Animation Observation: Batman The Animated Series-Christmas With the Joker

When you're a kid, nothing is more fun and exciting than Christmas. Hell, I'm an adult and as cynical and sarcastic as I can be at times, having Christmas day off to enjoy good food and relax is still something that makes me happy. And when I was six, nothing made me happier than Christmas and Batman. Combining the two can lead to...interesting results. One of them was 'Christmas With the Joker' from Batman: The Animated Series

 

More Christmas-Themed Entertainment

Two years ago, I made a list of TV specials and episodes that I considered to be my favourite to watch during the Christmas season. It was all in fun and the truth is that I really do enjoy all that stuff proving that I am forever going to be an eleven year old trapped in a man's body.

But recently I got to thinking if I had covered everything that enjoyed watching as a youth and as an adult. Thus, my list of More Christmas-Themed Entertainment

Animation Observation-Young Justice: Welcome to Happy Harbor

'Welcome to Happy Harbor' has the distinction of not only being the first episode to air after the two-part pilot but also for having the longest title in the whole series. After the action packed, mile a minute pace of 'Independence Day' and 'Fireworks', this episode is more relaxed and serves as a vehicle for us to understand some of the characters (Particularly the newly introduced Miss Martian) a bit better. Onto the review...

Animation Observation-Young Justice: Fireworks

In our last episode, our three young heroes decided to show their maturity by disobeying their mentors and getting themselves captured by Constable Odo. Oh and Superman has a clone who doesn't know how to play nice with others. Onto the review...

Animation Observation-Young Justice: Independence Day

Young Justice came into development when Sam Register of Warner Bros. Animation wanted a show based on the concept of a cross between the Teen Titans and Young Justice series of comics but didn't want it to be an adaptation of either. Brandon Vietti, an animation director who had just finished work on Batman: Under the Red Hood and Greg Weisman, creator of Gargoyles and producer of the acclaimed but short lived Spectacular Spider-Man were hired to produce but also included in the writing process.

The series takes place outside of what is known as the DC Animated Universe (DCAU) in which series like Batman, Superman and Justice League took place. Basically we were seeing characters done before but now being done in a new light. I don't want to dwell too much on the production of this show, so without further ado, let's start with the first episode, Independence Day.

Animation Observation

There's something about animation that always gets me excited. If it's animated and done really well, it can have my imagination going for days on end. I don't know why but I fondly remember the cartoons of my early youth more fondly than I do any other TV show, save for Star Trek.  

As I grew older, those shows stayed with me. I look back at Batman: The Animated Series and think, 'For a kid's show, it was really ahead of it's time.'

Review: Man of Steel

For a lot of kids, the first superhero they're exposed to growing up is Superman. When I was younger it was Batman but as I got to the age of six or seven, I really became interested in Superman. I'd read whatever comics my parents were nice enough to buy, even though I didn't always understand the continuity going on and when I was in grade two, me and the teacher wrote to the ABC network after he heard talk that Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman was in danger of being cancelled. I was such a big fan of the show around that time that I even used to wear a home made Superman shirt to school once a week.

And for the record, the show stayed on the air several years after we mailed that letter. I don't know if we had any impact on it's remaining TV run or not but I still have the letter that ABC sent me in reply. I watched the Superman animated series that aired in the mid-nineties and while it never reached the popularity of...another animated series, I think it might actually be a bit underrated at times.

"Someone's playing Superman 64? I'll stop them!"

Book Review-Zits: Chillax

Any similarities between the character on the cover and the author of this blog are (hopefully) coincidence and (hopefully) unintentional

I was probably in grade six when my parents called me over to look at a comic strip. In it, a teenage boy was chained in a dungeon while a voice off-panel asked him how his day at school was. The next four or five panels featured something similar: An exercise in torture with a side of everyday questioning. The last panel showed the teenager looking physically spent, sitting at a table with his parents simply saying they weren't holding an inquisition. 

Since most of the questions from my parents concerning school and the like felt like that to me when I was that age-and to this day-I instantly knew that I had found something special. This was the comic strip Zits. 

Calgary Expo 2013: Saturday

Last year, I arrived at the Expo only to be turned away along with thousands of others due to the lack of foresight the planners had put into the event. In case you don't recall my post from last year, the highlight of the 2012 Calgary Expo was the full cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation being together at a convention for the first time in close to 20 years. 

Fans were righteously upset and I was among them. I didn't brood about it but at the same time, I knew that if I wanted to make it next year I would have to be better prepared. I bought tickets a month ago for the weekend but there was going to be a slight problem in that I had to work a midnight shift that Friday night. I wasn't going to run home for a nap and risk missing anything important so instead I bought a bag of chocolate covered espresso beans and headed off as soon as I punched out. 

My Favourite TV Themes

Back a few months ago, I did a podcast with The Basement Vagrants where we discussed our favourite TV themes/intros. I went back and listened to that and thought that while my list was good, there were some choices that I either neglected to include or shouldn't have put on in the first place. 

It's very hard for me to rank these to other than the final two on this list (Which I consider the best), so any other entry on this list, I enjoy equally. 

Haiku: The Origin of Intercourse

Don't ask me how or why I came up with something like this, but my theory is, so long as my creative juices are flowing and producing something that's not porn, why not share it? And don't worry, not all every haiku I make will be about sex. 

The Origin of Intercourse:

I took my dick and

Put it inside of you. And

then I pulled it out.

Still Alive

No, I didn't die, neither did I give up writing the blog. I just...got distracted. First of all, I was unemployed for a good while (Not that there was anything good about it), was looking for a new place, new job and trying to keep depression at bay while creating content for the boxing website I write for.

Then I found a new job, had to get used to the fact that I was at the bottom of the food chain both in terms of seniority as well as having any idea as to what I was doing (Nobody ever tells you how bad you're going to fuck up until you've already fucked up) compared to the Pilot/Flying J where I was training people who were going onto become General Managers of their own stores. To quote Gordon Ramsay: "General Manager? General Tosspot."

"Making reference to me when not talking about one of my shows? GET OUT!!!!"

But I'm doing well at my new job now, settled into a new apartment and am giving good content to Boxing4free.com on a regular basis. So now that that's under control, I'm going to try and work to get this blog up to the standard it was at two years ago. I've already got some ideas for posts, including an episode-by-episode review of some animated series and a few other things. So, relax, don't get out that black suit. I'm not dead yet and neither is my writing.