Santa Monica Studio’s Art Director Raf Grassetti is a prolific artist with a penchant for recreating pop culture and video game icons in his own style, for instancedrawing Sonic the Hedgehog, Tails, and Knucklesto celebrate the release of Paramount Picture’sSonic the Hedgehogmovie. On Saturday, Grassetti completed a project he began on March 17: Creating his own renditions of his favorite characters fromBatman: The Animated Series.
The project began with Grassetti drawing Two-Face, as he saidBatman: The Animated Series' blue-faced version is “one of my favorite takes on the character” on Instagram. From there he began to pump out more and more characters from the Caped Crusader’s rogues' gallery, including the popular Joker, Bane, and Mr. Freeze, as well as more obscure villains like Man-Bat and Phantasm from the series' animated filmBatman: Mask of the Phantasm.
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At the end, Grassetti compiled all 16 of his images onto one very impressive spread that makes a strong case for his call to bring the series back for a modern-day audience. Grassetti even specifically said that a new version of the classic DC Comics' series should cast all the same voice actors when he posted it to Twitter, and directly pointed the image out toMark Hamill, the voice of Joker; and Ron Perlman, the voice of Clayface.
As amazing as it would be to see a modern rendition ofBatman: The Animated Series, especially in Grassetti’s art style, it’s not entirely likely given the already many fractured directions DC Comics has been taking its iconic superhero and his villains as of late. Joaquin Phoenix’sJokermovie was entirely separate from Ben Affleck’s Batman seen inBatman v Superman: Dawn of JusticeandJustice League; and fans are currently waiting to see Robert Pattinson’s take onBatman once the coronavirus pandemic passes.
That’s not to say anything of the character’s completely separate existence in the realm of video games. Warner Bros. has been working on a new Batman game for some time based on various leaks and rumors, and a report claimed they would have shown thatBatmantitle at E3 2020if it weren’t canceled due to the aforementioned pandemic.
Luckily, artists like Grassetti are pumping out amazing work to show the world what could be if, for example, DC Comics wanted to rebootBatman: The Animated Series. For those who want something a little more unique, Denis Medri also recently imagined a1950’s “Rockabilly Batman” universe.
