Daily Batman: the Long Halloween

The death of Johnny Viti.

Daily Batman: Knee-wobbler

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There it is again.

Daily Batman: Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none…

Part of a series of posters by Laura Pittman on the behance.

Daily Batman: A colorless female brain

Barbara Gordon prepares to go from librarian to Batgirl. I’d be more interested in the opposite direction, but to each their own.

It happens: “Friends without benefits” edition

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Happens all the time.

Meanwhile, upstairs …

via sequential crush on the blogger. More.

“The Grey Lady of Coburn Manor.” Dorothy Manning (w), Ernesto Chua (p), and Vince Colletta (i). The Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love #4. (March-April, 1972.) DC Comics.

There is now a semi-agreed-upon comics citation style guide. Tell A Friend!

Daily Batman: A-caroling we shall go

It’s Christmas Eve, kids. Get out there and earn some figgy pudding today! Make a joyful noise.

Daily Batman: Batman has a socking in his stocking just for you

Daily Batman: Tough on Santa. Tough on crime.

This guy and orphanages. He almost acts like his parents are deaaaaaaaad!!!

69 Days of Wonder Woman, Day 38: Who the world needs me to be

All-Star Comics No. 8, featuring the first appearance of Wonder Woman, debuted in December, 1941. It hit the stands amidst the tumult following the Japanese strafing of Pearl Harbor on December 7th. After President Roosevelt’s Infamy Speech and declaration of war, patriotic fervor was wild. The response to the fortuitously back-storied and red-white-and-blue-attired Wonder Woman on the team of the Justice Society was overwhelming. The following month, January, she appeared in Sensation Comics No. 1, this time on the cover. Six months later, United States involvement in the second world war at full swing, Wonder Woman’s own title comic line debuted. It has not ceased publication since.

I’d like to later do a thing comparing Wonder Woman to all the Joan of Arc propoganda through the decades but I need to make dinner. Catch you on the flip.

Daily Batman: Talk nerdy to me — third Nolanverse film rumor round-up

My Bat-ticipation has been kicked in to high gear since the announcement several months ago that Chris Nolan and his brother had completed the script for the third film in Nolan’s Batman Begins series. Stars are aligning, schedules are floating, and everyone and their dog thinks they have the inside scoop on the plot.

I can play that game, too.

Rumors and speculation, ahoy!

Rumor: The new film is titled The Dark Knight Rises. Potential truthiness: Total. The studio says yes, that’s the title, but Bale claimed while promoting his new film The Fighter that he wasn’t sure that would be the final title, saying that he’d wait until he “heard it from Chris.” The title is officially entered on IMDB as The Dark Knight Rises and I’d tend to think at this point will likely not change.

Rumor: Scripts will go to the actors in January, principal photography will begin in May, and the film will be in the can by November. Potential truthiness: This comes directly from Michael Caine, who is delightful and talented and a gift to generations of moviegoers, and who could still easily be completely wrong. Shooting will take place in New Orleans, which will give Gotham a seamier, heavier look than the crispy, boxy look of the grim Chicago Gotham we’ve seen in the last two films. The tragic poverty in the Ninth Ward would be a realistic backdrop for action in the Narrows, too.

Rumor: The Riddler will be the chief antagonist. Potential truthiness: Practically nil. This long shopped-around speculation has been pretty much permanently tabled due to some of the following rumors.

Rumor: Tom Hardy has been cast in the film. Potential truthiness: 100%, apparently. Awesome. The guy has great action chops and his looks are total female fan service. Aces in my book. The question of who he will play is where things get dicey for me.

Rumor: Tom Hardy will play Dr. Hugo Strange. Potential truthiness: Fair to middling — I’d say this rumor is at least on the right track, if not outright true. One of the first villains in the original DC comics, Dr. Strange is, in recent incarnations, a police psychologist who develops a bad case of bat-mania.

In the Legends of the Dark Knight comic series, in an arc which takes place roughly contemporaneous to the events of Year One, Long Halloween, etc., from whose stories the Nolans have taken inspiration in the first two films, Dr. Strange is employed by the Gotham City Police Department to help develop a profile of Batman in order to bring him to justice. The search is lead — and, of course, secretly hampered — by newly-promoted Commissioner James Gordon. The timing works out great and the plots match up well with where we left off in The Dark Knight. In fact …

Rumor: The Dark Knight Rises is based on the Prey arc from the Legends of the Dark Knight line. Potential truthiness: Somewhere between somewhat likely and “it would be a good idea if it is true.” This is a very recent rumor. Like, last week. It’s a plausible and good suggestion for the plot, but so was a fourth Spider-Man movie with Lizard as the villain and instead it’s back to high school like frigging chumps. I am cautiously optimistic about this rumor.

In the Prey story, Dr. Hugo Strange initially seeks to find Batman, who is Gotham’s Public Enemy No. 1 at this time, but grows to seek to be Batman, even successfully supplanting the vigilante and pulling some pretty whack shenanigans. He accomplishes this in part by brainwashing a fellow find-the-bat task force member, the mouthbreathing leg-breaker Sgt. Max Cort. Dr. Strange grooms Cort to become a vigilante, called Night Scourge, to flush Batman out of hiding.

This aspect of the plot dovetails very reasonably with the vigi-wanna-bes we saw plaguing Gotham City at the beginning of The Dark Knight. In the comic, Cort eventually kidnaps the mayor’s daughter under hynoptic suggestion from Strange. We met the mayor in the last film (Richard Alpert from Lost — that guy seriously gets around) so this, too, has conceivably got some decent groundwork already laid.

Hardy as British criminal Charles Bronson in Bronson.

Rumor that I am starting: If the former rumor is true, and the plot is based on Prey, then Tom Hardy is likelier playing Sgt. Cort than Dr. Strange. Potential truthiness: Probably zero. What the heck do I know? It’s just how I’d do it. The guy’s hunky and action-star-looking. He just seems a better fit for young, fit Max Cort than Hugo Strange, who is older, has a bald egg head, a phatty beard, and weird sunglasses. I’m admittedly coming at this from a shallow place: I really hope not to watch handsome Tom Hardy’s good looks get hopelessly mutilated to play the puppetmaster part. I’d rather see him play a hot hypnotized mouthbreather than shave his head again like he did for Bronson. I’m very shallow.

Rumor: Six actresses have been auditioned for two female roles. Reports are that one role is Bruce’s love interest and the other is a villain. The actresses are Natalie Portman, Anne Hathaway, Rachel Weisz, Naomi Watts, Kiera Knightly, and, for some implausible reason, Blake Lively. Potential truthiness: Pfft. These same names, except Lively, and sometimes Marion Cotillard and Angelina Jolie, have been getting tossed around since before the script was even finished. It’s just fantasy comic movie casting — we all do it, and until I see a picture of Anne Hathaway and Natalie Portman sitting beside Christopher Nolan holding folders that say “Top Secret Batman 3 Screen Test Script,” I have no reason to believe that those names should get any more credence than the ones I come up with myself in the car at long red lights.

Now, the rumors about the characters are new and much more interesting. Catwoman does enter the Prey story; tantalizingly, so does the Scarecrow in a later Strange arc in the Legends of the Dark Knight series (more Cillian Murphy? yes, please). And I’ve been saying for, like, three years that it’s time for some Talia Al-Ghul up in this piece. I even said she should be played by Rachel Weisz.

Besides old and easily wrong favorites like Catwoman and Talia, other potential female characters being floated around are Julie Madison, the Year One actress and early girlfriend of Bruce Wayne, which has a strong possibility of being true, and Detective Sarah Essen, who was not Bruce’s but Jim Gordon’s love interest (he cheats on his wife, Barbara, who we’ve seen a bit of in the last two films) at an earlier point in Batman: Year One. I don’t see it. First of all, Sarah popped up when Gordon was still a lieutenant, which ship has now sailed thanks to his promotion into Commisioner Loeb’s old spot — you need Loeb around and alive for the thing to work because it was his discovery of the affair and subsequent efforts to blackmail Essen and Gordon that lead to Essen ending the affair and leaving for New York — and the whole sad affair thing does not really fit with the Gordon we’ve been given so far in these films. Unless they are planning to change everything we think we know about Jim Dandy, or divorce or kill off Barbara (he did eventually marry Sarah after he and Barbara had been divorced), I don’t think that Ms. Essen will be appearing in the Nolanverse anytime soon.

Oh, man, I’m tired of doing this. I got more to say about the Scarecrow angle but I’ll have to come back to all of it later.

69 Days of Wonder Woman, Day 8: Super Dictionary, “I am against the people who make trouble.”

It’s interesting how quickly, even before the infamous code descended and cut out some of the popular gory lines, comics became dominated by superhero/crimefighter stories, due of course to the mad success of Superman. Sure, there have always been pulp adventure and horror comics, but when most people even think of comic books, it’s the heroes with which they associate the genre. The writers are driven by the publishers, who are driven by sales, which are driven by readers — so the natural conclusion is that a story about a badass goodhearted hero who fights crime is what the audience wants to read.

Drawing by Anthony Tan via fyeahww on the tumblr.

Comics are such manifestly wish-fulfillment-meets-folktale, flimsy-and-touching paper myths, that I think there’s a beautiful lesson here: we want to read about the hero who fights crime, who is “against” troublemakers and waiting with her golden lasso to show them what real trouble is, because we, ourselves, wish to do that. We wish to have a secret identity and fight for those who have no voice, to put a stop to injustices against our fellow men. All these generations of readers have wished to make the world better, not just for accolades or girls but because it is the right thing to do. And that’s really a great and inspiring thing. It’s sweet and charming and kind of triumphant, isn’t it?

PSA: Keep it real

PSA: Keep it real.

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Young ladies, you’re growing up now, and it can be hard to avoid peer pressure when you badly want to fit in, but remember — whatever you do, don’t do your hair like Ann-Margret.*

Oh, my god, Lindsay Lohan, what did I just say? I wash my hands of this girl. Like everyone else who touches her. That reminds me: almost time for a penicillin refill …

Don’t let it happen to you — keep it real.

*Reference image of megahot vintage ginger Ann-Margret for the littluns.

69 Days of Wonder Woman: Day 2

via fyeahww on the tumblr

“Wonder Woman — and the trend toward male acceptance of female love power which she represents — indicates that the first psychological step has actually been taken. Boys, young and old, satisfy their wish thoughts by reading comics. If they go crazy over Wonder Woman, it means they’re longing for a beautiful, exciting girl who’s stronger than they are. By their comics tastes ye shall know them! … Wonder Woman satisfies the subconscious, elaborately disguised desire of males to be mastered by a woman who loves them.

… Normal men retain their childish longing for a woman to mother them. At adolescence a new desire is added. They want a girl to allure them. When you put these two together, you have the typical male yearning that Wonder Woman satisfies.”

(Marston, William Moulton qtd. in “Our Women Are Our Future.” Richard, Olive.* The Family Circle. August 14, 1942.

Art by Phil Noto.

Marston was Wonder Woman’s creator, but that’s a story for another day. Also he lived in a polyamorous relationship with his wife and the author of this article, Ms. Richard, but that is also a story for another day. I’m pleased that this brief dive into psychology has already uncovered an aspect of Wonder Woman that leaves me cold, or that I feel I do not share. I don’t mind taking initiative (especially in certain aspects of the relationship), but I hate being the stronger one.

Denise Milani.

I dislike getting pushed in to the corner and forced to make decisions and ask repeatedly for a thing to be done that has to be done and can only be done by my partner. It makes me feel like a nagging bitch, which I fear and hate, and it’s not fair. I want to be equals, I want to feel like we can rely on one another. I don’t even necessarily want to be total equals; I don’t know that I’d want to completely submit to a partner, but it would be nice to relax and feel taken care of. Not to always worry, not to be the only one tuned in to the big picture — not to feel alone.

Art by quasilucid via fyeahww on the tumblr

And it starts out all nice-guy like, “No, you pick a restaurant. I don’t care where we go,” or, “Let’s get something you want to see,” but it builds in to this passive-aggressive thing where it turns to this slow-simmering resentment on both sides. Mine because I don’t want to be in charge, at all, ever, I hate feeling that way and I hate being forced to lose respect for someone I love; the other person’s because even though they have put me in this position of power it was really to avoid responsibility and now they’re feeling mutinous, the immaturity of which makes me see that they really are, in fact, weaker than me and makes me lose even more respect. When I can’t respect someone, then I don’t feel like I have a partner, and when I don’t feel like I have a partner, I don’t feel safe, and when I don’t feel safe, I am out of love.

I hate, hate, hate that aspect of a relationship. I hate being more powerful. There might actually be literally nothing that I hate more than that when it comes to love.

Cheese blintzes, looks like Day 2 was pretty damned educational for me. I’m going let that make up for the week and some odd days in between Days 1 and 2.

Stop: Cappy-time!

Updates might be spotty the next few days: the Cappy is about to be in town in, like, an hour on that aforementioned leave and I will be trying to spend as much time as possible with my brother from another mother before the Army steals him away again.

This is an outtake from a shoot for a poster that came free with an X-Files comic book that the Cappy and I both had in high school. HMS Dorkytimes, ahoy!

For a four-eyed loner who spent most of my childhood in the back of moving vans with headphones and a comic, and my school days trying to stay under the radar, I am ridiculously lucky to have such great, great friends as an adult. The past few weeks have made me more aware of that than ever.

I’ll try to squeeze in or schedule my Daily Batmans and some fun stuff in the next few days, but I plan to be mainly absent. Catch you on the flip!

Daily Batman: Get down with your crazy self

Bats in the belfry.

via and via.

There is no genius free from some tincture of madness.

(Seneca.)

Hey. I’m home from going home and after I post up a few things, I will work back through the comments. I hope you have all had an illuminating, fascinating, orgasmic last ten days and I am totally willing to hear all about it whether you have or have not. It feels good to be back!

Daily Batman: Batman and Robocop, BFFs

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Click to enlarge.

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: 19 Man

Last year my friendoh’s rad son came up with a superhero who was made out of number 19s and was named, appropriately, “19 Man.” That drawing has been lost to time so he made me a new one.

19 Man has a sidekick and a nemesis who has his own sidekick, and they all have kickass pets. Please click to enlarge and enjoy the awesome creativity. I especially like Mustache Dog — the very combination of the words of his name is something like “cellar door” or “fiddlesticks;” it pleases, yes?

I think I’ll start including some of my daughter’s work in liberated negative space as well. Like Picasso said, “All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”

Daily Batman: It’s always something

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It’s always something.

Daily Batman: Why? … Why?

In Batman’s nightmares, he is not well-liked and he doesn’t understand why.

I had troubling, thickly plotted nightmares last night but too much was going on immediately after I woke that I didn’t have time to make a note of them. The last dreams like that I can remember happened while I was subbing for the Scamps, and I told them about it the next day:

I dreamt that my daughter was being held in this large industrial building and I was using the stairs to get to a certain floor before the elevator, and a dude started pursuing me and I turned around and first wrestled him, then kicked him down a short flight of stairs, then ran briefly down after him for, you know, “suresies” and threw him over the edge and heard him come down all wet and broken on a landing several flights below. I totally did not even lean over the rails to check on him after that because I was only focused on getting the kidlet and getting out.

Scamps in bio class action, but I chose a blurry picture for privacy.

The kids were shocked and exhilarated by this vivid story of unmerciful ass-kicking and I said it was all on their heads because they’d asked me anxiously the day before during Social Studies what would happen if the President’s daughters were ever to be kidnapped. I’d reassured them and theorized that not only would the Secret Service prevent such a godforsaken thing from ever happening, but that my guess was Michelle and Barack Obama, besides being loving parents, are pretty hardcore and good at taking things in their own hands, and that I definitely would not want to be in the shoes of an attempted kidnapper of their girls were he to be caught.

In retrospect, maybe I shouldn’t have told a classroom of ten-year-olds that I dreamt I straight up dropped a motherfucker, but, on the other hand, it could be part of why I had practically zero discipline problems in that class.