Pretty Cover
To celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the 1989 Batman movie, DC Comics offered a "Deluxe Edition" hardcover reprint of the adaptation of the film into a one-shot comic book. Jerry Ordway's efforts at drawing likenesses of the cast, locations, props and vehicles from the film is still an impressive feat after all these years - not an easy task to accomplish, because designs for the caricatures go through an approval process; often artists are replaced upon request if the cast and director are not happy with the artist's work. It's because of Ordway's achievement with this assignment that the book is considered a classic. Unfortunately, you wouldn't know this from reading the book. To understand that, you need this:
A back issue of Back Issue Magazine devoted to development of the film's screenplay, graphic novel adaptation, newspaper comic strip tie-in, plus, the Batman comic books during the late-80s into the early-90s, which are still considered a golden time for sales of Batman comics, with sales figures reaching the millions...the comic book market really wishes these days were back again.
Twomorrows Publishing, which publishes Back Issue, along with other pop culture nostalgia magazines, offers copies on their website, since the shops tend to order conservative numbers of copies. It's not hard to get and I reccomend it for the commentary - particularly the sections featuring interviews with screenwriter Sam Hamm, writer/editor/legend Dennis O'Neil and Jerry Ordway, where it felt like I was learning new things about the making of the film that hadn't been revealed before. People who wonder about Michael Uslan's contribution to every Batman movie ever will learn from his interview that he pitched the idea of a "serious, dark" Batman movie for almost a decade, but he stops short of revealing why his name is rubber-stamped on a lot of films, yet he doesn't have anything to do with the production at all; you need to dig deeper to learn that this is the result of a deal in which he relinquished creative control for a percentage of the net and a flat fee with a "Producer" credit on every Batman film...to this day, he's very cagey about that, because he still does interviews about comic book history, but it's not a secret; it's just details that you need to dig for to get clarification, like this article from Den of Geek:
article.
At the end of the day, it's a sweet lifetime deal for helping development along during a fallow period.
As for the comic book of the movie, the appeal of having this in 1989 was that you get a peak at plot spoilers if you hadn't seen the film, or you haven't bought the film on home video, or your parents hadn't bought it - that's if you were a kid at the time. Anyone who remembers the videocassette will recall that it contained a heavy amount of videotape that asked for a lot of muscle from the VCR's rewind function - the rewind feature on the VCR was always the first component to cause the machine's motor to burn out from overuse fairly quickly, which is why separate machines called "tape rewinders" were popular, but were cheaply made and burnt out even quicker. This is the primary reason why VHS/Beta cassette recorders/players have not been revived like vinyl records, regardless of their clunkyness. So..having the comic book saved you from trying to watch the film more than once - at risk of ruining the family VCR by rewinding a heavy spool of videotape.
Another draw was deleted/alternate scenes. The comic was produced under a tight deadline. Ditto the novelization - even the bubble gum cards, so you'll find scenes depicted in the tie-in material that did not make the final cut. For example:
That scene was only partially filmed, but it was sandwiched into a "making of..." documentary for the 10th Anniversary DVD, which appears in the Blu-Ray and future anniversary editions, thereafter.
Another insight that I realized from reading the magazine interview with Sam Hamm...and I don't believe this has ever been brought up...from this film onward, the recurring theme is that Batman/Bruce Wayne is crazy, but the plot of each film has him encounter someone whose interactions with him result in him becoming sane, but he needs to rediscover his insanity in order to become effective at bearding an even bigger psychopath. I don't know if they'll ever shake off this theme, but this starts with Hamm's take - which he saw as "Batman's First Big Case", conceived before Frank Miller's Batman: Year One, which is partly why the film doesn't draw inspiration from it, perhaps superficially, the crooked cops and gangsters, but Hamm reveals that came from Steve Englehart's Batman stories, which implied Gotham City was controlled by the mob.
There's been recent talk of re-releasing an expanded edition of Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever, which would recover almost an hour of unseen footage from the cutting room floor, although I'm inclined to think it will be more of the dull stuff with Bruce Wayne and Chase Meridian, talking shop about his sanity, though that would reinforce my observation about Batman's arc in these live-action movies, which sounds less like a proper character arc and more of a beat for the actor playing Batman to play with.
pain go away, Batman...
That's a cool re-edit from the Batman Again YouTube channel, which remixes Han Zimmer's music into scenes from the 1st Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher Batman films, but in the video that shows a deleted scene from Batman Forever, the video includes footage from the 2 Burton films in a montage mixed with bits of Zimmer's score from Batman Begins to the tune of Val Kilmer's soliloquy: "..killing won't take the pain away..you make the kill, then you'll run off into the night..and find another face..and then another..and another..until you wake up one day and realize that revenge has become your whole life..." and that's with edited clips of Joker, Penguin and Catwoman - each encountering Batman before meeting their demise in the 2 films. Matt Reeves' The Batman, allegedly has 6 Batman villains, though we only know of Penguin, Riddler and Catwoman..which is still impressive. It'll be interesting to see if his film continues the observance of having a Batman whose greatest challenge is overcoming sanity.
So...yeah. Batman. The comic book of the movie. It's good. For extras and commentary, though..some assembly required.
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