Nostalgia is not all it seems. This month Batman: The Masked Crusader was billed as the grown-up version of the beloved and groundbreaking 90s show Batman: The Animated Seriesmade by B:BAG co-creator Bruce Timm, producers Matt Reeves and JJ Abrams, freed from the censorship of Saturday morning cartoons and backed by the talents of several well-known Batman comic book writers.
And while the show certainly Animated series Look, it wasn’t a direct continuation and it wasn’t a strong relaunch. Timm’s crew was free to say what they wanted, but ultimately didn’t have much to say. Sometimes you just can’t go home.
But what if I told you there’s already a more grown-up version of it? Batman: The Animated Serieswith hour-long episodes like a live-action drama, a multi-season plot and fresher animation than Hooded CrusaderIt’s episodic, but the characters maintain a solid emotional continuity, and while it’s appropriate for children, it has multiple layers and references for adult viewers to ponder.
If you are looking for a better Batman: The Masked Crusaderyou have to look Justice League And Justice League Unlimitedwhich are now available on Netflix for endless viewing pleasure.
The premiere took place in 2001, Justice League was a direct continuation of the DC Animated Universe setting, which began with the 1992 film Batman: The Animated Series and continued in Superman: The Animated Series, The New Batman AdventuresAnd Batman Further —and for the most part, it was all the same talent working behind the scenes. Artist Bruce Timm, writer Paul Dini, producers Rich Fogel and Glen Murakami, voice actors Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, Clancy Brown, Ron Perlman, Arleen Sorkin, Michael Ironside, and Michael Dorn, all returned to reprise their various roles and duties.
But Justice League wasn’t a half-hour, one-off episodic series that hit the airwaves at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings. It aired in primetime on Cartoon Network, and each episode of the series was part of a two-part story — hacking the standard half-hour animation into an hour-long adventure series. The core cast started out with Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Hawkgirl, the Martian Manhunter, Wally West’s Flash, and John Stewart’s Green Lantern, but two seasons into the show, Cartoon Network asked for a rebrand and expanded its mandate.
In Justice League UnlimitedThe full breadth of DC Comics’ superhero roster was welcome in Justice League , not just its seven founding members. Episodes were once again cut back to half-hour slots, but the show’s crew found a new way to think big. For the first and only time in the setting’s history, a DC Animated Universe show began delivering storylines that lasted an entire season; placing dominoes, predicting revelations, and paying off setups from weeks before.
And while every episode was still appropriate for kids, the show’s writers weren’t immune to the thrill of including references that only adults would really pick up on — like ’50s gender and racial prejudices, a long-lost Martian Manhunter being brought before Nazi doctor Josef Mengele for experimentation, or canonically establishing that the Flash is a more attentive lover than Lex Luthor.
So if you’re in the mood for a Batman fix this weekend, get in line Justice League (2001) on Netflix. Now, it might take you a few episodes to get going, but if you can get through the early middleweight stuff, the series will pay off big time. Aquaman chopping off his own hand to save his baby son, an alternate Superman lobotomizing his opponents with laser vision, a collection of murderous romantic subplots, the Batman of Justice League: Unlimited travel through time and meet the elderly Bruce Wayne and the future Batman Batman FurtherLex Luthor’s season-long presidential campaign, and a straight-to-film adaptation of one of the greatest Superman stories ever, “For the Man Who Has Everything.”
So maybe it’s not the creepy procedural film that gives you the same feeling as when you watched the movie Batman: The Animated Series for the first time. But again, neither is Batman: The Masked Crusader!