When Batman gets bitten by a vampire, the real fun begins.

What They Say:
Shadow of the Bat

The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Batman: Brave & The Bold has a lot of fun with its varied cast of characters and it’s always a treat to see who gets brought onto it. This episode opens the main arc with the use of Jason Blood as he helps Batman track down a particular Nosferatu named Dala. The battle itself is actually fairly quick, but it’s good to see Jason turn into Etrigan through rhyme here and to have a little fun with it. What it sets up though is that without realizing it, Batman himself got bitten by her and is starting to slowly change. He’s getting a little more violent, as we see when he takes down Black Mask rather quickly and then scares the pants off of Alfred back at the lair by sleeping upside down from the ceiling like a bat. There’s taking your namesake seriously and then there’s taking it too far.

With the way Batman can be as cunning as he is, turning him darker and vampiric certainly opens up a lot of possibilities. Where it goes, with him giving in to all of this darkness, is heading up to the Justice League satellite where several members of the group have come believing that there’s an emergency to deal with. With his usual sense of theatrics upped several fold here, he ends up turning all of them except for the Martian Manhunter into vampires as well. What’s amusing about it is that it’s all done with a veil of seriousness, but it has such an air of fun about it as they all try and figure out what’s going on. Ice herself has some of the best lines in this and watching Batman going through his hunting phase with them really pushes home that it’s vampire show in space for a bit. Girls in curlers and nighties, best buddies fighting over the bunks and a real evil hunting them all down. It’s positively priceless.

While we’ve seen just how easily a vampire can take down a human, even a superhuman, it’s at least a little tougher for them to take out a Martian and that provides the opening for which to deal with him. The show has a good bit of fun with its cast though, as we get to see the two primary pairings here with Fire and Ice working well together, accents and all, as well as Booster Gold and Blue Beetle. They all work well over playing off of each other, sometimes in a panic, and having Batman playing up the shapechanging and amorphous evil that he’s become is just right. The character alternates between silly and serious in this series regularly, but it’s good to see him being forced into playing really serious for awhile. Seeing his intelligence and methodologies used in this manner definitely provides for a very fun and dark episode.

In Summary:
This episode plays on a lot of material from the comics over the years and mixes it up well. It’s not easy to strike a balance between serious horror and comedy, but the writers here have ma-naged to once again pull it off. With the very varied cast, including several members of the Justice League and the use of the rhyming Etrigan, it’s a treat to see so many of them running around, fighting against Batman and then getting turned to his side. Batman as the master of all of this though is where things really work the best as he takes his nature and uses it for bad things. Getting everyone else to go bad is just the icing on the cake. This episode was definitely another in a string of very, very enjoyable episodes.

Grade: B-