Mendelson’s Memos: Celebrating Batman: The Animated Series 20 years later: The reason Batman: TAS still stands apart…
This week is the 20th anniversary of the premiere of Batman: The Animated Series. In its weird way, the show actually had three ‘premieres’. The first episode, “The Cat and the Claw part I”, debuted on Saturday morning, September 5th, as a quasi-sneak preview of sorts. The next day saw the official premiere, in primetime no less (Sunday night at 7pm) where Fox debuted the official pilot episode, “On Leather Wings”. Then came the first official weekday episode, Monday afternoon at 4:30pm, which was no less than “Heart of Ice”, which to this day stands as not only one of the best episodes of the series run, but a shining testament to all that Batman: The Animated Series did right both in terms of the Batman mythos and the entire medium of childrens’ action shows. This is one of an ongoing series of essays detailing the long-term legacy of the Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski’s groundbreaking animated saga. Today, for the final essay of this series, I will examine the one defining feature that makes it stand out above all those that came before or since. 
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