"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..

Darwyn Cooke, RIP, Cont'd...

I pulled out my copy of Batman: Animated, the coffetable Art History book from 1998 devoted to Batman: The Animated Series, because I remembered it had sample storyboards that Darwyn Cooke worked on for the sequence in "Legends of The Dark Knight" that adapted the battle between Batman and The Mutants leader from Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. They do a fantastic job of invoking the suspense and mood of the comic. I really wish the actual direct-to-dvd film adaptation of the book had been animated in this style, not the cranked-out assembly line anime look that's plagued most of the films for the last decade.

I also dug up my copy of Modern Masters Volume Three: Bruce Timm, from Twomorrows Publishing, which contained the passage I had recalled from memory of Bruce Timm's observations on Darwyn's art style. Since my previous post about Cooke was quite packed, I felt like putting these images in a separate post.

Darwyn Cooke, RIP.

Darwyn Cooke, RIP

Within days, we learned that artist Darwyn Cooke had an "aggressive" form of Cancer and was in "palliative care"..and  come Saturday morning, we learn that he passed away. He was only 53 years old.

He first got attention for his work doing storyboards on Batman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond. In the former, it was the magnificent recreation of  Batman fighting The Mutants gang leader from Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns in the episode "Legends of The Dark Knight". For the later series, it was the striking title sequence that opened the show. His first comics work was the graphic novel Batman: Ego for DC Comics, which was followed by a major revamp of Catwoman with writer Ed Brubaker that defined the character for the last decade and a half, including the graphic novel Catwoman: Selena's Big Score.

But wait! There's more! A revival of The Spirit. New Frontier. A series of graphic novels for IDW adapting Richard Stark's "Parker" novels. And lots of variant covers. His art style, at first glance, looked like an offshoot of animator Bruce Timm's style, capitalizing on the popularity of the animated cartoons, but Timm was quick to observe in interviews that when he looked at Darwyn's drawings "...there's a little bit of Frank Robbins, there's some Milt Caniff, a little bit of Sickles.." I would suggest that Cooke's characters tend to look self-aware; they seem to behave like actors that know they're being filmed - lots of expressions with eyes, jaws and teeth. A glance at both artists work in comics reveals that if Timm's characters stick to the script, Cooke's actors are prone to ham things up.

His work as a writer wasn't flawless; I found his scripts could be leaden at times - the dialogue and plots don't necessarily fire on all cylinders and payoffs can come off anti-climactic. His zombie Montez storyline in The Spirit had a climax taken from a short Batman: Black & White tale and went off the reservation, as if he was glad he could find an ending to the arc.

But that's just a minor quibble. Cooke loved heroes that were heroic and liked to tell stories he wanted to read. He could be an outspoken critic of popular dark storylines, like Brad Meltzer's Identity Crisis. He despised stories that pretended to be "mature" and "sophisticated" when it was only dragging fictional characters that were once created for children  though the mud. In the last few years, he felt he was typecast as an artist who only dwelled in Silver Age nostalgia and he's not wrong - if he had illustrated Grant Morrison's run on Batman, that definitely daft tenure wouldn't have been so easily discarded. When asked about why he didn't do much work for Marvel Comics  (beyond two issues of a Spider-Man title, a fill-in issue of X-Force and a surreal mini-series starring Wolverine & Doop), he pointed out that he was originally enlisted as the architect for the all-ages "Marvel Adventures" line, before his ideas for creative teams and storylines were completely scuttled by editorial. So he made his name working on DC Comics characters. Not bad.

He was working till the very end, so I wouldn't be surprised if some of the stuff appears posthumously. A comic book variant cover by Cooke on the outside always outclassed the art featured on the inside. When DC had Cooke do variant covers for all their books in 2014 - some featuring characters rendered by him for the first time in print, like He-Man and Skeletor - on the face of things that was a very classy-looking month, but only a few of those books might have had stories people still remember today. They'll remember those covers, though.

Darwyn Cooke, RIP

The Magrs Method of Book Reporting, Book #1 - Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu by Devin Grayson and Flint Dille

Can you encapsulate the book in one sentence?

A new criminal mastermind named Sin Tzu decides that Batman must be defeated and enlists three of the Dark Knight's toughest foes to create chaos in Gotham City.

When did  you buy it?

In December of last year.  It was on the bargain table at a comic book store for two dollars.

What year or edition?

The book is a mass-market paperback novelization of a video game that was released in 2003 and is a tie-in. It is also tied to the TV series Batman: The Animated Series, which had ceased production five years prior to the release of the game.

What's your verdict?

It's "good". I thought it was clearly following an outline and the authors tried to add originality by using a mixed-narrative, i.e., every chapter narrated in the first-person by a different member of the cast, while Sin Tzu narrates four chapters. It could have been better.

How so?

There are hints/intimations that Sin Tzu could be the omnipotent asian demigod he presents himself as...or, more interestingly, is a fraud. He chose to ally himself with three Batman villains dependant on chemical stimulants/toxins: The Scarecrow with his fear gas; Bane with his Venom steroid; Clayface's entire body consists of a toxic compound called "RenuYu" (Hydromethotrexamede)...could it be that Sin Tzu's visions & powers and communications with ancient dieties are just the ravings of a drug-addled lunatic whose hideout is in (surprise, surprise) Arkham Asylum?! This could've been a great denouement for a villain who'd been all talk and no action for over 280 pages, and a nice twist for novel that took a cerebral approach to what was, if I recall correctly,  an average "button mash" melee brawler game.

Another problem: the mixed first-person narratives probably required more skill and wit at executing than what was on display - each chapter begins and ends as a long-winded monologue/soliloquy/infodump in which each narrator spends 2/3 of it mulling over their backstory, with Sin Tzu being the worst offender. It kills any attempt at creating suspense and tension, and it makes the book feel more episodic than it should be.

What genre would you say it is?

I would put it in the "Fantasy" genre, or "Pulp Fantasy", since it could've easily been an adventure with The Shadow or Doc Savage or The Spirit - characters who are often name-dropped in that realm.

What surprises did it hold - if any?

Superstar comic book artist Jim Lee created the design for Sin Tzu,  so I'm surprised the character was never used again! Also, Batman's appearances feel slight until the final two chapters, of which, the last he narrates. He should have had more to do here.

Have you read anything else by this author?
I've read Devin Grayson's Batman comics and thought they were good, but her best work was writing Catwoman. She also wrote another novel featuring the DC Comics superheroes: Inheritance, featuring Batman, Aquaman & Green Arrow, who stole the show.  I believe Grayson should get a shot at writing Green Arrow - she had a lot of fun writing him.

What will you do with this copy now?

I'll hold onto it - it's not bad at all; the few Batman prose novels I've seen have never tried juggling as many characters as this book does - it's an impressive effort.

Is it available today?

It's out of print, but it could be purchased online used..or if your comic book store has an extensive selection of paperback novels that don't "move", if you know what I mean.

What scene will stay with you? What character will stay with you?

Of the chapters narrated by the villains,  I thought Clayface's tale was the best. With the heroes, Batman's was very good. With the supporting characters (and this answers the second question), it's the strange chapter narrated by a character named Gareth Baxter, a federal agent with a curious hobby of collecting Hummel figurines...he's being interrogated by Nightwing in his bedroom, and the dialogue/narration has a subtext that Devin Grayson seems to have gotten away with...with a wink.

Give a good quote from the book

My eyes begin to adjust more completely in the dark and I can just make out the lines of his figure crouching on my seven-drawer dresser . He doesn't wear a cape, as I was told the Batman does, but his eyes are covered by a small mask that mostly serves to call attention to the bare skin of his face as a contrast against his dark hair and the rest of his entirely covered body.  Gloves.  Boots. He's a young man in his early twenties and even in the dark I can make out the long lean muscles rippling under his skin tight costume as he moves. I watched him for 10 seconds without blinking and realize that he's in almost constant motion.
"Call me Nightwing he says, his tone almost conversational. "And hand over the Sin Tzu files."

Nightwing? I shake my head . I don't remember anything about a Nightwing from the files , but he must be one of the Batman's soldiers . We'd long suspected that the Batman has a support team operating under the acronym R.O.B.I.N (Reserve Officers of the Batman's Intelligence Network) most of them alarmingly young - kidnapped children possibly, or runaways. I've also heard of an operative called The Dark Knight but never Nightwing.

-  Chapter 12, Page 238-239

A good parry. His question surprises me. It shouldn't, because, after all, he is a detective. In moments of doubt, all men rush to things they know. They flee to the familiar.

- Chapter  13, Page 261-262

My existence is spent battling for the safety of this city. I don't honestly know if it's possible to live in complete safety, complete peace . But I do know that I'll do everything within my power to bring us as close to that point as I can even if I have to use violence to do it .
I abhor violence. It is a language of tyrants and thugs and one I have therefore become fluent in, but it is never my first choice when initiating discourse.

- Chapter  14, Page 276-277