ODE TO AN ANIMATED SERIES

So last week after posting my little BATMAN 232/"The Demon's Quest" mash-up picture, I decided I wanted to write a bit more about BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES. Since my son's birth a couple months back coincided with La La Land Records' release of their BATMAN: TAS Vol. 4 soundtrack album, I found my interest in the series piqued, as is periodically the case, and as a result I spent more than a few late nights rocking the baby to sleep while streaming random episodes on my iPad. I thought it would be fun to write about them -- nothing in-depth, mind you; you can't spit on the internet without hitting a full-blown TAS retrospective series -- but at the very least, I wanted to compose one post boiling down exactly what it is I like about BATMAN, and what makes it so enduring for me personally.

I still vividly remember the very first BATMAN: TAS episode I saw. Somehow the series' premiere had slipped past my radar, so I missed the first few installments. Thus my initial exposure to BATMAN was the episode "It's Never Too Late" which, according to the internet, aired September 10th, 1992 as the seventh episode broadcast. It might be a good thing this was the first show I saw, because it immediately demonstrated to me what the animated Batman was about. This was not the Adam West version or the Hanna Barbera or Filmation iterations I had known on TV up to that point.

"It's Never Too Late" is a character study of an aging gangster at the end of his career, struggling to defend his crumbling empire from the younger competition. It tackles drug abuse -- something typically taboo in kids' animation back then except for the occasional "very special episode" -- but only in passing as part of the larger story. There are no colorful, costumed villains. The antagonist of the piece is Rupert Thorne, a character I knew at the time from a couple issues in my dog-eared GREATEST BATMAN STORIES EVER TOLD trade paperback, and he and his goons use conventional firearms rather than the laser blasters I'd become accustomed to in my normal weekday afternoon fare.

"It's Never Too Late" may not be the greatest of the animated Batman episodes, but it's a solid entry and holds a special place for me personally as the one that won me over that Thursday afternoon twenty-four years ago.