The Evolution of the Batmobile. I’ll always have a soft spot for the 60s TV show convertible. (via)
Showing posts with label batman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label batman. Show all posts
06 January 2011
04 November 2010
The Single Weirdest Thing in the Batcave
I’m pretty sure that this is the single weirdest thing in the Batcave. And considering it’s only two doors down from a robotic tyrannosaurus, that’s saying something.
Batman & Robin 16
It is worth noting that the way this finale plays out only underscores how unnecessary and fabricated the recent Bruce Wayne: The Road Home issues truly were, as if that wasn’t already readily apparent from those forgettable one-shots. It doesn’t take a close reading of this issue to realize none of the events of The Road Home fit logically within the confines of Morrison’s story.
15 October 2010
The Road Home
I’m not reading any of DC’s “Bruce Wayne: The Road Home” books. Here’s Brian Hibbs writing about how poorly-produced the specials were:
[I]nstead of being “one shots,” as their solicitation text describes, the final product turns out to effectively be an eight-issue miniseries, with each one-shot being released with “to be continued in…” the next “one shot.” Naturally, someone messes up the production and at least one of the books “points” to the wrong “next” title. And let’s not forget to mention that the eight covers link up to form a single image – but that that image is neither the order of release, nor of reading order.
11 September 2009
07 September 2009
Batgirl PSA from 1974
Here’s Yvonne Craig as Batgirl doing a PSA for equal pay for women in 1974. The story behind the spot, and who’s playing Bruce Wayne, courtesy Mark Evanier. Makes me really miss that show.
05 June 2009
Never Use Real Names in the Field
I love this Frank Quitely panel from Batman & Robin 1. Look at the body language, how Robin has his arms crossed like the indignant little snot he is. And the dialogue, how obnoxious he sounds. Then Dick/Batman’s response, trying to teach Robin a few things. He’s been there before, sitting in the Robin chair as Bruce Wayne taught him the same lessons. And then the mini punchline, “I’d have killed for a flying Batmobile when I was Robin.” There’s a levity there that writers didn’t seem to be able to give Bruce Wayne after the 80s.
That, and I do like the actual topic they’re discussing. I hate when comics depict characters with super secret identities yelling each other’s real names to each other in the middle of crowded cities. Batman takes this stuff seriously, like special ops military do. He knows to use codenames in the field so that people can’t overhear their identities. I enjoyed parts of Brad Meltzer’s Justice League of America story, but all the characters calling each other “Clark” and “Bruce” and “Diana” bothered me. It’s one thing for them to know who each other are, but I don’t want to see them signing birthday cards for each other.
14 March 2009
10 February 2009
Detective Comics #215
Scans of the (now famous) “Batmen of Many Nations” (nee International Club of Heroes) issue. I love Knight and Squire’s horse motorcycles.
19 September 2008
Assorted Things that Never Became Posts
I’ve started to write a few posts over the past few weeks and have lost interest in all of them before coming to a version I wanted to publish. When Twitter lets me say it in 140 characters, why write a whole post?
So here are a few seeds that never grew to full posts, in no order whatsoever.
Politics: Sarah Pailin really worries me. I fear she’s like George Bush in not understanding the nuances and constitutional effects of various positions, like that it’s okay to go aggressively after criminals but still offer them trials. John McCain is making me like him less than I used to, especially with the dirty campaign he’s running. Lies I can understand, all politicians lie, but voter suppression is unconscionable.
Toys: my favorite Batman action figure is from the Hush series that came out a few years ago based on Jim Lee’s art. This week I bought the All Star Superman toy based on Frank Quitely’s art, and I love it. It’s not the definitive Superman, but I like having one of Quitely’s drawings come to life on my desk. (The definitive Superman is, I think, the 1984 Hasbro one that looks like Christopher Reeve. I have that, too, but the cape has faded to magenta.) I’d like a definitive Tim Drake Robin in his most recent red and black costume, but none of them come out just right, and depending on how RIP comes out he might not be Robin anymore.
Star Wars: I rewatched all six movies recently. I’ve been wrestling with a post about the prequel trilogy that I can’t seem to turn into prose that’s worth reading. Summary: I think Episodes II and III would be pretty much fine if a better actor had been cast as Anakin. I think Episode I looks like they filmed Lucas’s rough draft before he took out all the obviously unworkable brainstormed ideas like midichlorians. The overall framework of the film is fine, but you need to fix a few things like make Anakin older, make Jar-Jar a real character, and make the story fit into the trilogy instead of just being the one where Obi-Wan meets Anakin and nothing else important happens.
Comics: All Star Superman makes my heart pitter patter and fills me with hope for mankind, similar to the Juno afterglow. That and Casanova are the two best things to come out in the past year.
Books: I finished George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire and am eagerly awaiting the next one. I finished ‘salem’s Lot and am reading The Stand. After that I have a ton of things I want to read and have to keep reminding myself to just enjoy the thing I have in my hand right now.
Movies: Pretty excited about Quantum of Solace.
TV: The shows I’m most pining for to return are Pushing Daisies and 30 Rock. Lots of others of course but those are the standouts. I’m not watching Heroes, Smallville, or Terminator anymore. Fringe hasn’t wowed me but I’m willing to give it a few more episodes.
Apple: I’d really like the AppleTV/iTunes to be a viable competitor to broadcast cable, but the money doesn’t add up. I’d like to see them allow rentals of TV on a full season basis for a sharp discount.
IGN: The Top 10 Batman Toys
For my money (literally), the Hush Batman that they rank #6 is the best Batman action figure I’ve found. I have no use for variant dolls like “Green Lantern Batman”.
28 August 2008
Morrison's DC
I have to hand it to DC Comics for having the guts to publish the comics they’ve been putting out lately. In a summer where parent company Warner Bros. released a widely successful Batman movie, one would have expected them to try to parlay that success by publishing some watered down, accessible Batman comics. Instead they give Grant Morrison the keys to the kingdom and let him put out stuff that’s as crazy as you could possibly expect. Why not? As he says, “the success of any superhero movie doesn’t affect the sales of the monthly comic one bit. We always sell more trades of stuff like The Killing Joke or Arkham Asylum but numbers on the monthly issues don’t really change when a film comes out.” So they let him run wild with the monthly, because few people who didn’t read comics before The Dark Knight came out are going to start, and this is what DC publishes:
- Superman Beyond, a 3-D comic in which Superman and Nazi Superman from Earth-10 travel to comic book limbo (where forgotten characters go) in a multi-dimensional yellow submarine. In 3-D!
- Batman R.I.P., in which Bruce Wayne suffers a psychotic break, villains inject him with heroin, and he wanders the streets of Gotham hallucinating and then drops into a back-up persona that Bruce Wayne saw fit to invent just in case he was ever driven insane by a villain.
- Final Crisis, where no one really knows what’s going on yet, but features a Japanese superhero named “Most Excellent Superbat” and a fight between Wonder Woman and an evil dominatrix Mary Marvel with pink hair.
In other words, crazy crazy stuff. Either you love it and you’re willing to pour into these fairly difficult books, or you think it’s stupid because you just like the ones where Radioactive Man punches things.
16 July 2008
Requiem for a cheeky 'Batman'
Neat piece by the man who wrote the pilot for the 60s Batman series, which, despite the harm it did to comics for years to come, I adore.
03 July 2008
scans_daily: Batman 113: Zur! En! Arrh!
scans_daily: Batman 113: Zur! En! Arrh!
This week’s Batman references another old story. I get that it’s like a game for Morrison to bring in strange obscure things, but it’s be nice to see a footnote or something on the back page.
23 May 2008
17 April 2008
PvPonline My Parents are Dead
I had forgotten about this until I saw it linked on a board recently. It’s one of the best things Scott Kurtz has done: My Parents are Dead, the definitive Batman story of our age.
25 March 2008
Recolored The Killing Joke
DC has released a new hardcover of Alan Moore’s famous Batman story The Killing Joke (only $10 on Amazon). If features new colors by original artist Brian Bolland. You can see side-by-side comparisons here. It looks very nice, and interestingly mostly that’s toning down the colors on most panels. I already own the story as part of an Alan Moore collection DC did, but it’s a good book and this edition looks great.
28 February 2008
More on Batman 156
More about that Batman issue that Grant Morrison’s in love with. A quick check of eBay shows a few issues of Batman 156 that people are trying to make money on.
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