Why Batman: The Animated Series‘ Legacy Rightfully Remains Unchallenged

It’s not uncommon for the reputation of famous series, particularly fantasy ones, to go through cycles. The initial reaction to Spider-Man 3 was purely average before the film plummeted into becoming shorthand for “This is what a bad movie looks like.” Ten years later, it would receive a retrial and now sits in the pantheon of the Actually Not That Bad. The same thing happened with The Phantom Menace, which began its lifespan recognized as the blockbuster crib death of George Lucas’ Star Wars prequels before being viewed as a weird yet extremely ambitious film today.

In fact, the only superhero series that seems to have escaped the inevitable back and forth of popularity and backlash is Batman: The Animated Series the 1992 FOX cartoon that many (including this author) claim to be the best distillation of the character and his mythos ever seen on screen. As every other famous Batman incarnation succumbs to the whims of the “fandom,” BTAS stays strong. Even the Batman film released the same year, Tim Burton’s Batman Returns, would be seen as an exercise in effectively grim pathos (and a public relations disaster for Warner Bros) only to seem old hat in comparison to Christopher Nolan’s timely, metaphor-laden Dark Knight trilogy, and then rise again in esteem due to its brazen artistry.

So why has BTAS eschewed this cycle? Aside from the fact that it is, as anyone who’s seen it will attest, a really good show, it’s also the series that would blend the macabre Art Deco Gotham City of the recent Burton films with a film noir-ish sensibility, making it look unlike any other show on TV at the time. After the 1980s, a decade when most cartoons mainly served as extended commercials for corresponding toy lines, Batman’s adventures were pulse-pounding and iconic. Heck, it’s the series that made Mr. Freeze interesting, and the one that birthed the character of Harley Quinn, who shot up the ranks of identifiable DC Comics characters in a way not seen since the 1940s.

It also wasn’t a series that would take a long time to amass its esteem. Batman: The Animated Series was very much beloved in its day, smashing ratings and winning Emmys, including one for “Heart of Ice,” the episode that made Mr. Freeze a bad guy to weep over. It was even promoted to prime time on Sunday nights, where it dueled against CBS’ 60 Minutes. No superhero cartoon before or since has been awarded that kind of reception, and in the nearly 30 years since its debut, it has remained both a go-to reference for Millennial nostalgia and a masterclass in animated storytelling.

Part of this critical steadfastness likely has to do with the fact that it’s hard to find a Batman series since that captures its lead character and his world with such power. Its follow-up series, The New Batman Adventures (airing on The WB), had most of the same creative team, but a design overhaul meant that it lost what made a lot of BTAS so aesthetically unique. Several other Batman-focused series on the WB also tried to make their mark. A reboot, The Batman, was exciting Saturday morning fare, but its anime-inspired antics and lighter tone led it to be harshly compared to BTAS upon its launch. Batman: The Brave and the Bold was a thoughtful and often very funny team-up show, but its juxtaposition against the Bush-era allegory of the Dark Knight films coming out at the time meant it lost all those who demanded something a little grittier from their Caped Crusader. And finally, while Beware the Batman remains deeply underrated, its CG animation was a sticking point for fans since the start, and its early demise and lackluster marketing combined to deny the series any kind of traction for finding an audience.