Wednesday, April 23, 2008

The Brave and the Babymen



This was going to be another installment of "Awesome List Catch-Up," but one topic pretty much took over the post.

I mentioned yesterday how some "adult" Batman fans raised a fuss over the fact that Batman: The Brave and the Bold is a kids' cartoon. Character designer Mike Manley couldn't care less.
The message boards are already full of babymen angst about the show, how they hate the art, the idea of a kid friendly Batman and I have to just laugh at the ridiculous comments. IMO one of the biggest reasons comics suck ass and have since the '80s is the rise and overtaking of the biz by the Babyman fan and the loss of kids reading comics as a hobby. Now we are stuck with an aging fanbase with limited taste, long memories, a twisted taste where the comic heroes have to be dark, gritty, sexy, adult…REAL!
And later:
I don’t expect the babymen to ever see what I’m talking about, they can’t. But the fact is their taste is not the taste of a large pool of average readers, it’s the taste of the fetishist, the niche collector. They so resist change and want such a limited type of product that unless you have been following this stuff for years it’s really not something the average reader could even get into.
I don't know if I'd be quite as insulting about it, but I agree with him about this certain type of fan and can see why he's not pulling any punches. I know the kind of fan he's talking about and they don't pull punches either.

I'm all for a show that includes kids in its audience. It doesn't have to be dumb to be a kids' show. And all superhero shows and movies shouldn't be created exclusively for an adult demographic. That's just silly.

All that said, it sounds like the fan uproar may be a moot point anyway. According to Brave and the Bold director Ben Jones:
...there will be an element of comedy, but that doesn’t mean that we’re skimping on the action. We’re trying as hard as we can to make sure the action will be as amazing and exciting as any previous incarnation of the Batman ... Character-wise, Batman is still the same gruff perfectionist that he’s been for the last twenty-five or so years. Everyone here is a Batman fan too, so we want to do right by him.
Sounds great to me. If it's anything like The Spectacular Spider-Man, which my six-year-old son and I absolutely love watching together, I'm very excited to see it.

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