DC Comics celebrates the 75th anniversary of Batman with a nostalgic short by Bruce Timm, known for his charming animation style popularized in Batman: The Animated Series.
Batman: Strange Days is a classic black and white monster movie told in 3 minutes. Batman must stop the ungodly experiment of the mad scientist Dr. Hugo Strange, one of the caped crusader’s first supervillains. There’s even a grotesque assistant who kidnaps a damsel. What really gives it that vintage feel is seeing a gun-happy Batman, even if it is just a tear gas gun. Batman originally did not have an aversion to guns from seeing his parent murder.
.gif)
“It kind of is a throwback to Batman’s origin,” Timm told DC Entertainment. “I always kind of wanted to do Batman as an actual period piece, literally in 1939 the year the Batman first appeared on the newsstand. So it’s kind of based on the very earliest version of Batman that Bob Kane did.”
The most difficult part was animating the fog, which gives the short its atmosphere so to speak. Nearly every frame was treated digitally to give it an old school feel says Timm.
Batman: Strange Days and a Batman Beyond short by Darwyn Cooke are airing on Cartoon Network’s DC Nation Shorts (Wednesday nights at 6:30 p.m.).
