New Batman Adventures
1997-1998

The New Batman Adventures is the successor to the highly acclaimed American animated series Batman: The Animated Series. There has been some debate over the "official" title of this show; some refer to it as Batman: Gotham Knights despite that title having never been referred to in any way regarding TV broadcasting or merchandising, always utilizing the New Batman Adventures name and its accompanying artwork. To better adhere with the prior DVD sets of the original series, the DVD release of this show is titled Batman: The Animated Series Volume 4 (from The New Batman Adventures).

Stories in this series tend to involve Batman's supporting cast, which include fellow crimefighters Robin, Nightwing and Batgirl, among others. The show also features guest stars such as Supergirl, Etrigan and The Creeper; characters who would later appear with Batman in Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. The series takes place after B:TAS and around the same time as Superman: The Animated Series.

The New Batman Adventures was produced for The WB and started almost three years after Batman: The Animated Series had stopped production. The animation style was changed significantly from Batman: The Animated Series due to budgetary issues and to have the show more compatible with the smoother Superman: The Animated Series which TNBA would eventually air in tandem with as part of The New Batman/Superman Adventures, then later return to its own series again.

The show had a significant change in focus from the original series with episodes focusing less on Batman and more on the many characters that inhabited Gotham City. The art was more streamlined, giving Batman a more sleek, buffed appearance and his classic plain black chest emblem, though the yellow oval would also be removed from the comics in later years; it remains so as of the present day. Nearly every character design was darkened with the animation change.

The appearances of villains from his rogues gallery were also changed. For example, The Joker was made pale blue with green-highlighted black hair, and black eyes with white pupils, as well as being depicted as much smaller. He no longer had the ruby lips from the earlier animated series. Additionally, the Penguin was redesigned to match his classic counterpart rather than resemble the animal-like appearance of Danny DeVito's Penguin from 1992's Batman Returns. Notably, Harley Quinn was the only character to not receive any drastic change in appearance or color alterations. Her popularity also became more evident, as she appears in 6 episodes; more than any other recurring villain -- even The Joker.

Most characters were given a more ghoulish appearance. One of the most apparent was the Scarecrow's new design which became a dark, corpse-like figure wich had a hangman's noose around his neck. The tone of the show shifted between "dark & serious" to "light & charming", with some of the darkest episodes ever seen in a cartoon (Over the Edge featured the death of Batgirl, albeit as a dream), as well as wacky, lighthearted fare.

The New Batman Adventures had its fair share of memorable episodes. Perhaps the most famous was the adaptation of the Batman Adventures comic Mad Love which featured the origins of Harley Quinn and the dynamic of her relationship with the Joker. Legends of the Dark Knight featured three kids telling stories about Batman, one in the vein of the mid 50's Detective Comic's stories involving giant instruments and another featuring a near word-for-word adaptation of a scene from Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Other episodes included Over the Edge, Old Wounds (filling the gap between Batman: TAS and TNBA and explained what happened to Dick Grayson as Robin.), Joker's Millions (an adaptation of a classic 1950s story and Growing Pains.

In this series, it is implied that Batman and Batgirl have a romantic relationship. To complicate the situation, Barbara Gordon and Dick Grayson were in a relationship prior to Dick's tenure as Nightwing. In Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman, there is one scene where Barbara calls Bruce from her college dorm and asking him if he found someone close to his own age, referring to Batwoman.

In the 1998 episode Legends of the Dark Knight, Joel Schumacher — director of Batman Forever and Batman and Robin — is seemingly mocked as a flamboyantly gay young boy who is impressed with Batman's muscles and tight-fitting rubber armor. He has an apparent interest in feather boas. The boy is referred to as Joel and is standing in front of a store window with the sign "Shoemaker".

Shortly after The New Batman Adventures aired on Kids' WB , a mini-series book set in the continuity of the series was published. In a total of five books, Hilary Bader, Bo Hampton, Terry Beatty, Lee Loughridge, and Tim Harkins explained the gap between B:TAS and The New Batman Adventures.

Book One: Robin (Dick Grayson) voices his disapproval towards Batgirl’s (Barbara Gordon) fighting crime and tries to stop her from doing so. During this time, Batman finds out that Batgirl is Barbara Gordon. After some time Batman comes to the conclusion that Batgirl will continue to fight crime, but under his wing. Dick gets upset and has an argument with Bruce, but fails to change his mind.

Book Two: Bruce and Dick have a very hot argument the day of his graduation and Dick decides to leave Gotham City. Barbara and Bruce's butler/confidante, Alfred Pennyworth, try to convince him to stay, but to no avail. Dick leaves to fine-tune his skills.

Book Three: Dick comes across an ancient African tribe and learns a new form of combat from them; he finally gets ready to step out of Batman's shadow. He develops a new crimefighting persona, Nightwing.

Book Four: Batman and Batgirl fight crime side by side, and Batgirl notices the difference. One night, while on the trail of Two-Face, Batman saves a young Tim Drake, son of petty criminal Steven "Shifty" Drake. (The writers of the animated series characterized Tim as such to blend him with another character, Jason Todd -- the ill-fated Robin who would otherwise make no appearances in the animated universe). Shifty was murdered by Two-Face and Tim swore revenge. Batman trained Tim as the new Robin and gave him another shot at life. Two-Face was captured and Batman took in Tim as his second ward.

Book Five: Dick travels to the Himalayas to discover a tribe's secret of flight. While there, he is trapped under an avalanche and rescued by one of the members, who agrees to trade the secret of flight in exchange for recovering a statue. Dick returns to Gotham and retrieves the stolen artifact from Ra's Al Ghul. Dick soon returns to Wayne Manor and unveils his new persona of Nightwing to Bruce, Barbara, Alfred, and Tim.

(info from Wikipedia)