Praise be to Heat Vision for giving the scoop on the upcoming animated Batman: Year One voice cast along with a couple of images from the movie. This pics are gorgeous. I think the simple designs are going to look fantastic when we see them in motion.
As for the cast, Ben McKenzie from the OC is Batman, Malcolm in the Middle's dad is Gordon. Starbuck is Sarah Essen and Dollhouse is Catwoman (as some had predicted from an enigmatic tweet a few weeks back). Although Catwoman didn't have a lot to do in the Year One comic, additional material was written for a Catwoman short that will accompany the movie and I assume Faith with do the voice for that as well. This looks like yet another winner from DC.
Behold Mystique as she shall appear in the forthcoming X-Men: First Class and compare her to how she looked in the previous X-Trilogy. She sure aged well in the intermittent 30+ years.
June of 1992 brought the highly anticipated sequel to 1989's blockbuster Batman. In Batman Returns, Bats faced off against not one, but two (arguably three) villains, a trend that would ever plague comic book movies to come. Nowadays its easy to forget how significant Tim Burton's 1989 Batman movie was. Before that movie came out, the masses knew Batman from the 1960's Biff, Bam, Pow, TV show or from Super Friends. In the 80's comic book readers were treated to a Batman closer to his roots and redefined by such classics as The Dark Knight Returns. The 1989 film exposed general audiences to a Batman not rooted in camp, but a Dark Knight.
Unfortunately, in the 1992, Burton attempted to double down with a darker, grittier, more crazy, and less Happy Meal friendly Batman facing off against a grotesque imagining of the Penguin and an innuendo drenched Catwoman. The movie was a hit, earning over $160 million in the US on an $80 million budget, nevertheless, audience reaction caused the pendulum to swing in the Schumacher direction.
Just a few months later in September, Batman: The Animated Series would debut and Batman would be redefined for a generation. I hardly need to go into why this series was such a big deal, I will just say it spawned over 100 episodes of Batventures, and began the decade long presence of the DC animated universe.
Amazingly, a month after the debut of Batman's series, The X-Men got an animated series of their own. It too was a hit lasting five years and 76 episodes and beginning Marvel's own attempt at an established animated universes. Even more so than the Batman series, X-Men ambitiously adapted stories directly from the comics and won over a new crop of fans. So it was that two of the most influential superhero series debuted during the same fall season
Oh, and there was also a Human Target live action TV series in 1992. It lasted just 7 episodes because no one watched it.
The Internet is ablaze with rumors that and animated adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns is in the works, possible set to coincide with the release of next summer's juggernaut live-action film The Dark Knight Rises. That would make this the next, next, next, next Direct to Video movie in the pipe for DC Comics (after Green Lantern: Emerald Knight, the also highly anticipated Batman: Year One, and the recently announced loose adaptation of the Tower of Babel arc Justice League: Doom). If accurate, this would be the third Bat-centric animated movie in a row from DC, but after all next year will be the year of the Bat. Besides, this title is well known by a broad audience and I am sure it will sell like hotcakes.
The adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns would not be the first time Frank Miller's classic take on Batman was brought to life onscreen. The Legends of the Dark Knight episode of The New Batman Adventures features a loose adaptation of one scene from The Dark Knight Returns. More recently, in Batman: The Brave and the Bold, the episode Legends of the Dark Mite gave a brief nod to many incarnations of Batman from over the years including the Dark Knight Returns look which was deemed "too psycho." With this leak, perhaps DC will confirm the rumor soon. Otherwise, we will have to wait for the summer Comic Con when next years DtV lineup will be officially unveiled.
EDIT:
Shame on me, I forgot to mention the Dark Knight Returns homage from The Batman (Thanks Kurtis for the reminder). Maybe I was just blocking the whole series out of my head, but the 4th season of the show was actually pretty good. Perhaps the best episode of the season / series, was titled Artifacts. Set in the distant future, Artifacts contained flashbacks to a not so distant future Batman, highly reminiscent of Batman from Frank Miller story. This grittier, older, tank driving Batman was even introduced by Mr. Freeze with the line, "The Dark Knight Returns."
A new image of Emma Frost, the White Queen in diamond encrusted form from the upcoming X-Men: First Class has arrived in the most recent issue of Total Film Magazine. So, just how does the crusty diamond look compare to the same effect we saw in the continuity challenged X-Men Origins: Wolverine? Well, both look shiny, but where Origins Emma looks sparkly, First Class Emma looks more glittery. Obviously, I am just being a little silly since its pretty tough to judge from a still photo, nevertheless, judge them we will...
Booster Gold first appeared in the 1986 issue, Booster Gold #1. The hero from the future brought high tech gadgets to our time to help fight crime while gaining fame and glory.
Old Booster first appeared onscreen in Justice League Unlimited's 2004 episode, The Greatest Story Never Told. In the tale, Booster failed to get recognition from League leadership as a true hero, but he ended up saving the day regardless.
Booster Gold was next spotted by eagle-eyed viewers in 2006 during a cameo appearance in the pilot episode of the Legion of Superheroes season in which the hero (likely still in pre-hero mode) could be seen as a janitor of the future.
Beginning in 2009, Goldie made several appearances in Batman: The Brave and the Bold, as usual accompanied by his hovering robot Skeets.
In 2010, Imaginext posted an online ad / cartoon for their upcoming line of toys titled The Joker's Playhouse. This love letter to Super Friends fans featured your typical Justice League first stringers in action but was generous enough to give Booster a shout out as a pitchman from cereal on a billboard.
In perhaps his highest profile appearance to date, Booster Gold is set to appear, along with long time buddy Blue Beetle, for the first time in live-action on the April 22, 2011 Smallville episode Booster. In the episode, Booster arrives from the future eager to claim the fame that Superman is so reluctant to accept. Things are looking up for Booster Gold, all this exposure only ensures that he isn't going anywhere soon.
To all those naysayers and folks that have been complaining about the Green Lantern costume in the upcoming movie, let me assure you, it could have been, and has been, MUCH worse.
Check out this take from the unaired 1997 Justice League TV show.
Or this costume from the 1970's Legends of the Superheroes TV special which actually did air. Even the recent costume design for Wonder Woman for the upcoming TV shows has been shockingly bad (though to be fair some improvements have been made). I am not saying the GL costume is perfect, but seeing how wrong it could have gone, I have to say it not too shabby.
