I'm curious which episodes you guys would recommend to hook new younger viewers.
I show cartoons to my young ESL classes and they've proven quite popular. I've shown them selected episodes of BTAS, STAS, JLU, The Batman, JLAction, and the entirety of GL TAS, which was by far their favorite.
There were so many great episodes it's hard for me to think of which ones to suggest .
Generally I hate evil Superman stories but this show did such a great tribute to the wacky Silver Age "Super dickety" comics. Evil Kal shacking Kandor and saying "earthquake drill" still cracks me up.
Also the final show of this series was such a meta fanboy celebration. Ambush Bug (voiced by Henry Winkler) trying to save traditional Batman from Bat-Mite (voiced by Paul Rubens) who was trying to take Bats to Xtreme ridiculous levels.
Listen, if we have to sit through another evil Superman story, might as well make it entertaining. Superman was a di…fferent person, they even referenced Lois having her crazy moments in comics.
It’s funny as this show came out around the whole Nolan phase of Batman movies so people were very against it back in the day. I’d love for a cartoon like this for other heroes.
Evil Under the Sea. It's both a showcase of their amazing interpretation of Aquaman (one of the highlights of the show) and a fairly standard depiction of their typical plotting.
I do really like Dawn of the Dead Man, Journey to the Center of the Bat, and the Owlman two parter as well but they're all slight departures from the normal formula and best enjoyed once you've already gotten an impression of the show.
If having Adam West and Julie Newmar as Bruce's parents wasn't enough, Chill of the Night also brought back Kevin Conroy (and Mark Hammil) that's three Batman voice actoirs right there. That's about as much bat for your buck as you can get.
It's clearly whoever made this show loved not just Batman, but the DC Universe in general.
I loved the show, but it was...oddly dark. Like, I think it had the most on-screen deaths of major characters of any superhero cartoon. Young Justice may have had more deaths, but those were off-screen and one or two "dead" characters are still around but nobody knows.
It felt like it was setting up a Justice League International spin-off with Batman, Aquaman, Booster Gold, Blue Beetle, Guy Gardner, Fire, Ice, and Martian Manhunter.
What's Batman Universe?
I'll second "Journey to the Center of the Bat!" and throw in "Legends of the Dark Mite!" and "Revenge of the Reach!"