(I've never bought the comics. My brother got a volume 1 anthology, but of course it didn't get anywhere near Bane's intro. Also, explains why I spelled Bane as Bain. As for the nineties show, well my memories are sorta garbled, about the only episodes I remember clearly was several of the about Clayface episodes, including one in a relaunch where he split off a part of himself as a "daughter" so that he could heal or something. I saw a few Bane episodes, but I always remember him as a hired thug rather than a free-agent like the Riddler or Joker, so I kinda figured he was too stupid to lead on his own. That combined with the fact that he thought he could go up against the freakin' Batman made me think he was unbelievably stupid, regardless of genius-level savvy.
But yea, I did get the sense that Batman and Robin sucked horribly. )