Mask of the Phantasm is still the best Batman movie
As a teenage comic book fan coming of age as superheroes were breaking into the mainstream, I always approached any conversation about Batman with a hipster’s sense of ownership. Like any comics nerd with a punk-rock attitude toward superhero comics (possibly the least punk-rock thing in the world), I knew, without a doubt, that the best Batman movie was the one the normies hadn’t heard of — the 1993 animated feature Batman: Mask of the Phantasm.
At the time, there was much less competition for the title. The campy 1966 Batman movie starring Adam West was, in the ’90s and early 2000s, considered an embarrassment, the reason your parents mocked any interest in the character. None of the sequels to Tim Burton’s 1989 blockbuster had repeated its commercial or critical success, and though they each had (and still have) their defenders, the ’89 film was the cultural touchstone, the default answer for both “best Batman movie” and “best comic book movie.” But for a young, snobbish superhero fan, there’s nothing more satisfying than feeling like you know something the mass audience doesn’t.
Mask of the Phantasm was an obscurity in the days of the early internet — a feature-length episode of Batman: The Animated Series that was upgraded from direct-to-video to a Christmas Day theatrical release without much fanfare. It found its audience later on VHS, on Cartoon Network, or via Siskel and Ebert’s delayed recommendation two years later. In my case, I received a VHS copy of Mask of the Phantasm on my 5th birthday from my late Great-Aunt Toby. Bless her memory, she had no idea what she’d bought for me, much less that it would have such an impact on the course of my life.
It’s now been 30 years since Mask of the Phantasm landed in
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