After the more comedic undertones of Batman: The Audio Series from HBO Max, the various news reports of an audio continuation of Batman: The Animated Series and Spotify’s “Batman: Unburied,” it can seem like Bat-craze overload.

Batman and Batmania 2.0

Released the same year as “The Batman” movie, Unburied is both closer to the comics than the Matt Reaves film and different at the same time. Reaves’ take on the dark knight takes more iconic storylines like The Long Halloween and simply transposes them into live action without changing much. Unburied, written by David S. Goyer (co-writer of Batman Begins with Christopher Nolan, director of The Dark Knight Trilogy) tells a more original story with elements like Barbara Gordon’s inclusion as a Gotham PD detective rather than her usual persona of Batgirl or Oracle.

That’s jumping ahead a bit too much. Backing up, the show’s description on Spotify implies that this is a Batman Story with Bruce Wayne as the focal character. This marketing copy puts the interested party in one of two scenarios before listening. The “turnoff” and the “different” factor. These arguments are often that the reader is turned off by the idea of a Batman with no Batman or that it’s different and therefore might be good. I fell in the latter camp.

Pre-1960s or Post-1980s Batman

After the reveal in episode 3, the plot went full Batman. Not of the Frank Miller variety or any other famous living comic book writer. Instead, the story goes full 50s-70s Batman and that’s where you got campy sci-fi Batman that is tonally different from the later comics. The difference between Unburied and something like the 1966 Batman show with Adam West is that they leaned into the silliness.

Regardless of your opinion on the 60s Batman TV show, this Spotify original tries to have it both ways. This can be done, but this nowhere near the level of care the Lego Batman movie went with the character. Where Lego Batman combined humor with deep cuts from the comics in a new perhaps more realistic take on the dark knight as the film asks what would happen if some billionaire decided to fight crime. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say someone like Jeff Bezos is more interested in other people when it affects his bottom line.

Way Why Too Serious?

Anyway, Batman: Unburied doesn’t go for humor. It instead makes Bruce Wayne a Black man (played by Winston Duke) whose parents didn’t die and the desire to become Batman never came up. He’s a mortician too, and a new villain nicknamed the Harvester is maiming bodies., which Bruce feels responsible for in the GCPD’s search for the serial killer.

For someone far who’s far more interested in Bruce Wayne being the main character instead of the mask, the revelation as to why this isn’t a Batman story works well in the same way that Wandavision works with its first twist. After it, however, there are two many subversions that occur that I thought I was watching the end of Naruto Shippuden. The plan of Unburied’s villain feels more personal than the climactic battle of that anime. They both strangely involve trees. I will say after listening to it a second time, the climax and falling action of the story are better than I remember.

If it weren’t for the setup amounting to nothing, this would have been higher. As it stands, on the first listen, I’d give this 7/10 stars. After re-listening to the final 4 episodes again and really focusing on what the story was trying to do. My final rating for Batman: Unburied is:

7.5/10+ Stars

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