"The Caped Crusade: Batman and The Rise of Nerd Culture" by Glen Weldon

That is not the actual cover to Glen Weldon's Batman book. In my humble opinion, I fixed it. I made it into a cover image I wanted to see, just like when I fixed the cover to Michael Moorcock's rubbish Doctor Who novel into something I might keep on my shelf (but I didn't). Who are all those guys cosplaying as Batman? I don't know them. They're not Batman. The new cover - that depicts the Batman.

That's really the point of Weldon's book. The lean page-count is due to the lack of biographical material; the real focus is on the different incarnations of Batman thru the decades, from dark to light to dark to light to dark again snd so on. He's a resilient, nonchalant character - adept at mystery, sci-fi and fantasy stories with a simple turn of the screw. I don't think he really cracks the code as to why that is so, but he's more interested on how audience opinion can influence the lifespan of each incarnation anyway. It's this school of thought where Batman is an idea that exists within the public conciousness..as if he's bigger than comics or films or videogames...Weldon doesn't say it, but the character is recognized the same way globally as Mickey Mouse, James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, Superman, Elvis, Marilyn Monroe and Michael Jackson. He's joined that club. A lot of people don't read the comics, but they are cognizant of the existence of a character named Batman.

It's what Batman is that has the nerds debating about it, and Weldon doesn't quite ridicule those arguments, but it's hinted as very closed-minded thinking. The best depiction of a fully-realized Batman, at his most basic, is the Batman of Batman: The Animated Series. After that, you're probably just going for extremes for the sake telling new stories.

The downside to this book is that it's nothing you wouldn't learn from reading a Wikipedia article. Without biographical material to gain insight into why people who worked on Batman approached the character the way they did, it's very, "...during this run, this guy wrote Batman like this.." And another thing...I seriously doubt anyone enjoys being called a nerd. The bozos selling t-shirts and apparel in an attempt to brand "Geek" "Nerd" and "Spaz" wouldn't be caught dead feigning interest in this stuff if they couldn't make a buck. I don't buy it. It's a slam for knowing anything.

And yet, the fact that people know Batman is what's kept him from stagnating like Superman, Bond and the Mouse. Alan Moore put it best when he described Batman as a character created to appeal to children in 1939 who were reading Superman comics...Batman's longevity is astounding if you consider that he's past his "Sell-by.." date. I don't know if Weldon has seen that distinction between a  concept that can survive being branded and still have a place in contemporary fiction...maybe he'd have been hesitant to use the word "nerd" so much...or maybe he doesn't..between the lines, once you get to the end of the book, it feels like he's saying all the Batman stories that could be told have been told.

"Superman: The High-Flying History Of America's Most Enduring Hero" by Larry Tye

Superman has been around for over 75 years now, so it made sense that someone wrote a biography of the iconic character's existence. I had purchased this book shortly after I was halfway thru reading Men of Tomorrow - the Gerard Jones book, which I had reviewed in the previous post - so of course, I'm going to suffer some slight deja vu.

It's a very good appendix of Superman and the many writers and artists who worked on the character over the decades...and of course, it wouldn't be complete without chronicling the lives of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, but this time, the strongest passages aren't so much about them, but about George Reeves, Alexander Salkind, Michael Siegel  ( Jerry's son, whom he neglected ), Christopher Reeve, and some crumbs of shrewd observations regarding every attempt at innovation or retooling the character doomed to erosion, always falling "back-to-basics". These pointed remarks are few and far between...I can imagine a leaner book, packed with more insights and less name & fact-checking..actually, about a 1/3 of Men of Tomorrow told the same tale, so if you, the reader, already own one book, you don't need the other.

One glaring omission: Larry Tye had little/nothing to say about Superman: The Animated Series. Two sentences! What's the deal?! He devoted 3 pages to Superfriends! Maybe he's saving something for an updated volume, which will include Batman vs. Superman...

What We Talk About When We Talk About "The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance" (aka, "Birdman")

I've seen Birdman twice now. It stars Michael Keaton as an actor best known for starring in a trilogy of superhero movies attempting a risky comeback by producing, directing and starring in a stage play adaptation of the short story  What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver. The source material is a story for intellectual stuffed shirts - the summary of that tale on Wikipedia isn't particularly clear, and you don't get a grasp of what it's about from watching Birdman, either. It is definitely a movie that can be viewed in an Anthropology class, since I'm convinced it's a superhero movie that doesn't want to be a superhero movie, but follows the beats of a superhero movie...and is more satisfying to view as a superhero movie. I  think it's a shame that Fox Studios didn't think of having a tie-in "novelization" of Birdman published...and it turns out to be reprint of Raymond Carver's short stories (including  What We Talk About When We Talk About Love) behind the cover.

So how do I recommend you view Birdman? Well, it's clearly the story of an actor who's developing reality warping superpowers while under duress. He can fly, he can move objects, and he can change reality so that you can debate whether or not you saw him fly around midtown Manhattan during the morning rush hour...or was riding in a taxicab. Within this context, I think the film is like the Bruce Willis movie Unbreakable, where we didn't realize we were watching a superhero movie until the final act...and then realized a lot of opportunities were wasted that have made that film age terribly. At least Birdman has room for fun. As Ebert often wrote, "I'll leave that for you to discover." (So that I can keep this essay from going off the rails).

Which brings us to the concept of Birdman himself - he's like a mashup of three Hanna-Barbara cartoon superheroes: The Blue Falcon from Dynomutt, Harvey Birdman of Birdman and The Galaxy Trio and Harvey Birdman, Attorney At Law, and he appears to have Space Ghost's laser "power bands", which he uses to attack a monstrous robot vulture that resembles one of the Skeksis from The Dark Crystal...of course I want to see this spun-off into its own movie. Or maybe a Hawkman movie.

Anyway, go see Birdman. It's one of those films that I'm convinced works best when it's viewed on the big screen, so do give it a try. It's not as ingenious as some critics are making it out to be, but Michael Keaton is excellent in this film; it's doing what Lost In Translation did for Bill Murray - that's another film that works better when viewed on a big screen as well.

And without further ado, enjoy the gallery! :)

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.  :)