Batman: The Animated Series was a landmark in superhero storytelling, reimagining the Dark Knight as a noble and valiant specter in an Art Deco-drenched film noir landscape of demented and damaged villains.
Airing from 1992-1995, it piggybacked off Tim Burton’s 1989 big-screen blockbuster to cast Batman as a righteous redeemer propelled by tragedy and compulsion to protect his beloved Gotham City. Rousing, romantic, and melancholy, it was a triumph that permanently altered the character and his rogue’s gallery of adversaries (not to mention introduced a novel one in Harley Quinn). Three decades later, it remains—with all due respect to Christopher Nolan—the definitive portrayal of the DC Comics crime-fighter.
Consequently, building on such a legacy is a daunting task. Yet Batman: Caped Crusader, a new animated offering developed by The Animated Series mastermind Bruce Timm, does just that, recapturing its predecessor’s magic by harkening back to the early days of its title character in Gotham, where he’s known to few but, before long, feared by many.
