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20 Years since Batman: The Animated Series

Yesterday marked the 20th anniversary of the first episode of Batman: The Animated Series. For me, as for many others, this remains by far the best superhero adaptation of any kind, and ComicsAlliance has a cool write-up, which I have linked to.

Many of you probably celebrated it already, but BTAS has been a surprisingly big part of my life, and I thought I should have my own dedication to it.

It feels weird saying this about a TV show, but if there was ever a show that actually changed my life, it’s BTAS. Just as the linked article ends with a note that many at ComicsAlliance wouldn’t be involved with this blog if it hadn’t been for this show, this show more than anything else made me love Batman and later superheroes in general. When I was doing my undergrad, I went back and watched this series I loved so much as a child, and it held up so much better than I ever anticipated. I then went into the JLU cartoon and the comics simultaneously, and in just over 2 years I went from being someone with barely an interest in superheroes to being ‘that comic guy’ at my university. Reading comics helped keep my creativity alive during an engineering degree that took away the imaginative capabilities of almost everyone in my course, and it all started with watching BTAS episodes on weekends/after school (at times in India it used to show from Monday to Friday).

To Batman: The Animated Series, the show that changed how superhero cartoons were made (appealing to kids without abandoning story and quality? Shocking!), as well as giving a whole generation of kids a new love of Batman (along with some of the best voice acting a superhero cartoon has ever had).