Batman, Season Three

 

*sigh* And so we arrive at the third season of Batman.  Far and away the worst of Batman’s three seasons, Season Three debuted well after the show’s popularity began to wane.  Bat-mania was dying, but the show itself stubbornly refused to die with it.  They suffered massive budget cuts that reduced their sets to the bare bones.  Even the distinctive two-part episode structure was stripped away, leaving a single half-hour episode per week with each one ending in the flimsiest of cliffhangers. (“Oh, yes, Batman and Robin may have defeated THIS villain, but look over there!  THAT villain is roaming around!!  What trickery is THAT villain up to now?  Tune in to find out in our next episode!”)

El Chapulín Colorado

I’m willing to bet that most of the native English-speakers reading this (all two of them) have absolutely no idea who this guy is, unless they’re Latino and/or grew up around Latino people. (Is Latino even politically correct anymore?  I can’t keep up with this…) El Chapulín Colorado, “the Red Grasshopper”, is the brainchild of Mexican comedian Roberto Gómez Bolaños, a.k.a. Chespirito.  The characters he created—particularly Chapulín Colorado and Chavo del Ocho (dude had a thing for “ch” sounds)—are immensely popular, scoring monster ratings across multiple nations and multiple decades.  He’s popular outside of Spanish-speaking nations too; his shows have been translated into Japanese, Portuguese, French, Russian, and more. 

The one language it hasn’t been translated into?  English.  The DVDs I own don’t even bother to provide English subtitles.  Which is a pain, because that means I have to do the translating myself.* But hey, nowhere in my list of superhero requirements does it say that a superhero needs to speak English, so let’s take a quick look.

The (Comic) Book Was Better - DC: The New Frontier

 

Since the maiden voyage of the good ship The (Comic) Book was Better didn’t completely capsize and sink, it’s time to set sail yet again, this time with the epic tale of epicness known as The New Frontier.  The comic was written and drawn by Darwyn Cooke and published in 2004; the cartoon came out in 2008.  The comic is so epic that it needed two full-length TPBs to contain the awesome (though it is all available in one volume now, from what I understand), so of course, the cartoon version had to cut quite a bit.  The question is: did it cut the right things?  And was it able to tell a compelling story with what it did use?

"Mask of Doom" - Fantastic Four

Every once in a while, I’ll come across a superhero that even I can’t bring myself to care about.  For Marvel, those heroes used to be the Fantastic Four.  For some reason, even as I was gobbling up the most recent Spiderman and X-Men cartoons and reading every issue of Young Avengers I could get my hands on, I just wasn’t interested in tracking down anything starring Reed Richards and company.  When I saw the “blockbuster” films from 2005 and 2007, I was even less interested.  And when I saw this show?  Let’s just say Marvel was lucky I stuck around long enough to give Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four a try.

Teen Titans #4

With the 2012 London Olympics now underway, I figured it was time to bust out another issue of the old school Teen Titans comic, and you can probably guess why by looking at the cover.  And, um, that’s it really.  So let’s start.

Batman, Season Two

The second season of Batman is almost twice as long as Season One, and frankly, I don’t think that was a good thing.  By this point, the show was a monster success and everyone was riding high.  It was nominated for three Emmys—Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Comedy (for Frank Gorshin), and Individual Achievements in Sound Editing—and was even being referenced by other shows (The Monkees, Gilligan’s Island) and movies (The Fortune Cookie).  The Bat-climb celebrity cameos were in full swing, featuring everyone from Sammy Davis Jr. to… Colonel Klink from Hogan’s Heroes?  How is that supposed to work?*

The point is, the show was at the peak of its popularity, and I guess that made the writers too lazy to get up off their laurels and make sure the show continued to be a success.

Spider-Man

In 2002, among the hottest of hot summer blockbusters was Sam Raimi’s take on Marvel’s wondrous wall-crawler, the spectacular Spider-Man, which earned a whopping 821.7 million dollars at the worldwide box office; was nominated for two Oscars, two Grammies, and a whole slew of other accolades; and spawned two sequels over the next five years.  The film remains popular to this day, scoring an 89% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and many, many devoted fans.

And I don’t like it.

I will now take a short recess to dodge the bushels of rotten vegetables being thrown at my head, and then we shall proceed.