Batman: The Adventures Continue — Season 3

It’s more like “The Adventures Conclude” as this volume is billed as the finale for this series which sought to offer more stories within the setting of “Batman:  The Animated Series.”  So, what does it have to offer?  Two opening one-offs as Batman gets involved with protecting a hired killer from the mafia’s vengeance, and with Harley Quinn as she tries to reconnect with an old debutante friend who’s the target of a kidnapping plot.  Next is “Crack-Up!” where we get the full backstory behind the Joker’s latest sidekick and how he wound up as that from a promising military career.  Then we conclude with “The Offer” as Batman faces something he’s never had to deal with before:  A Gotham free of crime.  It’s something that allows him to take a holiday with Robin, where he encounters a familiar adversary with an enticing proposition.

While I still think that the best part of “The Adventures Continue” was the Red Hood storyline in vol. 1, this is still a decent note for the series to end on.  The opening stories are solid in their execution in that they feel like they could pass as lost episodes of “The Animated Series.”  Well, “Muscle Out” certainly could as guest artist Jordan Gibson captures the style of the source material well while Kevin Altieri, who actually worked on “TAS,” displays a more detailed style with “Old Flames.”  Regular artist Ty Templeton returns for the majority of the following stories, which means that they look as good as you’d expect them to.

A shame, though, that “Crack-Up!” winds up being better than the volume (and series) closing story “The Offer.”  Co-writers Paul Dini and Alan Burnett do a good job fleshing out Straightman’s tragic history while weaving in characters both old and new to this continuity, and giving us some quality Joker moments along the way.  It’s all a lot more fun and interesting than the proposition Batman gets in the final chapter, one that’s so obviously suspicious that it’s hard to imagine any reader being taken in by it, let alone the Dark Knight Detective.  I wouldn’t say that it ruins the story, but it’s certainly lackluster for something billed as a series finale decades in the making.