Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree: Where to Pre-Order Every Version Of the DLC

The latest trailer for Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree (the game’s first and only piece of DLC) has just been released. While the trailer doesn’t include any new gameplay footage, it does reveal a bit more about the DLC’s story and world. Perhaps more importantly to some, it reveals where you can pre-order Shadow […]

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Looking back, the early nineties were the best of times and worst of times for Batman fans. In 1989, fans got their first big-budget Hollywood Batman movie, followed by the 1992 sequel Batman Returns. Both of these films boasted A-list talent and made huge money. But they weren’t really interested in Batman, at least not the guy that comic book readers loved.

But 1992 saw the launch of Batman: The Animated Series, a cartoon that gave fans some of the best ever tales of the Dark Knight, in any media. Created by Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski, The Animated Series took some visual cues from Burton’s movies, especially in its designs for Catwoman and the Penguin, but it was grounded in the Bronze Age comics by Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams as well as 1940s cinema.

Taking a lead from the Fleischer Brothers’ Superman cartoons, Timm and Radomski insisted upon smooth animation for their project, giving the works a timeless feel. Combined with the full scores composed by Shirley Walker and Andrea Romano’s excellent voice casting, resulting in Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill becoming the ideal Batman and Joker, Batman: The Animated Series stands as the definitive collection of Batman stories.

Sixty-five episodes released across 1992 and 1993, followed by an additional twenty released in 1994 and 1995 under the title The Adventures of Batman & Robin, until the show rebooted into the less successful (but not entirely without merit) The New Batman Adventures. This list looks at the greatest entries of Batman: The Animated Series and The Adventures of Batman & Robin, the 15 tales that continue to stand among the best of the best.

15. “Eternal Youth”

Season 1 Episode 16

Batman: The Animated Series was dark, sure, but it was still a children’s program designed for Fox Kids. So the series had to be judicious when trying to show the stakes of its villains’ actions. And like the 1930s and ’40s movies that inspired so much of Batman: TAS, the suggestion of violence made things much scarier than actual depictions.

The Poison Ivy episode “Eternal Youth” proves this point. Written by Beth Bornstein and directed by Kevin Altieri, “Eternal Youth” finds Bruce Wayne getting an invitation to the Eternal Youth Spa. Too busy dealing with the fallout with his company’s partial destruction of an Amazon rainforest (unauthorized by Bruce, of course; he is an ethical capitalist, apparently), Bruce sends Alfred and his lady friend Maggie instead. There, they get caught in a plot by Poison Ivy, which transforms rich people into plants and trees. So shocking is the idea of human changing into trees, at least for the show’s intended audience, that viewers almost forget that Ivy’s plan might actually be a good thing.

14. “Christmas With the Joker”

Season 1 Episode 2

Here’s a pop culture truism, whether we want to face it or not. Everything gets a charge from the inclusion of the Joker. Yes, he’s overused, and yes, he’s tiresome. But he’s overused and tiresome because the presence of the Clown Prince of Crime immediately adds energy to the proceedings. Case in point, “Christmas With the Joker,” a fairly straightforward holiday episode that works because it lets the Joker run amok during the holidays.

“Christmas With the Joker” begins with the Joker singing “Jingle-Bells, Batman Smells” as he escapes Arkham Asylum and ends with Bruce and Dick, the Robin of the series, sitting down to enjoy It’s a Wonderful Life. In between, the Joker subjects the Dynamic Duo to all manner of Yuletide chaos. “Christmas With the Joker” isn’t the most groundbreaking episode of all time, but writer Eddie Gorodetsky and director Kent Butterworth provide a solid slice of fun, of the type that only the Joker can provide.

13. “A Bullet for Bullock”

Season 4 Episode 4

Batman: The Animated Series started out with a bang, but diminished in quality by the time it became The Adventures of Batman &