REVIEWS

Episode #46 - Artifacts Original Airdate - February 3rd, 2007 One thousand years into the future Gotham City is terrorized by a dangerous villain from it’s past. Can the city defend itself from such a threat without the Batman? Review by Stu Media by James Harvey Credits Written by Greg Weisman Directed by Brandon Vietti Music by Thomas Chase Jones Animation by Dongwoo Animation Co., LTD. Voices Rino Romano as The Batman / Bruce Wayne, Grey Alastair Duncan as Alfred Mitch Pileggi as Gordon Danielle Judovits as Moira Kellie Martin as Oracle Jerry O' Connell as Nightwing Kurt Fuller as Superior Robert David Hall as Pilot Screen Grabs Pans     Review The Batman attempts something dramatically different with this episode, as the entire episode is set in two different points of the future. This one is clearly aimed at Batman fanboys as it features several nods to both The New Batman Adventures and The Dark Knight Returns graphic novel. The interesting part features Batman and Nightwing battling Mr. Freeze 20 years now with Batman as an old man and Nightwing presumably in his thirties battling a supped up Mr. Freeze and stopping him from ruling over a frozen Gotham City, proving that this version of Mr. Freeze really needs some work – we’ve yet to have a single interesting appearance from the chilly criminal yet, beyond the beautiful visuals of Fire and Ice. There’s not much to him in either future version here, beyond an interesting twist that sees him return as half robot/half frozen foe. The episode isn’t especially deep, but it is a hell of a lot of fun and it looks great. This show always looks stunning with it’s winter episodes and this episode is no exception. The new designs are superlative, with an obvious homage to Frank Milller’s depiction of Batman in The Dark Knight Returns in the future Batman model. It’s interesting to note than the yellow oval and blue highlights on the characters cape are now missing and he is a hell of a lot bulkier than the sleek, modern day version. I admit to preferring the current Matsuda design but this is a great design for a one off and the number of fans wanting to see DC adapt DKR will probably greatly increase once this episode airs stateside. There’s little denying that the episode is very, very cool. It’s great to see Nightwing animated again, even better now that he has a really sharp design after his lackluster The New Batman Adventures and Teen Titans designs – this version actually looks really sweet without changing too much of his current comic book costume which has always been a little dull for my tastes. For all of you Oracle fan boys getting your hopes up, I suggest you don’t, this is simply the annoying version of Barbara Gordon without her Batgirl costume confined to her wheelchair. Her quips are still annoying and the character still reeks of arrogance. It’s not revealed if it was The Joker who paralyzed her or not but this is (erm, will be) Kids WB! After all, I highly doubt they’d get away with showing that story. The distant future stuff came as a distraction to the main story to me – I would’ve liked to see more of the aging Caped Crusader and Nightwing rather than some nerds from the future but you can’t have it both ways – without them it’d seem like a random trip to the future, with little or no reason for existing. Overall, an exciting, fun episode that adds another strong episode to the growing list of season four. This season will make one hell of a cool DVD box set! [ Back to Reviews ]

 

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