The last episode of season 2 ushered out Yin and introduced Jim Gordon. The Commissioner puts up the Batsignal and officially offers Batman his support, asking for him to “help me make Gotham a safe place for my daughter to grow up in.” And here’s where things get interesting — the first episode of the next season introduces an adolescent Barbara Gordon, Olympic gymnast hopeful who wants to become a cop despite her father’s protests. She ends up becoming friends with a classmate named Pamela Isley who happens to be really into environmental radicalism (cough cough). When Pamela gets hit with bio-engineered spores and terrorizes the city as Poison Ivy, Barbara gets the bright idea to become … Batwoman! But then everyone — even Gordon himself — calls her Batgirl and she goes with it. While Barbara was added to the show before Robin mostly because Robin was still being used by Teen Titans at the time, that doesn’t make it any less cool that she’s the first Batman sidekick in this universe and has a whole season with Batman to herself.
There’s a lot of humor in this two-part Batgirl introduction, especially because Barbara narrates the episodes herself. You get a real sense of her character and it’s a great version of the spunky, pro-active hero that I idolized when I was a kid. She even figures out that Bruce is Batman within three episodes … a bout of amnesia from Bruce makes her reject her hypothesis when she sees Bruce runs away from a fight, but that doesn’t deter from the fact that she’s smart enough to figure it out before really anyone else. Batman doesn’t make her quit despite knowing her identity from the start (world’s greatest detective and all), but he doesn’t really give her access to the Batcave or reveal his identity to her until the next season.
And what happened in the next season? Dick Grayson. Dick is around 10 years old when he starts and as in canon, his acrobat parents are killed and he becomes Bruce’s ward. The writers do a really good job setting up Bruce and Dick’s relationship, namely how Bruce feels compelled to take in Dick and help him through this difficult time like Alfred did for him. He also feels compelled to take down the people responsible for the murders and of course it isn’t long before Dick discovers Bruce’s secret and becomes Robin, after his mom’s nickname for him. I like this Robin, even if Dick acts a little more like Tim Drake than anyone else. As Bruce’s foster son, Dick is comfortable making jokes at his mentor’s expense, with Alfred and Barbara joining in. They tell the jokes and Batman is the straight man. Classic comedy.
Critics of the show have complained that bringing in the sidekicks was just a ploy to get kids to relate to the show and buy more toys, but Batgirl and Robin really elevated The Batman into something it wasn’t in the first couple seasons — fun. The two sidekicks don’t get along in the first few episodes together, but they became a great team and had a lot of really fun moments. They’re a core part of the show’s appeal and the rest of the series sort of went with it. You can see that in the opening credits, which changed starting in the 3rd season. The original theme was written by U2’s The Edge and played up the “edgy” aspect that grated me about the first two seasons. The 3rd through 5th seasons had a jazzy 60s style theme that harkened back to the Adam West era … and it worked! The show was adding more humor through both the quippy sidekicks and the supervillians, so the overall tone of the show had more energy.
Once they realized that the larger cast dynamic was strong, the show really picked up. The first Batgirl/Robin team-up was in the “Penguin’s Gang” episode. After seeing the Batfam for the first time, Penguin gets together his own Team Penguin (guess who thought of that name) to bring down the heroes. His team consists of Firefly, Killer Croc, Rag Doll and a squeaky voiced would-be supervillain named Mothman … he mostly gets them coffee. It’s just one of those amazingly funny episodes that does so much so well, especially dealing with Batgirl and Robin’s beginning disputes and the relationships between these different super villians. Tom Kenny’s Penguin really has a chance to shine as the ridiculously failing villain he is and I keep hearing the Ice King from Adventure Time come out in his voice (“Gunther, who told you you could fly!”).
There were also episodes into the later seasons that focused on the beginning of the Justice League. The season four two-part finale “The Joining” introduced J’onn J’onzz AKA Martian Manhunter as a new ally of Batman’s. The two of them (along with both the Gotham PD and baddies like Joker and Mr. Freeze) defend Earth against The Joining, robotic invaders who are swapping humans for identical android replicates. This is also the episode where Bruce admits to Batgirl and Robin (who help save the day despite being told to stay at the mansion) that the reason he distances himself from them is not because he doesn’t trust them, but because he doesn’t want them to get hurt. It’s a great storyline, made only better by a really enjoyable J’onn, who develops a very cordial relationship with the Dark Knight. The 4th season finale ends with Batman being teleported by J’onn to the League’s headquarters in space and the introduction of the other Leaguers in this universe. Batman then says he’s known for months about the station and (like a bad ass) gets the computer screens to pop up the Batsymbol just to prove he can.
The 5th season had a slew of Justice League single guest appearances, starting with Superman in the season opener. In a nice twist from most canons, it’s actually Batman who tells Superman he should join the League, that the Man of Steel needs a team backing him up. It shows how far Bruce has come since the first couple seasons when he was convinced he could only work alone. Flash comes in for an episode to help Batman fight Mirror Master and we get to see his voracious appetite come into play. Green Arrow butts heads with Batman about the Wayne Corp. but helps him stop Count Vertigo. Green Lantern has to send him the ring during an emergency, so we get to see Batman essentially be a Green Lantern for a short time. Hawkman shows up in Gotham when Black Mask and the Shadow Thief team up.
Before we get to the finale, there are some other episodes that stand out to me throughout the whole show. “Rumors” had Batman and Robin saving all of the villains of Gotham from the vigilante Rumor only to have to take down all of the villains themselves. The last 5 or so minutes of the episode is just one huge brawl, two against a couple dozen — it’s a prime example of how the action part of the animation is just stellar. Harley’s first episode is honestly Kevin Michael Richardson’s Joker at his best. At the very least it’s worth watching for the music number/montage of them destroying Gotham. “Artifacts” is a flash forward episode that shows Gotham a thousand years in the future as well cutting back to a decade into the future. The not so distant future features an older Bruce as Batman and Dick as Nightwing fighting a cyborg Mr. Freeze. There’s also a heartbreaking reveal when the police 1000 years into the future find a wheelchair in the newly discovered Batcave and assume it was used by Alfred in his old age, only to flash back to Barbara as Oracle. That broke my heart a little.
The series finale keeps with the overall theme of the 5th season and brings together the members of the Justice League. The superpowered heroes have mysteriously disappeared and when Batman and Green Arrow find them at the hands of Hugo Strange, they learn their heroes’ powers have been zapped and put into The Joining’s robots. Barbara — now a college freshman and only in a few episodes this season — comes back as Batgirl to help. After some chuckle-worthy jokes at the heroes struggling to adapt to crime fighting the human way, the League gets back their powers only to discover that there’s an entire Joining fleet headed straight for Earth. Teaming up, the League and the Batfam take down the invaders by using their own technology against them. The series ends with Batgirl and Robin looking down at Earth from the Watchtower and firmly suggesting a “Junior Justice League — Teen Division.” Considering Young Justice is now one of the major DC animation projects … I’ll let you decide if that was a coincidence or not.
The Batman isn’t Batman: The Animated Series … and it really shouldn’t be. The 65 episode reboot had some trips and stumbles in the early seasons, but it found a sweet spot by taking advantage of the authentic humor of the Batfam and the Gotham criminals. It stopped trying to be edgy and let just enough campiness in. There is a place in the 21st century for a funnier Batman universe as long as it’s still written well. Warner Bros. Animation must have understood this too, because their next Batman project (and the last addition to CartoonClack’s Batman Month) dove head first into the goofy, campy goodness that Batman and the DC universe has to offer. Stay tuned, friends.
Clacked by Katie Schenkel 
on Jul 14, 2012 @ 23:24 EST5EDT
