THE DARK KNIGHT RISES IN VINTAGE STYLE IN BATMAN: CAPED CRUSADER

BATMAN IS NOT FRIENDLY," insists Bruce Timm. "He has to be weird. It's not just enough for him to dress up like a weirdo - he has to be a weirdo.

- NICK SETCHFIELD

When Batman's in the room you shouldn't say, 'Oh, yeah, it's Batman...hey, how you doing, Batman?' It's like, no, 'Who is this weird guy?""

Timm has more claim than most to know Gotham's elusive avenger. If not fast friends they must, at least, be on nodding terms in the shadows. Back in the early '90s he was one of the key creative forces behind Batman: The Animated Series, a stylish, retro-flavoured take on the DC icon, smarter, cooler and altogether more Emmy-winning than the usual network 'toon. Now he's back with Batman: Caped Crusader, a series that finally makes good on his original vision for the Dark Knight and his world. Welcome to the 1940s, Mac...

TIMELESS CHARM

"We decided early on that we didn't want it to be a continuation of B:TAS," Timm tells SFX of the ten-episode debut season that boasts Matt Reeves and JJ Abrams as executive producers.

"We wanted to use a lot of the same building materials but do something different with them, so that we weren't just doing remakes of the old shows, or sequels to the old stories.

"The decidedly period nature of it is something that I really wanted to do, going back to the beginning of B:TAS. If I'd had my way I would have set that show directly in the '40s, but during the development process it became apparent that would probably have been a sticking point in terms of all the different people we'd have to get approvals from, like Fox Kids and the toy companies.

"The writers were like, 'It's so much more convenient if we have TV and computers...' It just became this more wishy-washy, retro-ish world."

"We wanted this to feel as though it was made in the '40s, whereas B:TAS didn't feel like that," adds executive producer James Tucker, a fellow veteran of DC's animated universe. "It had a '40s milieu, if you will, but it's still very much a '90s show."