Batman: Three Jokers

   I like those free playing cards...I 

  noticed nobody's talked about     them..

DC Comics' seems to be on the verge of planning a funeral for itself...how many more paroxysms can it take within a single decade? There's a rumor that 2021 might be the year that longtime fans might want to consider dusting off the free black armbands that were bundled with copies of Superman #75 from 1992 and I'll leave it at that:

           Who invited Darkseid?

I must note how some of the ongoing storylines have a weird, metaphorical quality; Scott Snyder's incomprehensible mini-series, Dark Knights: Death Metal, revealed that Batman and Superman are cadavers, keeping themselves alive to fight 'till the fight is won with mystic paraphernalia, to put it simply. In the main Batman book, Batman is acting oddly out-of-character, leaving his entire fortune in the hands of Lucius Fox, an employee, albeit a trusted one, via a conservatorship, but this is all preamble to establish one of Lucius' sons becoming the replacement Batman in an upcoming storyline, rather than heir apparents Dick Grayson or Barbara Gordon or his own son, Damian...well, it's your money, Bruce.

Let's get to the real meat among the potatoes: having finished reading Batman: Three Jokers, it is my belief that this mini-series is the last good Batman comic book we are going to see for a long time, if ever again. I'm not really writing this in stone by putting that statement in bold italics, but it feels that way right now; if there are any good Batman comics forthcoming...it's all gravy to me; I can't really see anything as good as, or better, than this mini-series; I don't believe it was intended as a finale or last Batman comic, but...I'm not sure we'll see anything better. We'll see, right? Meanwhile, I mean it with sincerity that this was the best Batman comic I've read since Mad Love. And I enjoyed it more than The Killing Joke. More on this in a bit..

Years ago, I remember an editorial from an issue of Comic Buyers Guide that described 2 types of Batman vs The Joker stories:

1) The Joker steals the Batmobile:

   🎶 And the Joker got away! 🎶

2) The Joker tortures Batman over a pot of tea:

   🎶A cuppa' arsenic, some tea    and you..🎶 

Three Jokers was teased as being like the first, but is really more like the latter. The tease came from scenes in 2 crossovers that are not particularly required reading:

                         This.

                       And this.

Eventually followed by the formal announcement:

Why wasn't this used as the cover art for the hardcover collection?

When it became clear the mini-series was going to be a sequel to The Killing Joke, everyone wondered if this was going to stick the landing. I'm not a big fan of Killing Joke, though I'm aware every dark take on Batman and The Joker takes it's cues from that story; fans of Oracle hate it, even though it's the only reason Barbara Gordon remained in a wheelchair, as a callback to that story. And Alan Moore is no fan of it:

 I saw that movie...Barbara is probably the only normal person Batman had a relationship with.

              Hey...Batgirl's hot.

                   This tracks.

The only scene I like is that whole "speech" Batman gives at the beginning - variations of which have been pastiched for decades since:

 I played with the lighting on this shot to make it readable; I dislike how Bolland recolored everything in the reprints. 

So, Three Jokers is revealed to be a sequel in that it changes the fate of a character that appeared in The Killing Joke...technically, 2 characters, really. Aside from that twist, the real focus is on the psyche of the 3 heroes featured: Batman, Batgirl and Red Hood - Batman's ethics & morality, Batgirl's ambivalence and Red Hood's neuroses. Each of the 3 Jokers correspond with each hero in different ways; the Clown has the same capacity for violent impulses as Red Hood; the Criminal is as ambivalent and pragmatic as Barbara; the Comedian, like Batman, holds more cards than he lets on and plays them close. 

Jason Fabok's artwork  is fantastic, Geoff Johns scripts are his most deftly-crafted; this is a love-letter to the pre-Knightfall Batman comic books of the late-80's - early-90's, right before Batman: The Animated Series began to permanently set the style; there's a nearly-forgotten era of deceptively simple, gothic tales by Alan Grant & Norm Breyfogle, Marv Wolfman, Peter Milligan, Jim Aparo, Jim Starlin, Christopher Priest and Dennis O'Neil in the ongoing issues of Batman, Detective Comics and Legends of The Dark Knight, read by many who were brought into comic shops by the success of the 1989 Batman film, where the stories were told from a street-level/rooftop-level perspective, and the ethos of the film's story structure seemed to be echoed by the writers and artists. It was a golden time to be reading Batman comics. It's an amazing triumph for Three Jokers. It even offers a happy ending! There's a punchline for you...

It was better than good...better than good enough..

DullTales

I have no idea what the story is about, but the observational humor of this screenshot from the comics inspired me...it's true to life in ways we don't care to admit...

The Lady From The Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters And The Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick by Mallory O'Meara

Creature From The Black Lagoon is a popular choice of old-fashioned Halloween monster movie viewing, as an alternative to the numerous Dracula and Frankenstein movies out there. A recent release of the DVD for Creature shows that the text on the back of the container has stopped attributing credit for the design of the creature to Bud Westmore, the then-head of Universal's makeup department. This was not always the case; older editions of the film on DVD and VHS cassettes would give credit to Westmore, though the Blu-Ray edition did not.

      The cover of the current DVD.

So...what brought about the change? There's substantial proof that Westmore was a fraud who took credit for more work than he actually did; the design of the creature was created and drawn by Milicent Patrick, a former Disney Animator - she was an assistant to Bill Tytla for the character Chernabog on the "Nightmare On Bald Mountain Sequence" in Fantasia:

   That's right - she drew this guy!

Milicent Patrick had movie star looks and could articulate her ideas clearly; Universal's marketing executives concocted the idea of having Patrick go on a promotional tour of various TV and radio stations to promote Lagoon; this rubbed Bud Westmore the wrong way. As head of the makeup department, he wanted to be the only individual credited with anything and saw this as a coup, even though Patrick is on record as working hard to downplay her own contributions, knowing quite well that Westmore was fuming. It wouldn't have mattered; Patrick was doomed - Westmore came from a family of designers with considerable clout in Hollywood; he made certain she was fired from Universal and would never find work at any other studio as a designer. Wrongful Termination lawsuits in Hollywood did not become known, or common until the early-80s, both cases involving actresses; Cindy Williams sued Paramount after she was fired from "Laverne & Shirley" because the studio would not allow for maternity leave and her schedule would've required her to work while 9 months pregnant; in the late-80s, Valerie Harper sued Lorimar Telepictures, the company her self-titled sitcom, Valerie, when she was fired from the show after asking for a pay raise. 

Could Milicent Patrick have sued Universal Studios for Wrongful Termination? I would say yes, she could, but she didn't - most likely out of fear that she would never find any work at all. Mallory O'Meara's biography of Patrick does a great job of covering the essential details of her life, but stops short of insight into what Patrick was thinking afterward. Patrick passed away over 20 years ago at an assisted living facility; after being fired, she briefly took on a career as an extra, appearing in small parts in TV series and some movies, then married a wealthy man and spent the 1960s & 1970s as a philanthropist & socialite; in the 1980s she was living in squalor - the Hollywood mansion she occupied had fallen into decay after a mudslide. Her health had also fallen into serious decline; the last decade of her life was spent marking time. She had no children and was estranged from most of her family, except for one niece, who had whatever remained of Patrick's belongings that survived, including documents. There's no mention of Patrick keeping a diary, so she remains elusive. O'Meara admitted in the afterword that she could not find any corroborating information that could explain why Patrick once described herself as "..a Bugs Bunny expert." And O'Meara then has to hazard an educated guess as to what Milicent Patrick's mindset was like by finding correlations with her own biography; the end result was that I felt like I knew O'Meara more than I knew Patrick, which reminded me of the Julia Child biopic Julie & Julia, but I don't find any fault with her conclusions. I definitely recommend this book.

If someone were to tell you, "If you're good at something, stick with it," what can you do if you've been shut out of your chosen field? Milicent Patrick's life story starts off as a success story, then becomes a tale of someone who moved on after success was fleeting, then seems to fall into entropy and isn't vindicated until after her lifetime. It's sad, but it's real life..and monsters in real life don't have to wear fangs, green makeup or prosthetic gills; they can look like Bud Westmore...

      Milicent Patrick, Pioneer, RIP

Let's Get..The Spinoff!

I used that old press kit image of Darkwing Duck characters because I think it inspired the concept-heavy approach to reintroducing Darkwing Duck into the current Ducktales revival. In that picture, it's just a visual gag because the production team wanted to show Darkwing and his civilian identity, Drake Mallard, in the picture; for the 2017 reboot, however, it really is 2 different characters, now: Drake Mallard and Jim Starling. Jim was an actor who played Darkwing in a superhero TV series; Drake Mallard is the actor cast to play Darkwing in a big-budget movie. Jim went insane from the notion that he was passed over and the part was recast; he decides to sabotage the film's production and winds up becoming this series' incarnation of Negaduck:

Drake, in the meantime, having been a lifelong fan of the Darkwing character, decides to become the new Darkwing in real-life, relocating from Duckburg to St. Canard - the locale where all the classic Darkwing Duck adventures were set. His latest adventure introduces the new series' take on Drake's adopted daughter, Gosalyn.

And that's the new "Team Darkwing". I miss Jim Cummings as the voice of Darkwing/Drake Mallard, even though the production team has him onboard as Jim Starling/Negaduck, but it should be a law that the cartoon character's voice actor should only be recast if the original/defintive actor is either incapable of recreating their original performance, incarcerated or deceased. Cummings is alive and well, perfectly capable of recapturing every nuance that character needs. Chris Diamantopolous is okay as the new Darkwing, but he doesn't make me forget Jim. On the other hand, his performance is strengthened by the presence of Beck Bennett, who has been terrific as the new voice of Launchpad McQuack, and Stephanie Beatriz, who, in her debut as the replacement for the late Christine Cavanaugh as the new Gosalyn, is excellent here, as the character has been sharply revised to be more determined and/or less mischievous (the original version of Gosalyn had the capacity for this development and had similar agency, but often characterized as a wild card, often with no provocation).

           Prototype "Protoducks"

The 2017 Ducktales' Darkwing Duck would be the 3rd incarnation of Darkwing, though the 1st - Double-O-Duck (pictured) - only exists in concept art and some press kit material, including a lapel pin(!), but I'm inclined to count him and bring him up because the new take on Darkwing is closer to this prototype, from when it was initially conceived as a pitch by Tad Stones for a spinoff of the 1987 Ducktales featuring Launchpad & Gizmoduck as spies that was rejected by Jeffrey Katzenberg as not having "..a sense of family," then reworked, sans Gizmoduck, with a colorful new sidekick for Launchpad who was a single father...and ultimately reworked to be the real star of the show when the production team at Disney learned that they could not use "Double-O-Duck" because the owners of the James Bond brand owned "Double-O.." and had to come up with a new name.

Even though the new Ducktales show is considered a success and it seems like a foregone conclusion that Darkwing Duck is going to be picked up to become it's own series revival, it's something I'm ambivalent about. I find this Ducktales revival to be just okay; it's clear to me that the team behind the revival respected the success of the original Ducktales series from 1987, but with Darkwing Duck, the affection is a lot more genuine, so a revival of that will be much better than the Ducktales show we've had for the last 3 years. I figured if Disney is interested in keeping Ducktales in circulation like Warner Brothers does with Scooby-Doo, then expect additional revivals from other creative teams that might come closer to rekindling the appeal of the old series...as is, there's no denying the success..as another cartoon with talking ducks.

Duck Avenger Strikes Again! (Commentary)

I don't know if this will be the last time Donald Duck's superhero disguise gets the opportunity to front a hardcover collection of Disney comics, but it's a very attractive cover - I had to take a picture of my own copy of the book; the only stock image I could find is an early mock-up that's probably more true to the content inside the book, whereas the cover we got is more akin to the modern take on the character:

  That image is somewhat iconic

What this book really does is collect 3 stories - 1 Donald Duck, 1 Mickey Mouse, 1 Scrooge McDuck. The Donald story is the 3rd appearance of himself in a superhero costume..more of a concept than a complete idea at this early stage - he's still a light parody of Italian pulp comic character Diabolik, hence the name Paperinik, which changes depending on which country reprints the comics; in some places, he's "Super Donald", "Super Duck", "FantoDonald", "Phantom Duck" and, in the United States, Duck Avenger. Only a scarce handful of stories have been reprinted in the United States with this particular spin on Donald's usual comic book antics; gradually, over the decades, his adventures resemble a precursor/forerunner to Darkwing Duck, only ironically enough, Darkwing's creator Tad Stones has admitted to not knowing this character existed, but becoming a fan of the short-lived Duck Avenger comic books published by IDW pretty quickly, even taking a crack at drawing the character a few times in his own art:

   He flies like Captain Caveman!

It's an intriguing concept - Donald's greatest triumph is one that he has to keep totally secret - but...maybe it's premature and I haven't read enough of the material to be fair, but I found the stories that have been reprinted to just be okay...the plots don't seem to realize the potential of what it means that Carl Barks' Donald Duck has spent over 50 years in comics living a double-life as a superhero - not even in the late-90s when the Italian publishers gave him a fancy-shmancy revamp in the form of PK: The New Adventures, which became a huge smash hit and resulted in a spinoff videogame in 2002 for Playstation 2/XBox/GameCube. That was my introduction to the character, though I have memories of thumbing through imported editions of Piscou/SuperPiscou Giant at magazine shops like Hudson News in the early-90s and wondering "What is this? Why isn't Gladstone Comics or Disney Adventures Magazine reprinting this? This looks cool!"

It turns out that over the years, we were probably protected with efforts at quality control - if it looks like a Carl Barks comic, it would pass muster at being reprinted faster than something outside that frame of reference, but it was still cool when odd images would pop up online - like those sketches of Duck Avenger drawn by Don Rosa upon request by the fan he was houseguest to while in Italy for a convention:

And the door to eventually getting reprints in the U.S. opened in 2000, when Disney introduced the PK version of Duck Avenger in a 3-part tale for Disney Adventures Magazine:

Honestly, the greatest contribution to Duck comics made by giving Donald a superhero costume is not just making Donald a superhero. My argument for the best thing about Paperinik is the introduction of this guy:

The Italian comics call him "Uno", so the American/English translations call him "One", but I prefer the name "Globus", which I think is the Germans name for him, but American comics went with One, so that's that. Now, observe this page:

And this page:

 Can you see the breakthrough that I'm seeing? In the comic books, One is Donald's best friend! He's also Donald's only friend! It's not weird, it's not stupid; One is a sentient artificial intelligence hologram computer program, created by Everett Ducklair to monitor all the gadgets, vehicles and secret rooms contained in the Ducklair Tower skyscraper, which Donald became building superintendent of in the premiere PKNA adventure, which established that Scrooge McDuck was the new owner of the building. So, naturally, One became the Alfred/Jarvis/Aunt May confidant to Donald's superhero disguise, but it also gave him a friend who wasn't a relative that he could talk to and confide in. It was actually Don Rosa who observed that, aside from cartoons where Donald hangs out with Mickey Mouse & Goofy, or dates with Daisy Duck or teaming with Jose Carioca & Panchito Pistoles in Three Caballeros adventures, Donald spends most of his time in the company of his relatives, particularly his nephews - Huey, Dewey and Louie - and his Uncle Scrooge. One is different. One is a true companion. I don't know if there are stories in which One appears in stories outside of Paperinik adventures, but his interactions with Donald open that character's world more than Donald fighting alien ducks in purple jumpsuits that act like outer space Beagle Boys.

I figured I'll get around to reading the Mickey Mouse story someday; it's really more about Ellsworth the crow in the Foreign Legion than about Mickey, anyway. What links the stories in this volume beyond having the same artist is that they feature characters created for Italian Disney comics: Duck Avenger, Ellsworth and Brigitta MacBridge.  Each new character offered a new element to increase story potential: Donald gets to indulge in parodies of pulp superhero genre cliches; Mickey has a new supporting character to play off; and Scrooge gets to be in a relationship with a female duck character that's not a witch after his dime or a retired showgirl.

Carl Barks' interest in crafting story ideas for Brigitta MacBridge might be more interesting than any stories featuring her, though I remember enjoying Secret of The Incas and The Funny Carrots. When Gladstone reprinted her 1st appearance in The Last Balaboo around 1988 or 1989, they included an editorial column that spotlighted her popularity and offered intriguing hints of a story, suggesting from a sketch Carl Barks offered Romano Scarpa, of Brigitta using a "Money Perfume" to attract Scrooge. Scrapa did a drawing that recreated what that sketch looked like, for what was then alluded to as a story called "The Golden Bunch"; I kept a clipping of that and added colors to it:

Over the years, Barks' sketch turned-up online and was alluded  to as "Uncle Scrooge and The Golden Helmet". It was reprinted and included in this volume:

And now, 30 years later, we get to see this collaboration reprinted in the United States for the first time:

I really miss my old smartphone; it had a better camera and could take sharper pictures and the colors would pop better..

Well, one thing for sure, neither  of the 3 titles attributed to this tale give proper indication of where the story goes, though the "Bunch" alludes to bananas; the "Helmet" alludes to the crown resembling a golden bundle of bananas that was destined to be worn by Brigitta's doppelganger; and "Bananaland" is where all the threads lead to in this tale, a lost land that's a far cry from Plain Awful or Tralla La, but not far from the Island of Golden Geese. I'll hazard a guess that Barks suggested Gyro Gearloose concocted the money perfume for Brigitta, along with the Beagle Boys in bird costumes and Brigitta having a doppelganger in some far away world-within-a-world is combining a lot of Barks' bag of tricks, whereas the visuals and pacing of the story are clearly left up to Scarpa - which is not bad, because Scarpa can do a good pastiche of Barks' story style. It's been a long wait for this, but it exists and it's available. 

That was always the best thing about the Disney comics; they were constantly being reprinted because it wasn't a hard sell; the older comics by Barks are well-crafted - it's not like reading The Spirit or New Gods and realizing that Kirby and Eisner are great artists and storytellers, but they can't write dialogue/narration well at all; Carl Barks can write, and anyone who imitated/pastiche his work was cribbing from a source that can be trusted to be of good quality. When left to his own devices, Scarpa's ideas veer more toward the farcical, but it's interesting how close his work is faithful to the master when working off his suggestions.

The Batman Comic Book of The Batman Movie

                   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:

  Check Den of Geek for the full

      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. 

   Killing the Joker won't make the

   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.