No Bat-Auteur For "The Batman"

The behind-the-scenes gossip about the forthcoming live-action Batman movie The Batman was initially more interesting than the movie itself. It's star, Ben Affleck, was set to star in this one-shot Batman picture amidst hopscotch performances in a handful of DC Comics superhero movies, beginning with Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice. What Batman fan wouldn't want an actual Batman movie whilst Warner Brothers is playing catchup to Marvel Studios? And it would be called The Batman...because they already used "The Dark Knight" for The Dark Knight and there are only 3 other monikers left: "The Caped Crusader", "The Masked Manhunter" and "The Dark Knight Detective".

The title is serviceable, but the big draw was that Affleck was going to produce, direct and co-write the script with Geoff Johns, whose Batman: Earth One graphic novels always seemed crafted like Batman movie plots. Rumors about the plot were tied to casting, with the most prominent that Joe Manganiello (a once-rumored casting choice for the part of Batman) would be cast as Slade Wilson, aka, Deathstroke, best known as the archfoe of Nightwing and the Teen Titans. Another rumor was that the film would feature all the Batman villains...how this could work is a mystery - it's usually the type of plot found in the Batman video games, like Arkham City. And while Affleck denied that the screenplay was going to be based on any pre-existing story, a film involving a breakout at Arkham Asylum that features all the villains at once would make sense...maybe the Joker and Harley Quinn were going to appear in it to play off events from Suicide Squad?

Then the rumors sounded less progressive. Affleck at first seemed pragmatic, observing that he may have to redesign the present Batman costume into something that would be comfortable for him to use when hoping behind and in front of the camera...then there were rumors about the script. Did a script exist at all? Was it badly-received by the studio? Then we heard that screenwriter Chris Terrio was brought in to give the script a rewrite. The studio still wasn't thrilled  (again, this is all rumors, rumors, rumors), but they desperately want a Batman movie ready before the audiences decide they'll just let Marvel Studios have their dollars or because they can't seem to get any other production running solid within the timetable they've set for themselves.

Then...a bombshell. Affleck bails. He's still willing (or obligated? Rumors, rumors, rumors) to play Batman, but it's hinted that his heart's not into wearing any additional hats for this film anymore. But at least, his script - what remains of it - will still get used, right?

Enter Cloverfield, Planet of The Apes franchise reboot and now new director of The Batman, Matt Reeves. He wants to use a new script that would incorporate his own ideas. Fair enough. But that's the end of the auteur Affleck Batman movie we thought we were going to get, which will live on in lists of unmade Batman films that include Batman Unchained/Batman Triumphant, Batman Beyond, Batman: DarKnight and alternate versions of Batman vs. Superman and Batman Begins.

The first picture headlining this post is a composite of what I pictured we might've seen in the Affleck Bat-flick...and might still see, since every idea gets used in Hollywood. The Catwoman film with Halle Berry and Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skulls were based loosely on ideas from rejected scripts that were kicked around for years! It could happen!

I'm not sure the second image I'm offering might. I thought it would be fun to imagine a Batman movie featuring villains I hadn't seen before on film, plus The Penguin, because the latest rumor I had read was that actor Josh Gad might be up for the role. Rumors, rumors, rumors.

So who's the villain draft picks for my Batman movie project? Hush, Nocturna, The Gentleman Ghost and The Penguin. A gamesman, a femme fatale, a trickster and a gangster. It's risky to me because none of those four are as popular as the Joker and Harley, but I think they offer cooler visuals than Bane or Ra's Al Ghul did in the Nolan movies...maybe if the script is good. I need to collaborate with a good screenwriter...

"Adjust The Color On Your Batman Movie."

https://youtu.be/1_r-qsxGiKY

Emil Gustafsson Ryderup's unofficial remix of the upcoming animated Batman film, Batman: The Killing Joke on YouTube created a sensation last month. His intent was to incorporate colorist John Higgins effort on the original version of the film's source material: the 1988 graphic novel by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland. That version remained in print until 2008, when the hardcover anniversary edition was released. Artist Brian Bolland recolored the book with a more subdued color palette, eliminating Higgins' funky, psychedelic look.

Ryderup's trailer got positive feedback from viewers...possibly because it gives the film some visual oomph that's missing - it has the same, flat, generic anime look that's crept into all of DC Comics/Warner Home Video direct-to-dvd/Blu-ray releases since their Wonder Woman film. As of today, new images offered on Facebook seem to imply colors on the film were given a slight adjustment...or that could be photo-edit trickery. What remains is that it's faithful to the comic, with it's big draw being that the best actors ever cast as the voices of Batman and The Joker - Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill, respectively - are reprising there roles, along with Tara Strong as Barbara Gordon/Batgirl...

..yeah, Batgirl...time to address the elephant in the room..

The comic book is what it is - lean and mean. I'm not going to defend it; I don't believe it's the best Batman comic ever, or best Joker story - I prefer Mad Love. It is the best of the dark Batman stories..like Moore wanted to top Frank Miller by penning a true tale of Batman failing, at the height of his mental and physical power; even Miller's recent Dark Knight Returns: The Last Crusade couldn't show a Batman at his peak - The Killing Joke shows that. It also shows Batgirl crippled and - strongly implied - raped. Lean, mean and nasty, this book was. And polarizing. To say it's the "Greatest Batman story of all time" seems really oddly put. It's the most chilling. It's a pure horror comic starring Batman and the Joker. Maybe that's why Higgins' colors seemed apropos; it really was like a 50's horror comic.

It's been reported that additional scenes have been added to the film adaptation to give it a feature-length running time. Does this mean we'll get a "love conquers all"-style epilogue chronicling Barbara's recovery from her paralysis? Or how about a definitive bit of fan wish-fulfillment by revealing that Batman snapped the Joker's neck in the final moments - not just simply a breaking of the 4th wall? The book has it's answer; the film may offer another. We'll have to see.

Perhaps in two years - when the "30th Anniversary Edition" of The Killing Joke is published (and they WILL do this - it's THE best-selling graphic novel of all time...right now..at the moment), it will feature both
versions - either side-by-side or one following the other. It should also include "An Innocent Guy" - Bolland's unrelated short story that was published in the 20th Anniversary Edition - but also offer a version with John Higgins returning to add psychedelic coloring to that. Just for the completeness of it.

I hope that link works..if not, just pretend that's a popup add for free movie tickets or detergent or hamburgers..heh, heh, heh, heh, heh..

Paul Dini's "Dark Night"

I really wish DC Comics' upcoming graphic novel, Dark Night: A True Batman Story by Paul Dini and Eduardo Risso, were released now instead of in June,  because, for my money, that's a more-interesting read than a lot of the Batman comics offered right now (and yes, that includes Dark Knight III: The Master Race*). So..as with that Ducktales preview art and Spider-Man's cameo in the Captain America: Civil War trailer (or...is that Spider-Man: Civil War? ;) ), I/we must make do with speculation and inferences based on whatever tidbits available.

Dini's Dark Knight is actually more like Realworlds, the series of standalone one-shots from DC's Elseworld's imprint, which offered stories of the effects fictional characters  (in this case, DC Comics superheroes) had on the lives of people in the "real" world. Superman was about an ex-con who had a tattoo of the "S" shield on his chest; Batman was about what happens when a developmentally-disabled boy whose habit of role-playing as the "goody-two-shoes" Adam West Batman in his interactions with others becomes influenced by his exposure to darker incarnations of the character. Dini's tale, however, is autobiographical, and in this sense, reminds me of Harvey Pekar's American Splendor. In 1993, Dini was mugged and beaten to within an inch of his life by two thugs. The incident left him shaken and despondent; he goes through a considerable amount of soul-searching before he recovered. Batman, the Joker, and other characters appear as avatars for Dini's thought processes throughout the story.

When Dini was recently interviewed by Kevin Smith and Mark Bernardin in an episode of Smith's Fatman On Batman podcast, Bernardin popped the 1 million dollar question: Did this incident change the way he wrote Batman? This is interesting, because according to the timeline, Dini recalled that he was working on the script for Batman: Mask of The Phantasm and considered being pulled out of the production. I'm not sure which scripts of Batman: The Animated Series credited to Dini were completed before it happened or after, but he did observe (with the air of it being the first time anyone had asked him that particular question) that his Batman became more "..circumspect..more human." It's very tempting to say that he began writing Mad Love, one of the greatest Batman stories ever told, in the aftermath, but certainly, all of his creative output, post-1993, would've fallen under the auspices of his "circumspect" Batman, even his run on Detective Comics during the past decade. I imagine it will to look backwards and re-read/re-rewatch all of Paul's stuff when this book comes out.

I can make one observation: Risso's cover depicts Paul wrapped in bandages, similar to how Harley Quin appeared in the ending to Mad Love. Harley has become Paul's signature character; for a time, it was logical that Paul be brought in to write her reintroduction, be it in a new Batman cartoon series  ( The Batman ), a spin-off  ( Batman Beyond: The Return of The Joker ), webseries ( Gotham Girls ) or a video game ( the Arkham City series ). I remember being disappointed when DC chose Karl Kessel instead of Paul to write Harley Quin's first ongoing comic book series (especially when it turned out that Kessel wasn't really familiar with the character's appeal/popularity and the book coasted on the artwork of Terry Dodson). So, with the character more popular than ever before  (and likely to increase exponentially when Suicide Squad hits theatres), it is fitting that it coincides with her creator  (technically, co-creator, but the character was born out of a cheesy sketch by Dini - which was eventually revisited and given new life as a pricey statuette from DC Direct) would offer an experience that parallels a moment from his most-acclaimed work...and just as other writers, artists and actresses begin putting their own spin on Harleen Quinzel. If you've seen the trailer for Squad, you've noticed Margot Robbie's performance is the first to eschew a facsimile of original Harley Quin-potrayer Arleen Sorkin's exaggerated vocal stylings...though I recall a rumor that we might see her wear an outfit resembling the classic Harley Quin, the Tank Girl-meets-Rainbow Brite look is more interesting than Harley's current look in the comics.

Like I said, I wish this was available to read right now...

*issue 2 had a nod to World's Finest  in one panel..that was cute.

Catching Up: #FourComics...That I Read In The 90s

Moreso than any decade before or after, the 1990s led comic book fans astray, left in the lurch, or feeling like they'd been had...did we want comic books with covers that looked like decorative notebook stickers designed by Lisa Frank? They sure looked pretty, especially with a big " #1" stamped in bold on the cover. It was hard to tell if anybody was actually thinking about reading this stuff, more preoccupied with hoping they could flip it. But the comic shops and publishers aren't hoping you get rich, are they? It felt like a Hobson's choice: read the stuff you like that the others don't care about, or collect the stuff you don't care about because that's what everyone else is talking about...and assume you can flip it in the near future.

And the cover prices were going up. This "hobby" - a word not often used anymore to describe comic collecting/reading - will no longer be casual spending.

I was still following the Disney Comics. The Disney company took back the character license from Bruce Hamilton to try self-publishing, which seemed logical, until they crashed and burned, too dependant on questionable marketing research. The survivor was Disney Adventures Magazine, a small digest that lasted the early-2000s like a little engine that could, running on moss-covered track. Hamilton got the license back in 1993, in time to serialize Don Rosa's magnum opus, The Life And Times Of Scrooge McDuck, in issues of Uncle Scrooge. To date, the Disney ducks  ( and mice ) have been carried by six different publishers within the last 25 years  and endured.

Other surprises that survived the 90s were Bongo Comics, founded by Simpsons creator Matt Groening to publish Simpsons ( and later, Futurama ) comic books. Upon acquiring the Hanna-Barbara characters, DC Comics' Scooby-Doo comic remains in print, alongside Looney Tunes as part of their "kid-friendly" line.

Marvel's Ren and Stimpy was "kid-friendly" because it's writer, Dan Slott, wasn't allowed to write fart and booger jokes...so, in my humble opinion, the book required actual, disciplined comedic wit (for the time that Slott was writing it, anyway) that outclassed the cartoons. The issue guest-starring Spider-Man  ( Slott's first time writing the character ) is a classic farce. I still remember the scene where Spidey suggests substituting powdered toast flakes with spider-silk on Ren and Stimpy's toast for breakfast...I imagine that would taste better than the Spider-Man tie-in breakfast cereals offered in the real world.

Speaking of an incarnation from a different medium outclassing the source material, Batman: The Animated Series was the best take on Batman offered, and a tie-in comic book series, The Batman Adventures, didn't lose anything in translation. Mad Love was a one-shot "special" issue, featuring story and art by the best-known of the TV series' creators, Paul Dini and Bruce Timm. I didn't get a chance to read it until around 1998, when it was reprinted with that magnificent painted cover as a "prestige format" trade paperback graphic novel. Mad Love was the best Batman comic of the 90s.

What would eventually be referred to as "The Timmverse" could also be found in Superman Adventures. The best issues were when Mark Miller was writing the book, offering an uncharacteristicly light approach compared to his better-known efforts on The Authority, Wanted and Kick-Ass. This issue featured a team-up with Batgirl to save a kidnapped Bruce Wayne from The Mad Hatter, in a plot reminiscent of the Superman: The Animated Series episode, "Knight Time". Cool art by Mike Manley.

I had no knowledge of what transpired in Spider-Man comics between his meeting Ren & Stimpy and his wife Mary Jane's miscarriage  ( a low down, nasty moment that would foreshadow other, cheap and nasty moments in the future of Spider-Man comics ), but I was enjoyed the Saban-produced, Spider-Man cartoon on FOX saturday mornings, so I picked up this particular issue of Spectacular Spider-Man, part 1 of  the 3-part "Goblins At The Gate", which featured the original Green Goblin against the original Hobgoblin, who was my favorite of the 90s cartoon villains featured on the show, thanks to the inspired notion of casting Mark Hamill as the voice of the character and using his Joker voice from Batman: The Animated Series. The arc was also plotted by Roger Stern, who is considered one of the top 2 best Spider-Man writers ( the other being Stan Lee, of course ), so the those 3 issues had more snap than a lot of Spider-Man comics offered in the late-90s.  At the time, my knowledge of Goblin continuity/history could fill the back of one or two trading cards, so I was surprised to see that Norman Osborn was back from the dead, or that there was more than one Hobgoblin, but I caught the reference to a once-trendy obscure 90's TV movie called Barbarians At The Gate. This arc was also a follow-up to Stern's Hobgoblin Lives mini-series, so I read that next, then continued reading more until I was up to date...the goblins are the Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd of Spidey's rogues gallery, anyway ( with Wile E. Coyote as Doctor Octopus ) to Spidey's Bugs Bunny...and realizing that it felt like nobody at Marvel particularly liked Spider-Man as a character in his present incarnation, as a married man; they were nostalgic for when he was a teenager, which amounts to the first 2 or 3 years of the character's history...

Goblins At The Gate had an anticlimactic ending, but it was a good page-turner. It had great covers by John Romita Sr., so it looked like classic, iconic Spider-Man. After this, it felt like everyone working on Spider-Man was trying too hard to achieve what they felt should be "classic" Spider-Man..but the #FourComics I posted on Twitter representing what I read in the 2000s were not one of Spider-Man's...

The Terrific 10 of 2013

Here we are -  a list of ten neat "things"  I liked in 2013, all funnybook/pop culture related/available in better-than-average comic shops, with emphasis on "things"  because the #1 on this list was not a comic book, yet it was the most "comic book" of all. So, without further  ado...

10. Tales of A Sixth-Grade Muppet: When Pigs Fly -  coinciding with the release of The Muppets and subsequent revival of that franchise's film franchise was a series of novels written and illustrated by Kirk Scroggs  (in the style of the Diary of A Wimpy Kid  series) about the Muppets consoling a boy after he is suddenly transformed into a Muppet...and still has to go to school anyway. There were four books in all, but the final installment is the best, because it jettisoned the sitcom kiddie novel trappings in favor of high fantasy - most of it is set inside the USS Swinetrek ... the ship from the Pigs In Space sketches on The Muppet Show. Suddenly the series feels like a Roald Dahl book...and that's a good thing.

9. House of Fun #1 - Evan Dorkin gave his humor comic Dork!  a name change when he moved it to Dark Horse, naming it after his & wife Sarah Dyer's website, HouseofFun.com, and adding color! Perennial favorites Milk and Cheese are also present, along with a new Eltingville Club story and recurring sitcom-spoof The Murder Family, plus a lot of great stuff.

8. Superior Spider-Man #5: I'm happy to say that I've been enjoying the adventures of "Otter" (Doctor Octopus swapping minds with presumably dead Peter Parker and assuming the latter's life and superhero identity for the past year of Spider-Man comics,  hence the change-of-adjective in the book's title), largely because Marvel's stance on who Peter Parker/Spider-Man is  for the last decade has resulted in comics that didn't interest me, but this stuff, with Otto as Spider-Man...feels like the Spider-Man comics I read when I was a kid in the late-80s and 1990s...and in that sense, this is classic Spider-Man - not Steve Ditko or John Romita Sr., but David Micheline & Todd McFarlane, Howard Mackie & John Romita Jr., Todd Dezago & Mike Weiringo, Tom Defalco with Pat Olliffe & Ron Franz, and J.M. Dematteis with Sal Buscema or Luke Ross. YES...that was my Spider-Man: decadent,  domesticated, happily married  (Yes! He was happy!) not particularly accessible,  but the only time Spider-Man was accessible (in my humble opinion) was his origin story in Amazing Fantasy #15 .
Anyway, I chose issue #5 of Superior  for this list because it's an early standout issue - that cover alone lets you know the kid gloves are off fairly early in the game; writer Dan Slott's greatest accomplishment throughout this past year was to present "Otter" as a fully-realized character and not a placeholder.  I look forward to seeing how this storyline wraps up (as hinted) in the Goblin Nation storyline.

7. The All-New Ghostbusters #1: rumors of a new sequel to Ghostbusters have hinted at a lot of things, most prominent the rumor that a new team of GB's will appear alongside the old guard ( I heard Jonah Hill and Emma Stone have been cast ). Anyway, IDW had some fun with these rumors by relaunching their Ghostbusters comic with a new #1, featuring a new team made up of recurring characters that had been introduced in recent storylines, led by Janine the receptionist for a half-dozen issues before the "good ol' boys" came back. I'm sure Dan Ackroyd and Ivan Reitman have their own ideas, but this was fun.

6. Doctor Who vol. 2 #12 : this issue marked the conclusion to "Sky Jacks", a fun four part arc that brought Clara Oswald into IDW's Doctor Who comic book series. Those among you familiar with the concept of the Tardis - the Doctor's "bigger-on-the-inside" time machine, will REALLY love this one, since the show doesn't really have the budget to show a WW2 bomber flying inside it. :)

5. The House of Mystery: my blog, my list, my rules - the public library had all 8 volumes of the DC Vertigo revival of DC Comics' code-approved  Silver Age horror series, written mostly by Matthew Sturges (with Bill Willingham contributing material here & there) from a few years back. It starts off rocky, with the tone of contributions by Willingham clashing with Sturges' storylines before the latter takes over writing all the material,  allowing it to find its groove before the announcement of its cancellation forces a rushed conclusion. I noticed how (or maybe it's just me seeing things) Sturges scripts seemed to switch influences midstream from Joss Wheddon to Russell T. Davies and ending with Steven Moffat. Very timely. I loved it. I DO strongly recommend you skip Willingham's story in the premiere issue about the girl getting pregnant with the mosquito boyfriend...what was Bill smoking that night when he thought that up?

4. Superheroes! Capes, Cowls and The Creation of Comic Book Culture : you may recall a post from last fall, in which I reviewed a documentary on PBS about comic book superheroes (DC & Marvel  Comics superheroes,  mostly) and I thought the thesis inferred from watching it was that you didn't need to read the comics to enjoy the characters, because they had become subsumed within mainstream pop culture, perhaps in a cynical way...and they left out stuff! :)  Laurence Maslon, who worked on that documentary and cowrote this  companion book, had read my review, and left his comments,  including a suggestion that I check out this book - I'm glad I did. The book presents a stronger case for the film's argument that the genre has become ingrained within our pop culture landscape...and I believe that's because the authors - Maslon with Michael Kantor - offer new voices. With the exception of Jim Steranko talking about his work on Nick Fury, and Neal Adams (taking a break from defending his work on Batman: Odyssey , for a change), I had heard a lot of those guys in the film on older interviews giving the same answers they always give in documentaries and books/magazines about comics, so the programme was likely a success among newer audiences. This book was well-written and deserves a place on your bookshelf.

3. The Joker: The Clown Prince of Crime: Miracles happen. Small miracles, at least. Who knew that DC Comics would actually release all 9 issues of The Joker's late-70s solo series in a handy, affordable (!) trade paperback - in color!!  This was the treat of the year.

2. Jim Henson: The Biography: Brian Jay Jones's excellent book about the man who created the Muppets is fantastic and heartbreaking at the same time; the last 1/3 of the book reads like a workaholic's fever dream, as Jones chronicles every single project that Henson was working on during the last few years of his life and how his multitasking had spread him too thin creatively, resulting in a string of flops (The Jim Henson Hour in particular,  which is sad, because I do remember watching that show and missing it when t was yanked). If there was never any doubt about how creative the man was, Jones does shed light on his faults, perhaps eerily foreshadowing his untimely demise due to a bacterial infection that may have been preventable,  because, as I insist that you should read and see, the man was always busy. He was a genius - he could never stay idle and content where he was; he had an entrepreneurial spirit and optimism that kept him going...even when his final days were spent as the eye of a tornado that he thought he was calming by adding another gust of wind.  Sad, brilliant,  joyous and heartbreaking - the epitome of "gone too soon".

1. Doctor Who: The Day of The Doctor: THIS ...was the best "thing" of 2013. I really didn't care about what Marvel was doing, or DC Comic's 3D "wiggle" covers or Zombo the Clown (Jeff Lester's favorite) or Dark Horse's Battlestar Galactica-esque interpretation of George Lucas's pre-1st draft scribbles of "The Star Wars"...and nobody could've anticipated just how fantastic Doctor Who's 50th anniversary special would be. I've already written about the special before...but I may have neglected to add that this was the best thing of 2013.

And now you know.  :)

Jingle Bells, Batman Smells...

Jingle bells
Batman smells,
Robin laid an egg...

The Batmobile lost it's wheel...
And the Joker got away!

The first time I had ever heard this parody of the lyrics to Jingle Bells was when Bart Simpson sang it in The Simpsons Christmas Special, back in 1989. There is no official "full" version of this song parody and the origins of it have a big Riddler-worthy question mark stamped on it; we only know that it emerged in the public consciousness in the mid-1960s, rather conveniently close to the premiere of the live-action Batman TV series starring Adam West. I suppose it could have been a product of the massive and aggressive campaign to promote the show before & during its first season - the so-called "Batmania"  that made the series a pop culture fad for its first two seasons. It wasn't until the 1990s Batman: The Animated Series episode "Christmas with The Joker", that it became official camp shorthand "Bat-speak" by having The Joker (voiced by Mark Hamill) sing it on the show, albeit as a missed opportunity; why didn't they create a definitive full version of the song right there? Oh well.

If anyone knows the truth about where this spoof came from, feel free to drop in with your comments. In the meantime,  I found some fun stuff to share, including three memes I made myself, appearing here for the first time. Enjoy!