Caped Crusader

Yet another Batman cartoon has been released. Prime Video dropped Caped Crusader on August 1st. This first season is 10 episodes long and they dropped the entire season at once. Produced by Bruce Timm, J.J. Abrams, Matt Reeves, Daniel Pipskim and Ed Brubaker. Caped Crusader’s animation is very similar to the Animated Series style of animation, and the show starts us right in the middle of the action. We also seem to be getting a Batman costume more reminiscent of Detective Comics Batman and I love that. It’s like the only thing that hasn’t been done in Batman animation, ya know since he has 1000 animated series and Wonder Woman doesn’t have any…but I digress. So as someone who has absolutely no interest in Batman let’s watch the newest animated series.

I immediately love that the first villain that we encounter is the Penguin. They have made the Penguin a woman and I love that for me. Most of Batman’s villains are men and that’s super boring. Also Batman has just the most theatre kid ass villains. We also get Barbara Gordon right away, which I also love.

Bruce Wayne sucks so at least our characterization is correct. He tries a line on Barbara which obviously doesn’t work and then he uses the same line on the next two women he sees. *GAG*.

We have already hinted at Black Canary and we also know that we are getting Harley Quinn at some point this season. Montoya shows up in the second episode and we already have Barbara Gordon. We do seem to be including everyone in Gotham City. Which is great because it is one of the richest worlds in comics. Gotham City houses some of the best comic book characters, and definitely some of the best comic book women.

I appreciate the balancing of the other characters in the universe. Neither of these first two episodes actually focus on Batman. We actually spend very little time with Batman or Bruce Wayne at all. The first episode focuses more on the Penguin and Barbara Gordon. The second episode follows Montoya and her investigation. Batman simply shows up when he is needed and I love that.

So far we seem to be doing a new villain every episode which is very original animated series so I don’t mind that. There might be a vague throughline but the new focus every episode goes back to when seasons were much longer and people needed to know what was going on if they randomly caught an episode on tv in the middle of the season. It really makes it easy for new people to enter at any point. Now the concept of that is nice but with streaming the execution is a little irrelevant. The thought, however, is appreciated. The first two episodes did open up storylines that could turn into ongoing storylines so they are giving themselves options. They are also things that don’t NEED to be closed out. So if they just drop them it's not going to be the end of the world.

The thing that I really love about the first impressions of this show is that it feels very much like a film noir. From the intro, to the way the characters are handled. I think that film noir is also the perfect backdrop for Batman. And I say this as someone entirely uninterested in Batman. I think every character in Gotham City is more interesting than he is, but thus far the show is pretty good and I do hope that there will be a second season.