Posted By Dan Greenfield on Dec 21, 2020 | 5 comments

VOTE in BATMADNESS: The Animated Tournament…

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Welcome to BATMADNESS: The Animated Tournament — your chance to VOTE for the greatest Batman: The Animated Series episode of all time.

Writer Fred Van Lente, a 13th Dimension regular, and his artistic collaborator Ryan Dunlavey have produced The Comic Book History of Animation — a five-part series whose Issue #2 is out Dec. 23 from IDW. To celebrate, we’re holding a tourney to pick the best episode from the greatest comic-book animated series of them all — and YOU get to decide.

Fred and Ryan seeded eight episodes each for a Sweet 16 and we’ll be pairing them off until we have a champion in January. (Click here to follow the whole tournament.)

We’ve now reached the ELITE EIGHT — and we haven’t had an upset yet, so things are really gonna get interesting.

— HOW TO VOTE: You can pick your choice two ways: 1) Note it in the comments below; or 2) Take part in our Twitter poll, also below. Votes will be tabulated and the winner will be announced in the following round.

We’re up to ELITE EIGHT MATCH-UP #1: ALMOST GOT ’IM (Fred’s No. 1) vs. FEAT OF CLAY (Ryan’s No. 4)

Written by Paul Dini. Directed by Eric Radomski.

“I love it when all the villains get together; it’s why the Batman ’66 movie is so great. All of these little vignettes are perfectly done by writer Paul Dini, and we even get the iconic Batman-strapped-to-the-giant-penny bit. It also has the best line of the entire series: ‘It was a big rock.'” — FVL

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Teleplay by Marv Wolfman (Part 1) and Michael Reaves (Part 2). Story by Wolfman and Reaves. Directed by Dick Sebast (Part 1) and Kevin Altieri (Part 2).

“The Batman writers wisely amalgamated all the different half-baked comic book versions of Clayface into a tragic, sympathetic villain that are Batman’s bread and butter. It drags a bit in the middle — so many of the early episodes were two-parters, trimming this down to a single would have helped — but it’s got some of the lushest and creepiest animation in the whole series.” — RD

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Now, which do YOU prefer? VOTE!

BATMADNESS ELITE EIGHT MATCH #1: Which of these is the better BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES episode?

— 13th Dimension (@13th_Dimension) December 21, 2020

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For the complete BATMADNESS: The Animated Tournament: Click here.

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NEXT: Heart of Ice (Fred’s No. 2) vs. Robin’s Reckoning (Ryan’s No. 3) Click here.