(And now, their greatest critical smiting comes from their adaptation of Batman: The Killing Joke.) At the height of their daring, they have humbled themselves to adapt seemingly untouchable classics (to varied success) with The Dark Knight Returns and All-Star Superman, and at their lowest cash-grubbing impudence, they’ve scribbled out retreads of nonsense like Superman/Batman: Public Enemies and Justice League: Throne of Atlantis. The DC Universe Animated Original Movie series has enjoyed a fair amount of success since its humble beginnings (that would be 2007’s brutal and oddly macabre Superman: Doomsday), given unprecedented freedom to dissect popular comic book stories and retrofit them into polished animated endeavors.

It’s all open for debate, and it will always be a spirited one, mostly because when it comes to visceral badassery, there are few fictional characters who resonate bigger and badder than The Goddamned Batman. Then there’s the small but vocal group that believes that the Caped Crusader had his greatest cinematic success in the downright majestic Batman: Mask Of The Phantasm. For some, it will never get better than Tim Burton’s gothic and monstrous Batman. For others, the beginning and end of the argument rests with Christopher Nolan’s svelte yet morally dense The Dark Knight.

RECOLLECTIONS: There will always be a lot of talk about what makes a solid Batman film.

THE YEAR: 2010, three years after Superman: Doomsday got weird with our expectations of what a comic book adaptation could be and a year before Warner Bros Animation went and fumbled All-Star Superman. This is RETROGRADING, where this is the best day of my life.

Batman brave and the bold red hood