DC Animated Producer, director, art director, writer, occasional voice actor and all around awesome guy Bruce Timm steps down.  And as long as everybody else is doing it, I call bullshit too.

If you’re even close to my age, when you think about DC comics, you can’t help but think about some of the incredible animated programs that have been created over the course of the last twenty-one years.  To most of us, we know that his work more or less started with Batman: The Animated Series, which eventually became The Adventures of Batman and Robin.  In truth, a quick look at Timm’s IMDB page will show you he actually started working with DC animated characters as far back as 1981 on The Kid Super Power Hour with Shazam!

With that in mind, Batman: TAS began a setting that has been lovingly known as the DC Timmverse, owing to his role as character designer on that program and many, many more roles within that setting throughout time.  That show started the pattern of his later work with the characteristic stylized physiques and clean lines of super-heroes.  Timm’s work never had to accentuate musculature with dozens of dark lines like you might have seen a contemporary Marvel work, X-Men, instead depending on silhouettes that cut a heroic figure.

The Timmverse expanded to include a Superman series, Batman Beyond, and two Justice League series along with a handful of movies, one of which even received a full theatrical release, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm.  If you haven’t seen this film, I strongly recommend you go out and buy a copy, don’t rent it, buy it.  You won’t be sorry.  It’s a wholly original story with some fairly adult themes and you can never go wrong with our good friend Mark Hamill as the Joker.

Timm went on to work as executive producer on Teen Titans, Green Lantern: The Animated Series, and, if you’ve seen a DC animated feature since 2007, chances are that he was executive producer on those, too.

Some of the most recognized characters in comics today had their start in the Timmverse or their modern conceptions were fundamentally formed by his work.  For instance, Harley Quinn, the Joker’s on-again-off-again love interest/lackey did not exist until she appeared in Batman.  The interpretation of the Question as a Mulder-esque conspiracy theorist (in a hilarious way) appeared in Justice League Unlimited initially.  Perhaps the most important fact remains that the voices that we associate with many of these characters have their origins in the Timmverse, Kevin Conroy is the voice I hear in my head when I read Batman, Mark Hamill is the Joker (and voiced Solomon Grundy and the Trickster), George Newbern is Superman, when Adam Baldwin isn’t, anyway.

In essence, here’s what I’m getting at.  The Timmverse created an easily accessible way for kids, teens and adults to get into comics without needing eighty-years of background knowledge.  In many cases, especially in Batman, those stories were adult, complex and hold up even now and I suspect they will for a while.

I know that we can’t give Bruce Timm all the credit for laying that foundation, there were whole teams of men and women working to make it come together and I’m sure he’d be the first to point that out.  But there’s a reason that the animated setting wasn’t simply known as DC Animated, it was the Timmverse.  At the end of the day, when we see the last of Mr Timm at the helm, it will be a sad one.  The man with the unenviable position of taking his place will have a hard road to travel and a ludicrously long shadow to fill, but I suspect he’ll do okay.  He just won’t be Bruce Timm.

And that’s bullshit.

**SPECIAL BONUS** Bruce Timm appears on Conan to help him develop a superhero based on himself.  Skip to the 4:50 mark to see it.