Batman: The Brave and the Bold

Small Screen Specials, Series and Direct-To-Video
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Post by Randall » May 8th, 2009, 9:10 pm

I was afraid they'd do this. But, it does follow the same DVD release pattern as all the other DC animated shows, and they all eventually received season sets--- except that I'm still waiting for Legion. Sadly, I'll have to wait for Brave and the Bold, too. I'm done with getting one-disc releases of TV shows.

GeorgeC

Post by GeorgeC » May 11th, 2009, 1:10 am

You might be waiting on Legion of Super-Heroes for quite a while, then.

I don't think it went past 39 episodes if that...

Wait a minute -- (quick search) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legion_of_ ... TV_series)

26? Less than I thought!

I knew the show didn't get a full 52 episodes (never really paid that much attention to it) but I had no idea it had been pulled after just two seasons. I thought it went at least 3!

Conventional wisdom in the US is that a full-series (animated series) order is 52 episodes. Less than 52 means "ratings failure". (52 is the magic number for daily stripping, ie showing one episode of a series per weekday. It used to be a 65-episode requirement for daily stripping but got cut back to 52 in the 1990s.) I don't think a lot of those shows get the DVD treatment unless they're live-action. I see plenty of one- and two-season live-action shows get DVD sets but not many one-season animated series unless they're non-North American.

LOSH is probably not a good candidate for full-season releases unless enough people write in to convince WB otherwise, OR it becomes a candidate for the WB Archive Program.

LOSH was never one of DC's better-selling titles and all the revamps and Crises sure haven't helped make the series' history very user-friendly....

GeorgeC

Post by GeorgeC » May 11th, 2009, 7:08 pm

New episode premiering on the 22nd of May --

http://news.toonzone.net/articles/29758 ... of-revenge

"The Color of Revenge"

The teaser/opener is a flashback to the days when Batman teamed up with Robin, the Boy Wonder (Dick Grayson).

Flash-forward to the present and the Dynamic Duo has broken up over differences in temperament and approaches to crime-fighting. Dick Grayson is in his late teens/early twenties and still Robin but wears an updated, more adult gear. Batman and Robin are forced to team up once again to fight a villain who threatens to level Bludhaven, Robin's current homebase.


***************

Let me say it again --

I LIKE this show! I like everything from the character design and overall art to the new directions and alternative takes on DC's classic superheroes.

Not every episode has been a home run but by and large this is the best Batman series since the 1992-1995 animated series and one of the more fun action-adventure series made to date, period.

One of the biggest mistakes DC made in the past 30 years was breaking up the original Dynamic Duo and graduating Dick Grayson to being Nightwing.

Let me tell the big problems with Nightwing --
a) he's under the shadow of Batman, like it or not; and
b) NOBODY knows what to do with this character!

The only thing DC needed to really to do with Dick Grayson/Robin was update the outfit. I prefer the first Tim Drake revision (designed by Neal Adams in 1987 or 1988) which was used for Dick in the '92-'95 and series and later again in The Batman animated series. It preserves the original outfit's colors but with darker a darker cape (with inner yellow lining) and long leggings to take Robin into the modern age. (I don't care for the current black-and-red comic book Robin outfit, however. The scalloped cape is too much like Batman and I miss the green coloring from the original and previous Robin costumes.)

2 replacement Robin's later and Dick Grayson is still the best-known and one-and-only original Boy/Teen Wonder.

The Robin in this Brave & The Bold episode wears not only his original briefs outfit but also the the more adult Earth-2 (Dick Grayson) Robin outfit which looks slick in animation.

Seeing how well the Dick Sprang design sensibilities translate to animation makes me wish all the more a Golden Age-style Batman animated mini-series would be greenlit...

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Post by Randall » May 11th, 2009, 11:37 pm

GeorgeC wrote:You might be waiting on Legion of Super-Heroes for quite a while, then.
Possibly, but with The Zeta Project (a barely-DCU show that also ran just 2 seasons) having just come out on DVD, there is hope for the future. With fewer and fewer DCU shows left to be released, I'd expect Legion to show up eventually.

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Post by Randall » May 11th, 2009, 11:40 pm

Wow, Robin looks good in those screencaps! I love seeing the Earth-2 outfit again (without Robin geying at the temples); I always thought it looked good. I've also always really liked the Neal Adams outfit, too. The current DCU outfit seems to be based on the last BTAS design for Tim Drake, which I never cared for.

GeorgeC

Post by GeorgeC » May 18th, 2009, 2:14 am

Yeah,

The Batfolks on comics have been taking cues from the animated series for a while.

I never liked the red and black Robin outfit, either. Hated that the comics folks felt this was a good direction to go in. I much preferred the previous Robin outfit with green in it. I've never cared for redesigns that carelessly throw away classic elements of costumes. The only good redesigns I've seen in the past 20 years are Wally West's shiny Flash outfit with the white eyeholes and Tim Drake's first Robin uniform. Other redesigns are pretty much a wash...





As to future Brave and the Bold episodes...

http://www.comicscontinuum.com/stories/ ... /index.htm

There's an upcoming Bat-Mite episode that also features Bathound. It's written by Paul Dini so the humor should be decent.

Just when Frank Miller Batman fans thought "all that lame 50's stuff" was gone --- nope! ---, it's back! :lol:

(Seriously, the lamest thing that happened to Batman in the past 23 years WAS Frank Miller and on top of that bad editorial decisions by Denny O'Neil and others that continue to the present-day.)

Voicing Bat-Mite --









Why it's Pee-Wee Herman himself, Paul Reubens!

GeorgeC

Post by GeorgeC » May 23rd, 2009, 2:46 pm

I liked the Robin episode.

It's one of my favorites and portrayed a Batman/Robin relationship that makes more sense than most of the junk written in the past quarter-century since DC allowed Dick Grayson to become Nightwing.

However, some Bat-fans didn't like it... http://www.newsarama.com/tv/050923-Brav ... l#comments

If you look at this, you get the feeling a lot of people like that god-awful over-the-top depressing junk like Nolan's Batman or Frank Miller's demented detective. That's not Batman to me any more than Joel Schumacher's Mr. Blackwell's best-dressed nipplefest is either.

To me this episode illustrates the inherent character flaw of Batman -- he's always right and has a hard time acknowledging differing individual crime-fighting styles work for others and the fact that his former ward is growing up and ISN'T the 10-year-old kid he could boss around. There's a certain arrogance to Batman and a coldness that other characters find hard to relate to. Robin is the exact opposite.

Frankly, I liked seeing the Dynamic Duo back together again and some of my favorite episodes of Batman: TAS were the Robin-centric episodes and the regular team-ups. While Robin will always be the back of the "Batman &" it doesn't feel right that it isn't Dick Grayson anymore in that outfit...

GeorgeC

Post by GeorgeC » October 7th, 2009, 2:09 pm

The Brave and the Bold returns to Cartoon Network on October 23rd at 7:30 PM EST!

http://www.comicscontinuum.com/stories/ ... dpanel.htm

"Mayhem of the Music Meister" is the premiere episode of the show's second season and features Neal Patrick Harris ("Doogie Howser," "The Flash"/Justice League: New Frontier) as the villain in what's obviously a Broadway musical homage episode.

A soundtrack of this episode which includes the series' main theme follows the next day and is available via download (iTunes, Amazon.com) or a hard copy (re: CD) on through Amazon.com...


Here's hoping a Season 1 collection isn't that far off in the future, too!

GeorgeC

Post by GeorgeC » October 23rd, 2009, 11:18 pm

You probably missed it like I did...

The Brave and the Bold featured "Music of the Mayhem Meister" this night at 7:30 PM. (At least I've got the excuse of a hellish school week working on commercials. Hopefully, it'll be easier for a while but I admit to taking Z's for a few hours at least two nights this past week because of stress!)

The episode fortunately repeats this Saturday at 10 AM EST on CN. All other time zones please check out CartoonNetwork.com for your schedule.

Last week was actually the start of the newer episodes (CN held back the last 4 episodes of Season 1 of The Brave and The Bold) although Season 2 is at least two weeks away... Last week's episode featured the animated introduction of Jack Kirby's OMAC which was a far better concept than the revamped trash introduced in the recent DC Comics' Infinite Crisis mini-series.

The original OMAC series has been recently collected as a hardcover in DC's Kirby Archives series along with Kamandi, the New Gods, The Demon, and Sandman...

In practice, I find that the Kirby DC characters actually function fine as guest-characters in comic book series rather than headliners. They just can't quite maintain their own books unlike the characters he co-created for Marvel. These concepts do, however, translate well to animation. Hardly any redesign is required for the basic looks of the character and they're already so over-the-top that they adjust well to animated storytelling, too!!

GeorgeC

Post by GeorgeC » December 24th, 2009, 8:58 am

http://www.comicscontinuum.com/stories/ ... avejan.htm


Bunch of new episodes scheduled for January including -- WAIT FOR IT --




The animated debut of the Justice Society of America!

<APPLAUSE>



Description: The Justice Society's worst enemy, Per Degaton, is revived from suspended animation. Can the aging heroes still defeat this madman bent on world domination?



(And no, the JSA appearance in the The New Frontier intro doesn't count since that was just a still... no animation there!)

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Post by Randall » December 24th, 2009, 4:27 pm

I was pretty excited when I read this. They're my all-time favorite heroes! Though, a half-hour just doesn't seem like enough to do them justice. I'm sure it'll be great, however.

I'm just hoping to enjoy the Smallville two-parter Geoff Johns wrote for them.

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Post by eddievalient » December 24th, 2009, 7:50 pm

It will probably air in two parts in reruns (and possibly on the dvd as well) but in its first airing, they're gonna show it as a movie called "Absolute Justice". As far as I'm aware, this will be the first Smallville episode not to have a one word title.
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GeorgeC

Post by GeorgeC » January 15th, 2010, 3:37 pm

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page ... e&id=24430


Tonight the JSA episode debuts on Batman: The Brave and the Bold at 7:30 PM EST.


Click on the above link to see stills and video clips from the episode.

It looks really nice!




A shame they couldn't have had a JLA/JSA crossover for the new JLA movie coming out in a short time.

It could have been better than what's being done now.

Props to the Brave and the Bold creative crew for doing the characters justice!

The episode looks very nice... I don't think people will be disappointed when they see it.

I'm planning to record it tonight and dump the MPEG-2 (after commercial edits) onto my iPod over the weekend.

The original JSA members in animation are characters I've wanted to see for a long time now...

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Post by Randall » January 15th, 2010, 7:47 pm

They had me at JSA. But then they put Degaton in there, too!! :) :) :) :)

Pretty awesome.

GeorgeC

Post by GeorgeC » January 15th, 2010, 8:09 pm

I just got done seeing the JSA episode of B & B.

Excellent!


Unfortunately, I fell asleep about 90 minutes before air time so I hadn't had my DVD Recorder set up.... :(

But at least I woke up in time to see the whole flick!

(I'll record the next airing as soon as I found out when it's re-airing... probably tomorrow in the morning or evening.)


Very, very good.

It captured the characters' essence perfectly.

The episode also established that the Black Canary featured in B & B is the daughter of the JSA's wartime member.

Yep, they didn't show away from the World War II origin of the group!

Time is definitely a central theme of the episode...

... and the Spear of Destiny was worked into the story in a neat way, too!

This was one of the best episodes of The B & B yet.

The show definitely has an excellent executive producer! By far one of the best DC Animated series of the past 10 years. It's a worthy follow-up to the series by Burnett, Timm, and Dini.

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