09- Aztec Batman: Clash of Empires
[Watched on VOD]
I like the elseworlds DC stories and so when this came out I figured I'd check it out. As a fan of history, this is surprisingly accurate in a lot of moments about Aztec history and Spanish colonization but with that extra Batman flare put in. I will say, the rogues gallery felt very forced in here with Two-Face, Poison Ivy, and Joker all feeling out of place in a story about the fall of the Aztec Empire, but I did really like the ties into the culture and mythology that justified the existence of Batman as a vigilante and Catwoman as well. Two-Face is not very Two-Face despite flipping a coin because it's just Hernan Cortes, a real dude, so they don't actually play with the Two-Face stuff because it's hard to make a genocidal maniac sympathetic (you would think...)
The animation is pretty cheap and feels a lot like the type of Flash Animation you'd see on a PBS kids program, but the voice acting was solid enough and the colors popped much more than your standard Batman fare. This is far from the best Batman animation ever, but as a history and elseworlds fan, it scratched an itch for me.
