I've been watching this series lately, and it's just as awesome as I remember.
Season 1 is a touch on the uneven side, though:
The first five episodes are good, but then we get The Underdwellers and POV which are two less than stellar episodes (Underdwellers is actually pretty bad).

The Two-Face two-parter is amazing, and Heart of Ice, Cat and Claw and Gray Ghost are great as well (I really love Adam West as the Gray Ghost...really cool)

but then there are episodes like "It's Never Too Late" and "Prophecy of Doom" which aren't so great.


One episode that I really like, despite it sharing a lot of similarities with the episodes I don't like as much is The Forgotten, where Bruce is kidnapped to work at the gold mine in the desert. It's a neat episode, one of the few without a name villain that actually works really well.


I have a question about the series though...
so, Harley is introduced in this series, which I can only assume is considered non-canon...and then later, Harley becomes part of the canon of the comics...
so, are there any other examples of characters being introduced in something non-canon, and becoming so popular that the canon source adopted them?

[MekaGojira3k]

Daggett originated in the animated series but is in Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises as a villain.

That's one example I can think of.
I know it did a lot to reshape how some characters were portrayed like Clock King and Mr. Freeze and the like.

[Dr Kain]

[XvGojira]

[jellydonut25]

[Xenorama]

I watched the entire series recently and then wrote this about one episode-

http://xenorama.blogspot.com/2014/12/ba ... -edge.html

[XvGojira]

[Dr Kain]

I just watched Christmas with the Joker tonight. That episode is awesome.

[MekaGojira3k]

[jellydonut25]

Great, now I wanna re-watch this series. THANKS A LOT!

[lhb412]

Wow, they really wanted that opening exact, huh? Those are really tight storyboards, and the images are super-close to what ended up on screen.

[XvGojira]

It's a more refined version of their original promo.

[Dr Kain]

[jellydonut25]

I always dabble in re-watching or re-visiting this series in spurts. They really messed with the production dates and air dates and everything, didn't they?
Seems there's no real rhyme or reason. I mean, following the air-date seems to make a little bit more sense, as there's less random usage of characters without properly introducing them, but then again, The Cat and the Claw is a two-parter where part one aired on September 5, and part two not until September 12 with at least three other episodes in between them...so, who knows what anyone was thinking?

[Dr Kain]

[jellydonut25]

Yeah, but the production order (on the DVDs) still seems a tad confusing, which is what I'm saying. It seems like air-date order might actually make a bit MORE sense than the production (DVD) order. Yes, there is that weird thing with Cat and Claw being split up, but the DVD order just seems odd. On Leather Wings being the premier episode is odd. It doesn't introduce any of the characters at all, it just drops us into this story. Then Christmas with the Joker has a weird thing to it too where Robin appears in that episode but then isn't in the next SEVERAL episodes.

So yeah, I kinda feel like the orders were just produced in whatever order, and then aired in a slightly more re-structured order, but still weird. Kinda like they said, "It's animated. That means it's for kids. Kids are stupid and don't care. Do whatever you want."

It's just weird to me.

[Dr Kain]

From my understanding when I was growing up, On Leather Wings was actually aired on TV about a month before the series premiered as a sneak peak at the show. I missed out on that, but my friends talked about it.

It is kind of like how Fox aired the season 2 premier three parter to MMPR and the Season 3 two part premier to X-Men over the course of 2-3 Thursday nights in August of 94. Then the shows did not actually start until mid-Sept.

[O.Supreme]

viewtopic.php?f=58&t=18997

Parts of "On Leather Wings" were shown at SDCC in 1992, but it was officially the 2nd episode ever aired (on a Sunday evening, odd to be sure), but it is meant as the first production episode. I understand that it can be confusing since the episode just jumps into the world of Gotham, with no real origin, but I don't think I've seen a Batman animated series ever start with his origin, it is usually told in bits & pieces across numerous episodes.

But feel free to watch them in any order you like. Airdate, Production, or otherwise.

[mr.negativity]

[Dr Kain]

[jellydonut25]

^For sure.

It's just a bit odd when the second episode on the DVDs is Christmas with the Joker, but if you are watching it for the first time ever in that order OR if you haven't watched the show in many MANY years, you get zero introduction to the characters and especially in the case of Summer Gleeson, you're left kinda scratching your head a little bit.

[Dr Kain]

[jellydonut25]

"Need"? No it doesn't NEED to introduce her, or the other characters, but it IS odd that you don't learn who SOME (not all) characters are in this universe and what they're all about until the second or maybe even third time they appear.

Summer Gleeson is probably the best example of that I can think of. She is just a random damsel in distress in the X-Mas with the Joker story and that's fine, I even thought it was Gordon's wife or maybe Barbara at first, before I remembered who it was. It doesn't affect the story or anything like that, but it's just a tad odd that we learn LATER who that character is.

[O.Supreme]