âBatman: The Animated Seriesâ Predicted the Bat-Future Now streaming on HBO Max, the show redefined the caped crusader years before he became one of the worldâs most popular and endlessly recycled characters. âBatman: The Animated Series,â which premiered in September 1992, was a departure from earlier TV incarnations of the superhero.Credit...DC Comics Listen to This Article . Before Robert Pattinson and Ben Affleck and Christian Bale, there was Kevin Conroy and the Gotham City of âBatman: The Animated Series.â The Warner Bros. series, which ran from 1992-1995 on Fox Kids, arrived on HBO Max in January. A Saturday morning cartoon that was also a super-stylized foray into the noir genre, it brought the Dark Knight version of the caped crusader to television, redefining a formerly earnest, occasionally silly TV hero and foreshadowing the ever darker iterations to come.