thehefner | Neon Noodle? NEON NOODLE?!?!?!

Speaking as...

1.) a comic geek, with a healthy fondness for Silver Age crackiness

2.) a lover of a certain brand of classic cartoons

and 3.) a fan of PEE-WEE'S PLAYHOUSE back in the day

There are no words to describe the giddy delight aglow within me after watching this:

Yes, that's Paul Rubens as Bat-Mite doing a Dick-Sprang-flavored homage of THE GREAT PIGGY-BANK ROBBERY from an episode of BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD written by the modern master of Batman, the incomparable Paul Dini.

Let all that sink in your brain for a sec, lest your eyeballs to explode from an overdose of awesome.

You can watch the entire episode here, which I wholeheartedly recommend you do, but in case you need further persuading (really? You do? After all that?!), here's another magnificent highlight:

So much to love: Dini!Harley with Timm!Joker, alongside a Hank Venture's "The Bat" and a Kevin-Smith-based snotty Batman fan voicing concerns that even I foolishly shared once upon a time.

Between the almost-sacred status the 90's BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES has achieved in our eyes and the piece of crap that was the recent THE BATMAN cartoon, I too was hesitant about seeing a kid-friendly Batman cartoon. Well, not so much hesitant and apathetic. It clearly wasn't meant for *me*, so whatever.

Then

leiacat started getting me to check out a couple episodes, as she was watching it but needed help with getting the references. And that's when I started to realize, holy shit, there are TONS of references. This show is downright riddled with classic DC geekery and goodness from every single era, almost more so than even B:TAS ever had! And when it's good, dear lord but it's fun, and frankly, we NEED more fun in DC Comics these days!

While the show's quality is on and off, with some less-stellar episodes out there that really do reflect the kiddie nature of the show, it's the episodes like the Green Lantern Corps team-up with Guy Gardner, G'Nort, and Sinestro, written by J.M. DeMatteis (!!!) and now this Bat-Mite episode...

Man, all we need now is to have Paul Rubens' Bat-Mite team up with Gilbert Gottfried's Mr. Mxyzptlk and have them adapt WORLD'S FUNNEST. But alas, I don't know if the world would ever be able to handle such a thing. It'd be like challenging Cthulhu to a staring contest, but in a good way.