I probably should have mentioned this *before* it premiered, but I’d totally spaced on it until mid-day on Friday. Then, I figured I should watch it before recommending it. Sorry about that.

Because You Should Be Watching This!

At least you should if you like fun, light-hearted action that doesn’t take itself seriously but takes its audience seriously. You should if you don’t believe The Goddamn Batman, or the brooding Batman, or the psychopathic Batman is the only real Batman. You should if you like a Bats with a loaded utility belt and a big yellow target on his chest. Most of all, you should watch if you like to be entertained.

I’m upset with DC Comics this week because they canceled my favorite title, Blue Beetle, on the very same week BB:TB&tB premiered with the episode “Rise of the Blue Beetle”. Talk about being asynergistic. That’s about the dumbest bit of marketing I have ever seen. Oh, wait. No it’s not. It’s typical of DC. The same company that had the biggest movie of the year, but couldn’t manage to get a floppy on the stands tied in to it.

Problems with DC aside, I’ve been looking foward to this reboot of Bats for a few months and have to say it lived up to my hopes. Good action sequences, crisp animation, clever dialog, and voice actors having fun all add up to a good time. I Tweeted several lines from the brisk half-hour as I was watching, so taken was I by their good humor.

Kevin Conroy has been the voice for Bats for a long time, so I wasn’t sure how I would react to the change, but Diedrich Bader fills his face-kicking boots ((Yes, if you read Sims, that is in his honor.)) with gusto, although not once did he tell Blue Beetle to watch his cornhole. The rest of the voices are well-cast, even if Dee Bradley Baker’s Clock King sounded too much like his Claus on American Dad. My only real complaint is the casting of two anglos to play Jaime and Paco. But even then I can’t protest too much: I love Will Friedle and Jason Marsden.

Interesting tidbits:

• Friedle and Marsden have carved out very nice niches for themselves as voice actors, and have played around in these universes many times before together and separately.
• Marsden also played Eric Matthews’ best friend in the early years of Boy Meets World, a show I never stopped watching for four reasons: Friedle’s increasingly antic/insane performance, William Daniels’ genius, and Danielle Fishel.
• Friedle provided the voice of Terry McGinnis, the future Batman, on Batman Beyond and a few appearances on other DC cartoons.
• Marsden played young Burt Ward in the MOTW Return to the Batcave: The Misadventures of Adam and Burt, an underrated melding of biopic and weirdness.

I’m not positive exactly where in DC’s complicated canon/timeline this episode is to have taken place. Jaime Reyes has only recently become the Blue Beetle and hasn’t had his lost year yet, so if it is in canon, this is shortly before the battle with Brother Eye ((TMI, right?)) but that doesn’t seem quite right. Or, it’s out-of-canon. Or Booster Gold’s effected the timeline. Or…sorry. I’ll stop wanking now.

Watch this show. And keep an eye out for my favorite, most dynamic action sequence, when Blue Beetle kicks the crap out of the villain. Note how with no 3-D and no expensive CGI, the fight is quickly and brilliantly resolved. Not the anime-like way in which it is shot with almost no motion at all. Nice work.