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Behold What Will Assuredly Be the Worst Batman Cartoon Ever Made


I have some good news and I have some bad news. Let’s start with just the news first, without any value judgments: DC and cartoon Network will air a new Batman cartoon in 2013, titled Beware the Batman. Now for the bad news: It looks like this.

bewarethebatmanscreencap.jpg

?And when I say “this” I mean “really shitty Bruce Timm fan art.” I mean, trying to put Timm’s designs in CG is bad enough — everything looks like Superman 64, as the Green Lantern cartoon proves — but Batman is missing the top half of his fucking skull. For the life of me, I can’t imagine how anyone in the cartoon industry would look at this picture and say “good enough.”

And sadly, that’s only part of the problem. Because you see the people besides Batman in the pic? Well, up top are Professor Pyg and Mr. Toad, two recent villains from Grant Morrison’s Batman comics who were really creepy but will undoubtedly be turned into ’60s Bat-villains for the cartoon. But that’s not the problem. The problem is that instead of Robin, Batman will be fighting crime with Katana (on the left) and his butler Alfred… who’s on the right.

Shooting the guns.

Yes, Alfred has fucking guns in this Batman cartoon, and he uses ’em as part of Batman’s fight against crime. So Beware the Batman stars Batman, some random Japanese girl with a sword, and a gun-toting Alfred, just like kids have been reading about and enjoying for NEVER. THEY HAVE NEVER ONCE HEARD ABOUT THIS COMBINATION OF CHARACTERS, SO THERE CAN BE NO INNATE DESIRE TO SEE THEM TOGETHER. AND ANYONE WHO KNOWS THE TINIEST BIT ABOUT BATMAN — WHO’S READ A BATMAN COMIC, WATCHED AN EPISODE OF BRAVE AND THE BOLD OR ANY OTHER BATMAN CARTOON, WATCHED THE INCREDIBLY POPULAR MOVIES, OR HAD AN OLDER SIBLING OR FRIEND WHO HAS DONE ONE OF THOSE THINGS AND WOULD TELL THEM ABOUT THE PROBLEM WITH ALFRED SHOOTING FUCKING GUNS — WOULD KNOW WHAT A TOTAL BETRAYAL OF THE CHARACTER THIS TRAVESTY FUCKING IS.

I honestly don’t know how shit like this can happen. I mean, maybe Katana, maybe some exec said let’s try it with a female Robin and see if that gets us some female viewers, but gun-toting Alfred is so wrong on every fucking level I can’t possibly understand how it gets greenlit. I mean, these people have made the previous Batman cartoons. They’re currently making Young Justice. Did they stick all the people with a lick of sense on YJ, and put all the idiots on Beware the Batman? Did some VP at Warner Bros insist that Warner Animation give his comics ignorant, drug addict of a son a job or something? Because this shit beggars all reason.

I did say I had good news as well; apparently DC is also working on a Doom Patrol cartoon, although I assume Robot Man will be human and Negative Man will be a cheery robot or something. More importantly, Lauren Faust — yes, the creator of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic — will be doing some shorts starring Wonder Girl, Supergirl and Batgirl titled Super Best Friends Forever. Lauren Faust doing DC superheroines is reason to be insanely excited. But honestly, I don’t know that it comes close to making up for the rest of this fucking nonsense. (Via Newsarama)