During my convalescence (I had an eye problem that's too complicated and dull to talk about right now - it seems to be on the mend, though) I bought and watched A LOT of the Batman Animated Series. At the risk of sounding redundant - cos everyone knows this, don' t they - it really was
bloody good. Weirdly, the Joker episodes are the weakest of the series - as though the presence of Batman's arch-nemesis forces the show into a shape that doesn't quite suit it. The best episodes are the smaller, quieter ones, the morality plays, the detective stories, where Batman is almost a peripheral figure. The Joker of the Animated Series is an abstract, immutable figure, as fundamentally unchanging as Batman himself, so Joker plots mostly amount to: Joker does something evil/mischievous; Batman gets angry; Batman finds Joker and a) captures him or b) doesn't capture him (the honourable exception to this rule is Joker's Favor, which uses the big J as a plot element, and focuses instead on the woes of a perfectly ordinary Joe Bloggs).
Anyway, it's great. Also, Robin rules. His first "big" story - Robin's Reckoning - is an absolute cracker.
So, all this Bat-thinking got me digging through my sketchbooks for Bat-stuff. And here (some of) it is! I did these a couple of months back, with PITT pens and graphite pencil.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1ZoX0HGzASmK3I7tM5gOlzXpAYQ-qpf0Bp1pfTwszcmbIEQIuqbNtshJZXcuQg3ivD4bEEmZ4Ptekr15qzatk3YaYgE0b8GLj5ac-FLZirfpbn5McqN917uex8AiihoTqcTWg/s400/Commissioner+Gordon+09.jpg)
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUtU4dJJ2Ipkp1x5t-uZcu79WNxKduTZKrVlnljHjuQhIIGkEtYErAdTZ78npEuSIfM0ptsY_m-a-tSJT_xkdpcGJupjWvUTgyFPjpbJ7mVUhqTqqCXJJhg8ShLf4Q6jEZp_6b/s400/batman+09.jpg)
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioy9syeGAoJE3EtnV6ZebKNliYqIxBRN-NznUKk68CXe9RTXpFe-BkQNXCRrkv57ZOHsdf2oyGHz4-Iav9lFmVVTOwiHR0EbpUHe4C2KEyE19LTiFmRwoemM8hLmlFgyoLwB1o/s400/Two+Face+09.jpg)
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheVsoHxGxV1iKzHaVuxual2wF-f4sYOhvnyrfxifFU1la-OfC0TXG8smR0gF5Mr2RYbw1lYAjiAaoyumZSHSwReL1GpkfH9dU28FzRqdtaTUI_cU1gwpz80DUqymUxbm5SnPdG/s400/Nightwing+09.jpg)