Outside of the insanely good Batman movies by Chris Nolan, Batman has always had a very highly thought of reputation in the world of animation.

This is mainly down to the reputation of the original Batman: The Animated Series from the early 90s and extended through series like The Batman, Batman Beyond as well as animated features like Under the Red Hood and Year One (also to a certain extent the video games are worth a mention in Arkham Asylum and Arkham City). It's now very exciting to see Frank Millers classic Batman tale 'The Dark Knight Returns' in animated form. The tale really breathed fresh air into the story of Batman and pretty much paved way for alot of the modern tales and movies that we have today.

Anyway, sufficed to say I'm really looking forward to this one. The art style is looking clean and doesn't crib too directly from the comic pages - but with a few nods here and there to classic panes. In fact i believe that Mr kaNO himself had the opportunity to work on some of the character design for this feature working over at Warner Bros - lucky git! And you can totally see it in the art style, particularly in Carrie (Robin) - fingers crossed i'm right, cos she's clearly the best character.

I think my only disappointment is that Kevin Conroy isn't doing the voice for Bats, but its a world away from Batman The Animated Series, but i'm so used to Conroys Batman/Bruce Wayne it will feel wrong hearing someone else doing it. Even if that someone is Robocop - Peter Weller.

Part 1 is released on DVD/Blu-ray on September 25th 2012!