DC Comics is launching a new series set in the world of Batman: The Animated Series. The comic is called Batman: The Adventure Continues, brought to you by the same folks who worked on the beloved ‘90s cartoon, series writers and producers Paul Dini and Alan Burnett. The comic will be drawn by Ty Templeton, a name that fans will recognize as the artist of 1992’s Batman Adventures comic, which also told stories set in the B:TAS universe.
The series will feature DC characters never before seen in the original show, using designs from the recent action figure line. These characters were designed by Templeton in the signature Bruce Timm art style. While DC’s press release doesn’t name which new characters will appear, the line includes the likes of Deathstroke, Azrael, Red Hood, and The Batman Who Laughs, so any of them are fair game.
Check out the designs of those characters along with some artwork from the comic series in the slideshow gallery below.
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“Fans familiar with the Batman of The New Batman/Superman Adventures will be right up to speed,” Dini said in a statement. “Alan and I approached the writing with the idea that we were doing the season you might have seen if we had not put the series aside to do Batman Beyond.”
“Tim Drake is still a very young Robin,” Templeton said of the timing of the series. “Batman isn’t middle-aged or anything, and we’re not even close to the events of Batman Beyond.”
“What is different, however, is that we’re going back to cover certain gaps in the original series, events that didn’t have a bearing on the series at the time, but now do,” Burnett added. “In other words, there will be secret histories that will turn Batman’s world upside down. Things that no one knew were out there, until now.”
“Perhaps the most intriguing character in the run will be [a] young man whose story threads through most of the issues,” Burnett said. “He’s a smart, super-elusive loner who knows way too much about the Dark Knight. How this mystery man fits into the world of Batman Adventures and what he means to accomplish should, I hope, be a real jolt for old fans.”
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Batman: The Adventure Continues #1 will see Wayne Enterprises attacked by a giant robot that makes off with an entire laboratory in its gargantuan hands. It’s up to Batman to find out who is controlling the robot, how he’s going to stop it, and what the recently-arrived-in-Gotham-City Lex Luthor has to do with it.
The series will be released online in digital chapters first, and then every two chapters will be combined and sold as a print issue. The first digital chapters will hit in April, while the first print issue will be released on May 6.
This isn’t the first time DC has used comics to further explore the world of B:TAS where fans fell in love with the performances of Batman/Bruce Wayne Kevin Conroy and the Joker Mark Hamill. The others were The Batman Adventures (vol. 1, 1992–1995), The Batman and Robin Adventures (1995–1997), The Batman Adventures: The Lost Years (1998), Batman: Gotham Adventures (1998–2003), and Batman Adventures (vol. 2, 2003–2004).
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Joshua is Senior Features Editor at IGN. If Pokemon, Green Lantern, or Game of Thrones are frequently used words in your vocabulary, you’ll want to follow him on Twitter @JoshuaYehl and IGN.
Source: IGN.com Batman: The Animated Series Continuation Coming in Comic Book Form