The Batman

Just finished up the Season 1 Disc 2 (they sent me 2 before #1), and I'm pretty impressed. I've liked the episodes I've seen, and so far there really hasn't been a bad one at all. I still don't like Joker's character design, and Mr Freeze's origin is not nearly as good as it was in the previous Batman: TAS, but it was serviceable. I loved the Catwoman intro episode, and I hope the use her more later on.

In general, I've liked their reinterpretations of various characters and the slightly deeper relationship between Bruce and Alfred than you usually saw on TAS. The fourth production cycle should be starting fairly soon and I'm curious as to which Robin design they're going to go with. Batgirl has been handled very well so far, so I hope they do as good a job with Dick as they did with her.

Editing

I'd like a wider layout that this one, but the custom graphics that make Rounder useful would have to be redone. What I'd like is a decent style sheet editor, but I haven't found one so far. I hate dealing with style sheets in Notepad, too.

King of the Seas

I was anticipating Aquaman, Sword of Atlantis, for several reasons. I've always liked Aquaman but the directions they dragged him through over the past ten years have just left me cold. I'd pick up the occassional issue that featured Tempest/Aqualad in it, but that was about it. So I was pretty excited about a reboot under One Year Later, especially since Buseik was doing the writing. So far, Busiek can do virtually no wrong in my book. I liked the idea because it gets a new person into the orange-and-green, and has more of a sword-and-sorcery quality to the title than a straight superhero book.

I was pretty underwhelmed but a lot of that was due to the art. Really, this guy is not the artist I'd have chosen for a major relauch of a title. Arthur is like 23 and while Guice did a decent cover the interior art is pretty bad - he makes the character look like he's 35 and been working in a coal mine most of his life. The script keeps referring to the new Aquaman as 'boy' and the 'boy' looks like he could kill a bar-full of Jersey bikers. Eh. I'll give it a couple more issues and see what develops.