The Adventures of Batman, produced by Filmation Studios in the late 60s and first airing within the Batman/Superman Hour in 1968, are classic cartoon shorts. For the first time, Warner has released the complete collection — all thirty-four shorts — in a two disc DVD set that’s priced to move (less than $13 new on Amazon). Spread across two discs and covering more than six hours, these animated shorts are a lot of fun and they have that certain old school cartoon ‘charm’ that makes them timeless and enjoyable for kids and adults alike.
Before receiving this set, I had never seen The Adventures of Batman, although I have seen Batman in other animated series like Superfriends and The Animated Series from the 90s. The Adventures are twenty-one minute episodes, split into two stories. The length of the shorts are about equal, each lasting about ten minutes. Within this time, a complete adventure from introduction to resolution is presented. At that rate, you would be correct to assume the shorts waste no time, maintaining a rapid pace that is engaging. That’s actually one of the reasons these episodes have such a high replay value. The intro and outro eat up about a minute per episode, and I did find the intro especially to become repetitive while binging on episodes, but that’s to be expected with almost any binge-viewing session.
As with many cartoons from the 60s/70s, The Adventures has a narrator that helps set the stage and keep the audience intrigued. Most episodes start with Batman and Robin getting the signal from the Commissioner while at their “stately home” (Wayne Manor), which has them racing to the Batcave. Within the Batcave is the all important BatComputer which is used several times throughout the series to help the dynamic duo figure out what the bad guys are up to. Of course the Batmobile is always at the ready, too. The villains featured in The Adventures include all the classics, like Catwoman, Riddler, Penguin, Mr. Freeze, and of course, Joker. Each has at least one catchy phrase associated with them, like Joker is known as the Prince of Crime, and Mr. Freeze is the cool, cruel Mr. Freeze, or the ‘frigid fiend.’ Sometimes it’s Batman and Robin using these phrases, other times the Narrator does. Regardless, there is a lot of ‘fun’ and fitting dialogue, including Robin’s rampant use of “Holy
So, as evident by what I have written thus far, it’s clear that I really enjoyed watching The Adventures, so let’s take a closer look at the specific DVD release. The set comes in a standard size case with a single ‘page’ holder that contains disc 1, while disc 2 is held in place by the back half of the case. The art on the discs mimics the box art, which is alright, but not great. Each disc has a different color, too. I liked how the back of the case had a complete episode list, i.e., all seventeen episodes with both shorts lists (yielding thirty-four). Upon starting up the discs, the main menu loads right up, no BS trailers to skip which was great, although you can view a couple of trailers for other Warner animated shows from the main menu. The menus look pretty bad, using interface elements (the buttons mainly) that look like the default ones in a DVD authoring program. You can scroll through the episode lists, play all, and change the spoken language between English and Spanish, or use English or French subtitles. I was pleasantly surprised that subtitles were included. Audio is in Mono, by the way.
As for the video, the original aspect ratio was preserved, which is great. The image quality looked very good to me, although if you’re sensitive to rapid light flashes, you might do yourself a favor and skip the intro on each episode as it rapid flashes red light several times. That aside, I thought given the age and relative niche interest in this release, Warner did a fine job with the image quality.
There are no extra features, unfortunately, but I think that’s something most fans and collectors will be able to overlook, although perhaps with some disappointment. Fortunately, in every other respect from price to content to entertainment value, The Adventures of Batman excels. To the summary…