Welcome to The Not-So-New 52, your digital Swampflix comic book (adaptation) newsstand! Starting in 2007, DC Comics and Warner Premiere entered the direct-to-home-video market with animated features, mostly in the form of adaptations of well-received event comics or notable arcs. This Swampflix feature takes its name from the 2011 DC relaunch event “The New 52,” and since there are (roughly) fifty-two of these animated features as of the start of 2024, Boomer is watching them in order from the beginning with weekly reviews of each. So, get out your longboxes and mylar sleeves and get ready for weekly doses of grousing, praise, befuddlement, recommendations, and occasional onomatopoeia as we get animated for over fifteen years of not-so-new comic cartoons.

Sometimes, it feels like I’ve been doing this project my whole life. I can’t remember a time before NSN52. I almost never mention these movies on the podcast because they’re rarely noteworthy enough to discuss there, but when I have mentioned it to the others off-mic or in conversation with friends, I have mentioned that doing this might be the metaphorical “smoke the whole carton” camel-crippling straw for me engaging with superhero media ever again. “I’m genuinely sick of typing the word ‘Batman,’” I say. “If I never type the word ‘Batman’ again, it’ll be too soon.” Last week, I mentioned that Man of Tomorrow was the last solo Superman outing, but we’ve got three more Batflicks after this to plow through, and of the remaining dozen or so movies after that, he’s a character in half of them. This franchise knows which cow gives the most milk and it’s never been afraid to tip its hand about its preferences, but I’m pleasantly surprised and happy to announce that this one was fun, clever, and original, so at least we’ve fended off despair for another week.

Batman: Soul of the Dragon is a pastiche of seventies kung fu-sploitation movies. As the film opens, martial arts master Richard Dragon (Mark Dacascos) infiltrates the swanky, swinging island compound of eccentric millionaire Jeffrey Burr. Burr, in true exploitation fashion, is introduced to us by paying a sex worker and then, instead of letting her leave peacefully, ushers her into dark enclosed space, where he unleashes several of his pet reptiles and watches with otherworldly satisfaction as they feast. (In another world, trying to find her now-missing friend would have Friday Foster out to this island to take some names.) Dragon discovers that Burr is the leader of the Kobra cult and seeks out his old friend Bruce Wayne (David Giuntoli) to tell him that Kobra has possession of “The Gate.” This leads us into a flashback in which Wayne, in his walking of the earth to learn all the martial arts known to man, finds himself at the temple of O-Sensei (James Hong), a legendary grandmaster who takes on the orphaned billionaire as one of his students. Richard is already there, as are Lady Shiva (Kelly Hu), Ben “Bronze Tiger” Turner (Michael Jai White, who previously portrayed the character in live action on Arrow), Jade Nguyen (Jamie Chung), and Rip Jagger. As they train under O-Sensei, they learn that he is protecting an interdimensional gateway that protects the world from the snake demon Nāga. There is a traitor in their midst, however, and they reveal themselves as a member of Kobra who is seeking to free Nāga, but when they open the gateway, they are killed by their deity immediately, forcing O-Sensei to sacrifice himself to close the portal … for now. In the (70s) present, Dragon learns that Bruce is Batman when he enlists him in preventing the legions of Kobra from opening the gate once more. But first, they’re going to have to get the gang back together. 

This is a fun one. Creating this as a kung-fu potpourri makes it feel warm and familiar in a good way, and it also makes the action sequences more dynamic than the normal punch-punch-batarang-laserbeam ho-hummery of most of these non-spooky cartoons. There’s a fluidity to the motions of the characters that’s normally just handled as rote superhero action sequences with the occasional novel idea. Here, it’s not just an element of the style, it is the style, and it does wonders for making this one stand out from the pack. The selection of which characters to use for this exercise is inspired, and I’m sure that whoever was complaining about Lady Shiva going out like a chump on the TV Tropes page for Apokalips War was pleased to see her played as a badass here. Even the generic mysticism about portals and serpent cults and swords that capture souls plays to the film’s strengths. About the only thing that I can think of that anyone could have a grievance about is that this is barely a Batman movie, but you won’t hear that complaint from me. For me, it’s more praiseworthy that this one was so fun and enjoyable that even though I’m at a point of such Batsaturation that I’m exhausted of thinking about the character, this one still managed to be entertaining and worthwhile. 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond