Batman: The Animated Series changed my life forever

September 5, 2022 marks the 30th Anniversary of Batman: The Animated Series. As a lifelong fan of the series, I feel compelled to write about the legacy and impact of Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski’s animated take on the Dark Knight. I write this knowing that the legacy of Eric Radomski and Bruce Timm has produced an impressive body of critical work, which would make any other effort obsolete.

It would be a great idea to write about the history of Batman: The Animated Series as a show that emerged as a result of 1990’s Tiny Toon Adventures, and how the show went on to not only redefine DC Comics’ iconic masked vigilante but the whole of American animated television itself, but that’s perhaps a story better told by the show’s creators themselves. I could have written about how the series reinvigorated Batman’s rogues’ gallery with a level of nuance and pathos unprecedented in any medium at the time apart from the comics, or about the show’s triumphant and bold title sequence. These subjects are, you may have guessed already, well-trodden. It is time to celebrate and write about these subjects. Batman: The Animated Series in a way that doesn’t feel entirely redundant, that feels both true to myself and to the auspiciousness of the occasion, I have to tell a story that I’ve never fully told or written about before: my own.

To tell the truth, it’s difficult for me to remember a time before I knew about Batman: The Animated Series. I can’t even remember the first episode I watched. How did I do it? DoIt is important to remember that the show hooked me, just like many others of my generation. I watched more cartoons that my peers up until then; starting from Looney TunesAnd Pink PantherYou can find more information here Tom and JerryAnd The Jetsons. However, Batman: The Animated SeriesIt was quite something. It wasn’t just a cartoon, it was appointment television. The adventures of the masked brooding vigilante Batman and his crusade for justice against a cadre of villains amid the anachronistic “Dark Deco” expanse of Gotham City sent a jolt through my young imagination like nothing else.

Image by DC Entertainment/Warner Bros. Animation

It was the perfect series for me. It was everything I wanted. Batman: The Animated SeriesThe captivating stories and title card design are just some of the many reasons why this film is so popular. It was at this moment that the love evolved from an infatuation to something deeper and more thoughtful. While watching television in the living room of my dad’s apartment, I asked aloud: “Why does this Take a look so different from everything else?”

There was something about this place that I recognized as special. Batman: The Animated Series, even if I didn’t yet have the knowledge at the time to ascertain what that was, or put words to what I thought and felt. It was unlike anything else I saw on TV. Hell, there wasn’t even any other Batman story like it, for all I knew at the time. It was not possible to access the internet at home and type in a query into the search box to be taken to a comprehensive wiki page with all the relevant answers. My immediate family and friends knew very little about animation. They didn’t even know how or why it was created. Although I didn’t have the ability to ask them questions, or the right words to put them into the proper context, I still had many questions. I didn’t just want to know what inspired Batman: The Animated SeriesIt was a show that made me feel special. I needed to write the words. Please feel You can do something that no other person could at the same time.

Without any other option, I chose to do what felt most natural to me at that time. I continued reading and watching art in all its forms, extending my knowledge beyond animation’s initial introduction into music and film, as well as architecture, to seek the answers I was searching for.

Image from DC Entertainment/Warner Bros. Animation

Kino Lorber

Over the course a whole lifetime I found these answers. I found them in the German Expressionist films of Robert Wiene, whose twisted corridors I recognized in the shape of Gotham City’s back alleys. They were in Giovanni Baglione’s paintings. I was struck by his mastery in chiaroscuro lighting, which I saw in Batman’s logo, where he is standing in front of the blood-red moon and scowling, while holding his cape. I found them in the futuristic world of Fritz Lang’s MetropolisHugh Ferriss’ architectural drawings and the Art Deco edifice at the Carbide & Carbon Building downtown Chicago. All of these findings pointed towards a collective future vision that was not yet realized. In the real world, however, Batman: The Animated SeriesThis was the future that lived on. And finally, I found my answers in a copy of Paul Dini and Chip Kidd’s Batman Animated I found in a used bookstore after college, which recounted the story of the show’s production in vivid detail and finally allowed me to connect the dots of who the writers, artists, and animators behind the series were and what they were trying to accomplish.

My love and devotion to Batman: The Animated SeriesThe medium and the character are secondary. The show didn’t just introduce me to the character of Batman, and it didn’t simply cement my love of animation; it opened my world to whole dimensions of art and expression and history I might never have pursued or known had I not encountered that series from an early age. In no uncertain terms, Timm and Radomski’s show is, however many degrees removed, responsible for setting me on the course to pursue a career writing about art and sharing that knowledge and passion with others. I’m a curation editor here at Polygon, which means my job is sifting through the ever-growing and shifting catalog of movies, television, comics, and games and spotlighting work I find particularly noteworthy, thought-provoking, and beautiful. If it wasn’t for Polygon, those qualities would not have come to me. I also wouldn’t think of writing about them. Batman: The Animated Series.

Image by DC Entertainment/Warner Bros. Animation

Dover Publications

It isn’t my only story. Batman: The Animated SeriesSince its debut 30 years ago it has had a profound impact on the lives of many people. It also inspires artistic endeavors from all walks of society. This is a great example of the transformative power art can have. Batman: The Animated SeriesThis quality is not unique to the artist. What number of classical music fans were introduced to it by a television episode? Looney Tunes or Tom and Jerry? I wonder how many artists were exposed as young people to Hieronymus Bosch, Frank Frazetta and Alejandro Jodorowsky simply by their growing up with them. Adventure Time?

You can’t call it trivial if you are able to evoke such a response. These are in the literalst sense, amazing. Art It matters. Animation It matters. Stories It is important. Start by going out to find those that most matter to you. Then, tell others. You’re the only one who can.

Batman: The Animated Series You can stream it on HBO Max.