"Batman: Caped Crusader," Year One"

I've been a fan of the animated DC universe, starting with "Batman: the Animated Series" from way back in the early '90s.  However, with the proliferation of different titles and projects that often don't exist in the same timelines, or have much to do with each other at all, I've been pretty selective of which animated Bat-projects I watch these days.  "Batman: Caped Crusader" is the newest animated Bat-series, based on the earliest "Batman" comics from the 1940s and 1950s.  It has an all-star cast, and "Batman: the Animated Series" creator Bruce Timm serving as showrunner.  The first season consists of ten serialized episodes, and is aimed at an older audience - not the "Harley Quinn" series audience, but viewers who will appreciate stories that are a little darker and little meaner.

The first thing you'll notice is that this is a very different Batman (Hamish Linklater) from the modern versions of the character.  He's still pretty early in his career as a crimefighter, and has a lot of unprocessed trauma, so he's harsher and colder.  He calls his devoted butler Pennyworth (Jason Watkins) instead of Alfred, and is treated as a dangerous criminal by the police, led by Commissioner Gordon (Eric Morgan Stuart).  Gotham City looks like something out of the 40s, but Gordon and his public defender daughter Barbara (Krystal Joy Brown) are people of color.  There are also several crooked cops on the force, including Harvey Bullock (John DiMaggio) and Arnold Flass (Gary Anthony Williams).  The ambitious district attorney, Harvey Dent (Diedrich Bader), has some shady dealings too.  Other characters include the rare trustworthy cop, Renee Montoya (Michelle C. Bonilla), an Asian Harleen Quinzel (Jamie Chung), who becomes Bruce Wayne's therapist, and a female Penguin (Minnie Driver), who is still a vicious criminal.

So, while "Caped Crusader" is designed to look like the oldest old school "Batman," it's taking elements from source material from every era, and creating some new variations specifically for this series.  Obscure villains like Firebug (Tom Kenny), Onomatopoeia (Reid Scott), and Gentleman Ghost (Toby Stephens) join perennial favorites like Catwoman (Christina Ricci) and Two Face (Bader).  This gives Timm and his crew the opportunity to play around with the Batman mythos, trying out more complex and interesting takes on the material while exploring some of the deepest deep cuts that only true Batman obsessives will know about.  I like that the series really gets back to its roots as a crime story, with Barbara Gordon and Renee Montoya serving as secondary protagonists trying to tackle corruption and injustice in many different forms.  I like that a lot of familiar faces show up, but often in different roles, or with different personalities.  Harley Quinn is a fascinating case, a character who didn't exist in the early comics, and has always been defined by her relationship to the Joker.  The "Caped Crusader" Harley is a formidable villain in her own right, a calculating manipulator with a downright scary modus operandi.      

The show's weak point is its animation.  The character designs often diverge from  expectations on purpose - less colorful and a bit more grotesque when it comes to characters like Two-Face - but the animation is noticeably lackluster compared to the older "Batman" shows.  An episode featuring Clayface (Dan Donohue), for example, looks noticeably stiff and clunky, without any of the transformation sequences usually associated with the character.  The tone of the series is harder edged, more pulp than noir, and in getting the visuals to match, the show often looks cruder and less polished than I expected.  If "Caped Crusader" were totally focused on street level crimefighting I'd find this more understandable, but there are a few episodes with supernatural and fantastical elements that could have benefitted from a little more visual flair.  I'm hopeful, however, that this will improve if the show gets additional seasons.       

And I'm very glad that "Caped Crusader" got made, and found a home with Amazon Prime away from David Zaslav's interference.  It's a unique, clearly very personal version of Batman from Timm, who has been away from animated superheroes for too long.  It's niche and not as viewer-friendly, and might have an uphill battle attracting fans, but I really want to see where this one goes.  

    

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