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It's not as dire as it sounds though.

It’s come to our attention that Batman: The Brave and the Bold will be leaving Netflix streaming on March 30.

Outrageous!

If you’re a Netflix-binge pro, you might be able to finish off the 3 seasons of this underrated show in the week left (and really, it’s more like 2.5 seasons, with season 3 being only a partial order). But if you’re not able to move that fast, we’ve pulled together a list of the best episodes of Batman: The Brave and the Bold so that you can catch the highlights before this one drops out of your queue.

Season 1

Episode 3, Evil Under the Sea: It doesn’t get better on this show than Aquaman, and his debut episode is the perfect place to start. Aquaman episodes are consistently hilarious, and this one is no different – Batman foils a plot from Black Manta to conquer Atlantis, while Aquaman remains oblivious.

Episode 8, Fall of the Blue Beetle: This episode focuses on Blue Beetles, both the present incarnation of Jaime Reyes and his predecessor, Ted Kord, the second Blue Beetle. It’s interesting to see Batman struggle to accept Jaime as a replacement for Ted.

Episode 9, Journey to the Center of the Bat: When Batman is stricken with disease by Chemo, the Atom and Aquaman shrink and fight the disease within Batman’s body. Aquaman befriends and rides a lymphocyte he names “platelet” – need we say more?

Episode 12, Deep Cover for Batman: Batman takes the place of Owlman on a parallel Earth, turning to a parallel world version of his usual villains and finding them as allies.

Episode 13, Deep Cover for Owlman: While Batman is off pretending to be Owlman on a parallel Earth, it turns out that Owlman has been posing as Batman and has gone on a crime spree. The flip side to the previous episode, Batman returns to find himself considered a villain and hunted by his usual allies.

Episode 15, Trials of the Demon: Batman time travels to 19th century London to help Jason Blood, who’s been framed for crimes committed by Jim Craddock. The twist to this one is that the two “World’s Greatest Detectives” join forces when Sherlock Holmes and Watson assist in the investigation. As long as you can handle Etrigan rhyming, this one’s a winner.

Episode 17, Menace of the Conqueror Caveman: Booster Gold episodes are usually great for much of the same reason Aquaman ones are: Batman plays the straight man to a humorous, egotistical sidekick.

Episode 19, Legends of the Dark Mite: Bat-Mite is the Q to Batman’s Picard, and his fifth dimensional powers allow him to express his fandom in painful ways. Bat-Mite is a recurring character on the series and plays a heavy role in the finale, so this character’s intro is worth watching.

Episode 25, Mayhem of the Music Meister: Featuring Neil Patrick Harris as the Music Meister, this is a musical episode and easily one of the best of the series.

 Season 2

Episode 2, Long Arm of the Law: Plastic Man tries to keep his home life stable by taking Baby Plas to the museum,  only to be attacked by Kite Man. Batman tries to assist, but this episode sees Plastic Man’s past deeds catch up with him and threaten his family and wife, Ramona.

Episode 4, Aquaman’s Outrageous Adventure: Aquaman serves as the POV character here, and the episode centers on Aquaman’s boredom with his family vacation and secret attempts to escape and help battle evil during breaks. Again, Aquaman = the best.

Episode 9, The Super-Batman of Planet X: Batman travels through a wormhole and ends up in a distant planet called Zur-En-Arrh, where he goes to “Gothtropolis” and meets the Batman of this world. This is a sort of Superman-Batman mash-up, because Batman has super powers on this planet. The best part of this episode is that it stars Kevin Conroy as the voice of the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh. Double Batman! (there’s also the always great Clancy Brown and Dana Delany).

Episode 10, The Power of Shazam: With a title in homage to the 1990s Captain Marvel Comic, The Power of Shazam pits Captain Marvel against Black Adam and Doctor Sivana, along with Sivana’s wonderfully hilarious children.

Episode 11, Chill of the Night: This episode makes most best-of lists for this series, and has a guest star list featuring Adam West, Julie Newmar, Kevin Conroy, and Mark Hamill to boot.  When The Phantom Stranger and the Spectre make a bet on whether Bruce Wayne will kill the person who murdered his parents, Batman is guided through his painful past and comes to learn about his parents’ assassin, Joe Chill.

Episode 15, Requiem for a Scarlet Speedster: Featuring multiple incarnations of The Flash working in tandem with Batman to investigate Barry Allen’s death, this episode also guest stars John Wesley Shipp (star of the 1990s live-action The Flash) as Professor Zoom.

Episode 17, Menace of the Madniks: Recalling plot threads introduced in Season 1, this episode focuses on Booster Gold, who travels to the past to spend time with his now-deceased friend, Ted Kord (Blue Beetle). Both Batman and Booster Gold considered Ted a close friend, so their rivalry and possessiveness over his friendship was touching (and entertaining). It’s also a nice reminder that shows like this don’t have to shy away from confronting death.

Episode 18, Emperor Joker: This episode is kind of like The Edge of Tomorrow in that we get to see Batman die dozens of different ways at the hands of The Joker, who gains the powers of Bat-Mite.

Episode 19, The Criss Cross Conspiracy: One of the few problems with Batman: The Brave and the Bold is that it is primarily consumed with male characters. This episode isn’t exactly much different or particularly kind to women, unfortunately, but it’s still an amusing one – Batwoman and Batman switch bodies, and we get to see Diedrich Bader pull off some of his most comical voice acting.

Episode 21, Cry Freedom Fighters: In which Plastic Man finally gets his big heroic spotlight. Basically every Plastic Man related plot point in the series culminates here, and he gets to join his fellow Quality Comics stable-mates The Freedom Fighters, including a particularly “taken so straight it’s hilarious” version of Uncle Sam.

Episode 22, The Knights of Tomorrow: More or less, this is the Grant Morrison tribute episode, taking place in the future and giving viewers the set-up of his classic Batman and Robin run, with Dick as Batman and Damian Wayne (this time, the son of Bruce and Selina Kyle) as Robin, with even a little wink and nod to Damian’s future and one of the easter eggs of Batman #700.

Episode 23, Darkseid Descending: Set-up gloriously in the previous episode’s prelude, the oncoming threat of the hordes of Apokolips compels Batman, Aquaman, and Martian Manhunter to reform the Justice League…and it ends up taking a shape that’s rather familiar to fans of the Giffen/DeMatteis iteration of the team. Wonderfully epic, this could have been/maybe should have been the finale to the second season.

Episode 25, The Malicious Mr. Mind: The best possible follow-up to a Captain Marvel/Shazam episode is one that includes the entire Marvel family, Mr. Mind, and the Monster Society of Evil. While many writers have struggled to make the fairly cheesy Marvel family “relevant” for today’s audiences, The Brave and The Bold creative team embraced everything that’s weird and wonderful about the old Beck/Binder comics and this episode is their ultimate tribute.

Season 3

Episode 1, The Battle of the Superheroes: For better or worse, it’s hard not to notice the Superman shaped-hole that filled the entirety of series’ first two seasons (barring one brief flashback cameo), but with the third season’s premiere, viewers were treated to the best possible love letter to Superman’s Silver Age past. You get a giant Turtle Boy style Jimmy Olsen, Mr. Mxyzptlk, and some rather hilarious examples of “Superdickery”. Season 3 was, on the whole, not as successful as the brilliant second set of episodes before it, but this episode was a stone cold classic.

Episode 7, Sword of the Atom: Remember “Journey to the Center of the Bat” back in season 1? This is basically part 2 of that fantastic episode and once again sees Aquaman team up with (the new) Atom and shrink to microscopic size to save Batman.

Episode 9, Bold Beginnings: When Aquaman, Plastic Man, and Green Arrow get together, it’s a can’t lose combo. And sure to form, this story that details how each first met Batman not only superbly entertains, but also provides just a tiny bit of character backstory for Batman’s core three supporting cast.

Episode 13, Mitefall: Best. Finale. Ever.

Have fun!

LeSean Thomas’s path as an artist has taken him from the South Bronx, to Los Angeles, to Seoul, and back to Los Angeles again. Starting out self-taught in the late ’90s, he worked on the first regular Flash animated series on the web, WhirlGirl, as designer, storyboard and layout artist. Since then, he’s worked on shows such as The Boondocks, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, The Legend of Korra, and Black Dynamite, the latter for which he is supervising director.

His thirst for understanding the production process from start to finish drove him to take the drastic step of moving to Korea to work directly in a studio there that services the U.S. animation industry. He describes more about this in a documentary series, The Seoul Sessions, and his TEDxSinchon talk here:

He has a blog and website where you can find more production drawings, sketches and his self-published sketchbook collections.

From a report on ComicBookResources.com:

Cartoonist Bruce Timm has stepped down as supervising producer at Warner Bros. Animation to develop his own projects. He’s been replaced by James Tucker, a veteran of Batman: The Animated Series, Justice League and, more recently, Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

It’s the end of an era.

(Thanks, Paul Burrows)

From a report on ComicBookResources.com:

Cartoonist Bruce Timm has stepped down as supervising producer at Warner Bros. Animation to develop his own projects. He’s been replaced by James Tucker, a veteran of Batman: The Animated Series, Justice League and, more recently, Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

It’s the end of an era.

(Thanks, Paul Burrows)

I’ve been a fan of DC Comics for years.




I’ve been a fan of Washington DC for years.



(I’m a fan of neither on Facebook. What’s the point?)

So it seemed odd, though perhaps only to me, that I broke into both DCs in the same year. This year.

Within a few months of each other, I sold comic book scripts to DC Comics and moved to Maryland, just outside DC.

These events are unrelated other than the initials.

I will, of course, report when I know when the comic book stories will see print. There will probably be no further updates about the other DC. I’m simply here.

Last Son by Brad Ricca.

Men of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones.

Secret Identity by Craig Yoe.

The Book of Lies by Brad Meltzer (plus the triumphant 2008 campaign he spearheaded to renovate Jerry Siegel's former Cleveland home).

Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman by golly.

To name only five.

A friend asked me why I think the last few years have seen a surge in interest in Siegel and Shuster. Good question, and it also begs a more specific one: is this increased interest only within the comics community or also among the general public?

Either way, I don't think it has as much to do with Michael Chabon as some might say. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (which came out in 2000) wonderfully helped bring a certain mainstream validation to comics, but I don't think the book inspired the average reader to then pick up, say, Men of Tomorrow. And despite its popularity, it didn't make Siegel and Shuster household names (not that it was necessarily trying to). To comics people, Kavalier & Clay was an engaging new lens through which to consider the Siegel and Shuster story. To non-comics people, it was just another good book.

My friend wondered if the surge in interest might relate to the litigation between the Siegel family and DC Comics. But that is not on the radar of most people beyond the industry, at least not those I talk to.

I think the interest is at least in part because of a suddenly urgent sense of posterity—the last of the Golden Agers are dying now, so people are scrambling to document them while those original creators (or people they knew) are still around to speak for themselves.

I think it also has to do with the timing of the formative years of our generation. Many of the people researching Siegel and Shuster today grew up in the 1970s and 1980s. The superhero culture of that period has had a distinct influence in what has been happening recently at DC:

• the acclaimed mini-series Justice written by Jim Krueger and Alex Ross paid tribute to the Legion of Doom from the cartoon Super Friends (which debuted in 1973)
• the Hall of Justice and Wendy and Marvin, also from Super Friends, have been brought into print "continuity"
• other characters created for that cartoon (the Wonder Twins, Black Vulcan, Samurai, Apache Chief) are getting the action figure treatment (strange, when you think about it, that it took as long as it did)
• artists are drawing Superman to resemble Christopher Reeve (the first Reeve Superman movie came out in 1978)
• the animated series Batman: The Brave and the Bold is based on a comic whose glory days were the 1970s