Abstract: Dr Sutliff Sanders will be sharing some of the research from his forthcoming book on Batman: The Animated Series (Wayne State University Press, April 2021) with us: Although comics fans love to fight about the best, truest versions of their favorite characters, perhaps no iteration of Batman is more universally loved than the version that appeared in the 1990s children’s cartoon Batman: The Animated Series. This talk explores “Dark Deco,” the dramatic visual aesthetic of the show, and traces its historical resonances. It also picks a completely unnecessary fight with Paul Dini, one of the writer/producers most closely associated with the show, to demonstrate a profound irony set up by a conflict between that aesthetic and the vision of Gotham that the series offers.