One of the cool offerings in this year's Free Comic Book Day was a brand new Batman Adventures title by one of the best (if not the best) writers of the series in its many incarnations. What made it really cool wasn't just the new spin he put on the characters and their status quo or seeing one of my favorite Batman Adventures teams reunited, but knowing that it was the beginning of a new series, and this second issue reminds me why I liked their work so much before. While the stories play off of an established continuity (the animated series continuity and a revelation that the Penguin has been elected Mayor), they also stand alone and are very accessible for readers both young and old.
The story being told here is one that could fit into the regular continuity as easily as the animated continuity, and it's this inclusive approach that I think is Templeton's greatest strength on these characters. He isn't writing down to a younger audience, he's just writing stories with some of the better known Batman characters that don't require an intimate knowledge of the stories that have been told for the past few years. If you know who the League of Assassins are and who they work for are, you'll get a little kick out of the story you might otherwise not get, but you won't be lost if you don't know who they are, because Templeton spells it out in the dialogue as well.
This grasp of the basic coolness of the characters carries through to the rest of the story as well. While Batman Adventures is a fairly traditional take on the characters, Templeton isn't afraid to shake up the status quo. The election of Penguin to mayor is pure genius, a logical evolution for a character who has evolved throughout his time in the animated series, and the Riddler's attempt to go straight is another indication that Templeton considers these characters living characters, not just static icons. In fact, having The Riddler as a corporate figure who can't quite avoid his particular psychosis makes him considerably more interesting.
To some extent, I'm sad to see Tim Levins go from this title, as I thought his style was perfect for it, but I can't complain about seeing Burchett and Beatty back on the book. They have the animated style down, and they keep the story moving and exciting, as it needs to be for the younger readers the book is aimed at. I especially enjoyed the brief martial arts sequence between the assassin and Batman at the end, and the flying vehicles that were a big part of the action sequences as well.
A new addition to the latest incarnation of the animated Batman comic is backup stories, as Ty Templeton trades in his writer hat for an artist one and works with writer Dan Slott. These stories are brief, about five pages, which is a tricky format to work with, but Slott provides a nice bit of development for the Penguin's status quo and a look into Batman's mindset on that matter in those five pages, and it's always good to see Templeton's art. Basically, after feeling like the animated Batman series was something of an afterthought for DC for a while, it seems that their heart is back in it, and that's a good thing.
