Brave & the Bold - best animated show ever?
Sure we all remember the classics, Bruce Timm deserves his praise but...is Brave & the Bold better?
My favourite hero has always/will always be Batman. When you say his name out loud to people, different people picture different things. Some think of Christian Bale, Some think of Michael Keaton, some still Adam West, some Kevin Conroy, some picture the saint and you have to correct them.
Everyone likes to discuss 'their' batman, the most popular is the justifiably dark Dark Knight Batmans. Now its true in film-form I believe Batman should be dark, noirish, adult and deep, but...I pose to you a question, you're allowed to mull it over a while...what is Batman's strength as an icon?
No i dont mean the Burton logo t-shirt everyone has (i have 2), i mean whats his greatest strength as a character/pop figure/lasting icon? Times up, ill just tell you its quicker, its his malleability.
Sure the core-concept never changes he's almost always a mortal, insanely rich, man who has seemingly limitless skill and intellegance, his parents are dead and he almost never tapdances. Ive seen his story though done camp, dark, comically, seriously, movingly, puzzlingly, poorly, brilliantly, whatever superlatives you can be bothered with. Ive seen people stress he's a detective, some he's a hero, some vigilante, some deputised whacky cop, some he's a ninja, some he's an anti-hero, some he's a bonafide superhero make no mistake...
Where am i going with this? Well Batman Brave & the Bold is the current bat-toon doing the rounds, its been accused of camp, ridiculousness, kiddiness, light-hearedness, being more West than Conroy and being the antithesis of the dark knight. I completely agree, wholeheartedly. ITS ABSOLUTELY AWESOME.
Few things have won me round so completely and totally. In one episode he fought gorillas riding pterodactyls. In another he's fighting his evil doppelganger with the joker, in another he goes back in time and teams up with Sherlock Holmes (i spent a full 3 minutes 4 seconds going do they know he's fictional until i realised batman was too and i was an idiot). In my favourite Batmite and ace the bathound were in it...it had bikersantas and mutant easter bunnies, it resembled a Duck Tracey cartoon more than a TAS episode...i cant praise the show enough. The more ridiculous the events the more grounded you weirdly feel as batman himself observes the insanity and puts it right with his fists of justice, delivering the funniest, more ironiless put-downs to his enemies. There is a reference rate of 27,00012 references in an episode and it almost delivers crash-courses on DC characters who aren't blessed with their own cartoons and films and it never for a solitary nanosecond takes itself seriously. Yet it never takes the name of Batman in vain, he's always better than his partner/guest hero of the week and is always better than the villain of course.
The show breaks EVERY SINGLE RULE i have on how i like batman to be shown even down to putting him in space and i love it for it. Thank you Brave & the Bold, your just as valid as any carnation and should be celebrated equally.
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Scottymagic
7/3/2009
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