Category Archives: Batman: Caped Crusader

Batman: Caped Crusader Season 2

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Amazon Prime’s second season of its animated TV show, Batman: Caped Crusader dropped recently and I got to binge it today. I had planned on watching five episodes today and then watch the rest on Sunday, but I just did not want to stop watching once I got into it.

This was fabulous.

The flavor and feel of this show is so much like the Bruce Timm Batman: The Animated Series, but mixed with the violence of the present day, such as Matt Reeves’ The Batman. That makes sense since both of those gentlemen worked on this project.

I can understand if someone did not like this show since the show takes many of the known characters from the Batman universe/rogue’s gallery and give them a different touch. An example is Edward Nygma, known to the Bat-fans as The Riddler. The Riddler was so named because he would “riddle” his victims with bullets. I like most of the new versions. You can compare these differences to those you might see in the Absolute DC universe.

The Joker came into the show this year and spent most of the season in the background doing sneaky stuff. His arrival front and center was downright frightening, especially in episode 9. Watching all of the people dying from laughing was horrific. I was not as fond of the gas turning the people into Solomon Grundy-like creatures. Seeing the people actually die was much worse for me.

The Joker was less crazy as we usually see him portrayed as, and here he is colder, more serial killer-like. I’m not sure it was my favorite version of Joker, but he was a frightening character.

This show is absolutely not afraid to kill of these characters. Season one had the death of Two-Face which was shocking, but this year, we saw Rupert Thorne, The Riddler, Hugo Strange, Hattie Tetch (who was supposedly a version of the Mad Hatter, which I never got) and, of course, countless cops and henchmen. I thought this violence was better used than in, for example, Invincible since it does not focus on the blood splatter.

They took several low-level comic characters that made their way into the show. Carrie Kelley, who appeared in season one, becomes a Robin in Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns, and she takes on a Grey Ghost-like persona. A villain called Thorn, who I actually had to look up. I had never heard of her before.

They gave us a version of The Spectre, which came from season one with the character of Jim Corrigan (which was the episode with Onomatopoeia). Again, it was not my favorite version of Spectre, but, as a part of this episode, I thought this turned out great. As I said, I think of this like a Elseworld version or an Absolute version.

This was a lot of fun and I just enjoyed every episode. I do think episode 9 was my favorite of the season as I was on the edge of my seat the whole time watching these people die from the Joker Smile-X. I hope there will be more of this series in the future because these are great.

Batman: Caped Crusader S1 E6-10

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I finished up the remaining five episodes of the new animated Amazon Prime series, Batman: Caped Crusader, and don’t listen to the angry mob of online haters, this was great.

You get a few race and gender swaps and people get angry. That is sad. These 10 episodes are still really great no matter how ‘woke’ you claim it is.

We get several villains that we do not usually get in the first stretch of Batman. There was no Riddler. No Joker (until the very final scene). No Killer Croc. No Bane. No Scarecrow.

Instead, we got Gentleman Ghost and a couple of characters who I did not recognize. One was Onomatopoeia and the other was Wednesday Adams. Um… actually, it was a character named Nocturne, who I had never heard of before, but she sure looked like Wednesday Adams.

Then the season long running storyline with Harvey Dent led to the acid-in-the-face origin of Two-Face, but the end of the two episode season finale led to a surprising and tragic end for Harvey Dent. I liked the way that storyline wrapped up. It was more than just what we usually expect from a Two-Face story.

Marc Bernardin wrote the Gentleman Ghost episode. Bernardin who co-hosts the podcast Fatman Beyond with Kevin Smith has done a lot of television writing over the years, including animation. The Gentleman Ghost episode was excellent and one of the better ones of the season.

While this does not reach the level of Batman: The Animated Series, Batman: Caped Crusader was a lot of fun and seemed to get better with each episode. I look forward to seeing the next season.

Batman: Caped Crusader S1 E2, E3, E4, E5

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I jumped into the new season of Batman: Caped Crusader after starting with episode one last night. This morning I went through the first half of the new season on Amazon Prime. So far, I have liked this more with every episode.

Batman is well done. He feels as if he is new to the world of crime fighting and the responses to him from the Gotham PD and the people of the city reflect that. The only nitpick I have on the character of the Batman is when he calls Alfred, “Pennyworth.” I know that is his last name, but it feels too distant for Batman to call his longtime butler and mentor by his surname. That’s a minor gripe, but I do notice it every time he has said it so far.

The show has taken its own takes on Batman’s rogue’s gallery so far, making some interesting changes. Of course, the female Penguin must have shaken some tailfeathers of the internet, as did the changing of skin color for Jim and Barbara Gordon). Neither of those changes meant anything to me as none of those changes made any real differences to the characters.

Other villains used in episodes two-five included:

Clayface. He was a top notch actor whose face prevented him from getting the roles he wanted and he underwent a experimental treatment which turned his skin into the malleable skin we know. I will admit not knowing as much about Clayface as some of the other Bat-villains, but I did like the use of the actor in the role. It made sense to me.

Catwoman. Selina Kyle felt as if she were the least adjusted villain of the series so far. She was a down-on-her-luck high society woman who took to crime to make her money. Her father had been convicted of some kind of tax evasion leaving her penniless. The Batman-Catwoman chemistry was still there and Selina’s outfit was very comic accurate.

Firebug. Another character that I do not know as well as some other Bat-villains, and he was used as bait by Bullock and Flass, both crooked cops, to try and capture the Batman. Bullock shooting Firebug who then fell to his death out the window to keep Firebug from talking really set the crooked cop up as one of the big bads of the series.

Harley Quinn. Harley was really adjusted quite a bit, taking her origin with the Joker out of the picture and playing her as a therapist who was brainwashing her patients into doing her bidding. Her bidding all had a positive outcome, like having people donate to charity or so on. She was not the crazy Harley that we have been used to over the years. She id definitely different than the Harley Quinn on the HBO Max series or in the DC movies. That is not a bad thing. I liked the new look at this character, but she did do the old “falling to her death” trope that we have seen in so many Disney movies. No way Harley is dead.

One of my favorite scenes was in the Harley Quinn episode as we saw one of her patients in the road dressed up like King Tut. King Tut was a villain on the Batman TV show from the sixties played by Victor Buono. This animated version was not a villain, but a victim of Harley Quinn but it was still cool to see him.

Interestingly enough, there has been no sign of the Joker so far in the series. I am curious to see if that will continue as the show focuses in on other Bat-villains. Batman certainly has the number of villains to make this work.

Batman: Caped Crusader S1 E1

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“In Treacherous Waters”

A brand new Batman animated series dropped its ten episode season one on Amazon Prime today, and I was able to watch episode one, “In Treacherous Waters,” to kick off the new show.

This first episode, which featured the new Penguin, a female named Oswalda Cobblepot, gender-switched for the animated program. She is voiced by Minnie Driver.

The new series definitely has the same flavor of the original Batman: The Animated Series, one of the greatest cartoons of all-time. Bruce Timm is back with an involvement in this new series, so that tone similarity makes sense.

Hamish Linklater is the voice of Batman/Bruce Wayne and the style of the voice is clearly in honor of the late great, EYG Hall of Famer, Kevin Conroy. Diedrich Bader, who has done a ton of voice over acting, is Harvey Dent, Eric Morgan Stuart is Commissioner Gordon, Krystal Joy Brown is Barbara Gordon, and Jason Watkins was Alfred Pennyworth. There are several other voices to come in the remainder of the episodes.

The style on this series again reflects the original series and looks really cool. However, the story itself was, at best, okay. I did like the first episode, but that is all I have seen so far and I would say that the level of animated TV shows from this past year (X-Men ’97, What If…? etc.) rates much higher than this so far. Of course, I have only seen one episode so far and I will definitely be checking out the remaining 9 episodes of this first season as soon as I can.

Of course, the gender-swapped Penguin will probably be an issue for some, but that does not bother me in the slightest. Minnie Driver is a talented actor and works well for the character. I am sure there will be voices out there who are angry at this change who will scream to the heavens about the impropriety of making Oswald Cobblepot a female. I am sorry for your pain.