Hello! It’s time for a brand new episode of The Flickcast. We’re excited. Super excited. We hope you are too.

On this week’s show Chris and Joe pretty much devote the entire episode to Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Do they like it? Do they hate it? Is it amazing or the biggest POS since Affleck played Daredevil? Does anyone care at this point? Listen and find out . . . if you dare!

Picks this week are a secret but you can probably guess if you try really, really hard.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship, or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook, Google+ or via email.

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Fans who grew up with Batman: The Animated Series as their go-to cartoon superhero show have undoubtedly noticed the darker, more violent trend in those same cartoons now. I don’t think this is bad or even unwanted, as you can tell from my review of this month’s Batman vs. Robin. But a return to a more traditional, 90s feel is certainly welcome. That’s what we get in Batman Unlimited: Animal Instincts.

The story brings together classic Batman foes and heroes to uncover the plot behind Penguin’s new invention of Cyber Animals. The robotic creatures keep popping up during strange crimes committed by the Animilitia, a squad of animal-inspired villains that includes Silverback, Cheetah, Killer Croc and Man-Bat. Luckily, Batman has his own squad to call on and Flash, Green Arrow, Nightwing and Red Robin answer.

Animal Instincts comes straight out of DC Entertainment’s desire to create a Batman animated film for younger kids. That sentiment registered strongly with screenwriter Heath Corson who “wanted to capture that fun of Silver Age Justice League comics.” He’s definitely done that here. Humor is used to great effect and is mixed effortlessly with both hand-to-hand and high speed action scenes. Fight sequences are often one-on-one giving each hero and villain a chance in the spotlight.

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Today is Thursday and there’s a brand new episode of The Flickcast for you. Sorry it’s late. We couldn’t help it.

What do you want? We apologized, didn’t we. So give us a break. If you don’t like our schedule go and do your own podcast and then we can complain about how late it is, okay? Okay. Moving along …

On this week’s show Chris and Joe take on some new topics and revisit old ones, as usual. Some of these topics include the first picture of Ben Affleck as Batman, the death of H.R. Giger, the new 24, the underappreciated Dwayne Johnson, Edge of Tomorrow, Godzilla, season finales of their favorite TV series, and a whole lot more. There’s some other stuff in there too. It’s a pretty good episode, all things considered.

The guys also made picks this week. Chris’ pick is the movie Aliens (in honor of Mother’s Day) and Joe’s pick is the NBC series The Blacklist.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship, or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook, Google+ or via email.

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At WonderCon 2014, fans crammed into the Arena to watch the world premiere of DC Universe’s latest animated feature, Son of Batman, and with good reason. The film, which is set to release on DVD and Blu-ray on May 6, delivers fun and adventure with a fresh plot based Grant Morrison’s 2006 DC storyline.

Bruce Wayne (Jason O’Mara) receives an unwelcome visit from his former lover and foe, Talia al Gul (Morena Baccarin), who’s brought with her a son Batman never knew he had. Damien (Stuart Allen) is exactly the type of kid you’d expect to come from these two: smart, strong, ruthless, and bloodthirsty. Bats, with some patience and an assist from Nightwing (Sean Maher), is able to get through to his long-lost son, and it’s not long before the arrogant kid is donning his own version of the Robin costume. He soars off alongside his father to take down criminal mastermind, Deathstroke (Thomas Gibson).

In keeping with its later animated features, DC does not hold back on the blood and gore of the battles. Damien, who is supposed about 10, takes quite a beating and there’s an especially cringe worthy part involving daggers. Still the action is very welcome and keeps the plot speeding ahead. One of my favorite sequences involved the new dynamic duo fighting off ninja man-bats, engineered by a kidnapped Dr. Langstrom (Xander Berkeley).

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Kicking their Batman 75th anniversary celebration into high gear, DC revealed the new Batman Beyond animated short at WonderCon 2014. Though only a little longer than a minute, the short features the two original voice actors from the series, Kevin Conroy as Bruce Wayne and Will Friedle as Terry McGinnis. Check it out below, courtesy of Yahoo Movies:

Darwyn Cooke, the writer and artist of Batman Beyond, was commissioned to make this short. Batman fans were surely notice the Batman costumes from throughout the Caped Crusader’s history, including Adam West and the original comic book design by Bob Kane. This minute and 15 seconds was definitely a reminder of the genius of Batman Beyond and a great way to celebrate The Dark Knight’s 75th birthday.

The short airs on TV following Teen Titans at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 23, on Cartoon Network. Take a look after the break.

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DC Universe will premiere its 20th animated original movie at WonderCon this Friday, April 18. Son of Batman will have its world premiere in the Anaheim Convention Center’s Arena theater at 6 p.m. A panel discussion with the cast and filmmakers will follow the screening.

In Son of Batman, Bruce Wayne (Jason O’Mara) learns he has a son, Damian (Stuart Allan), whose mother is Talia al Ghul. He takes the boy in to train him as the new Robin and father and son form an uneasy partnership to take down the criminal enterprise, Deathstroke. Sean Maher (Nightwing) and Xander Berkeley (Langstrom) also star in the movie produced by James Tucker and directed by Ethan Spaulding. Check out a clip from the film below:

An encore screening of the movie is also available Sunday, April 20, at 1:15 p.m. in the Arena. The animated feature, which is based on Grant Morrison’s DC storyline, arrives on Blu-ray and DVD May 6, 2014.

Check out the clip after the break.

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It’s that time again, folks. That’s right, a brand new episode of The Flickcast is here and it’s yours for the taking. For free.

That’s right, free. As in free beer. And really, who doesn’t love free beer? Nobody, that’s who. Yeah, we’ve used that example before, but so what? It still works. Anyway. . .

Moving right along, Chris and Joe are back and ready to rock and roll with a whole slew of new and recurring topics. Some of these topics include the change in release date of Superman vs. Batman, Star Wars VII script news, Elementary, the return of Sherlock, fanboys and haters, the true meaning of life and a whole lot more.

No, not really. We just slipped that “true meaning of life” one in to see if you were paying attention.

This week’s picks include Chris’ pick of the novel Pandemic by Scott Sigler and Joe’s pick of the audio version of the novel Redshirts by John Scalzi and read by Wil Wheaton.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship, or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook, Google+ or via email.

Podcast: Download

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You may be thinking “Oh, look; another crossover where the good guys fight, figure it out and save the day.” I wouldn’t blame you. I had anticipated the same when I sat down to read this 2003 one-shot from DC Comics and Wildstorm Productions. Boy, was I wrong as this was definitely not your cookie-cutter team-up tale. Far from it.

While almost anyone reading comics has read Batman (or, at the very least, is familiar with the Caped Crusader), the same can’t be said for Planetary. With that, I can confidently state that my lack of exposure to the Planetary series and its characters didn’t hamper my reading experience at all. I’d actually argue that this is primarily a Batman-centric story; even though various members of Planetary get more “screen time” than Bats himself.

Which brings me to the creators. Warren Ellis is, well, Warren Ellis. If you don’t know what that means, you haven’t read much of his work. But if you have? You’re nodding along with me right now. Indefinable, he almost always seems to approach a story from a completely different angle than most of us can even conceive, and that’s part of what makes him a fan favorite.

His handling of Batman here is both exciting and (seemingly) an open love letter to the character. There’s barely a beginning or end to this original graphic novel, and frankly, it doesn’t need it.

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With Batman: Arkham Origins just around the corner, it was kind of a shock to hear about a season pass for the title. Traditionally, the format of the Arkham games didn’t lend themselves to enough DLC to warrant a season pass. When you finally read what you get for this $20 price tag and is also claimed to be a $30 value, it really doesn’t feel worth investing another 50% of the game’s original price for this extra content.

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I went for the tacky pun. I had to. Chris doesn’t let me put enough puns on the Flickcast. And it’s Zatanna. You really can’t expect me to post a story about her in any way shape or form and not mess with it at LEAST a little bit. So now that I have gotten that out of my system, let’s get down to business: Zatanna is coming to Injustice: Gods Among Us.

Though appearing in a number of comics such as Hawkman, Batman, Green Lantern and The Atom alongside the title heroes starting in 1964, it was more than a decade later before she was offered membership into the Justice League. The crux of her early appearances revolved around the search for her father, magician Giovanni Zatara. Unlike most magicians though, Zatanna actually possesses legitimate magical ability because of her mother Sindella, who is Homo magi. Staying true to her father’s profession, Zatanna’s costume resembles that of a Playboy bunny combined with a magician’s tux (though the New 52 version only wears that costume on stage).

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