Seeing things

This is quite cool - a page from Denny O'Neill and Dick Giordano's 1989 retelling of Batman's origin, "The Man Who Falls."

It's a decent story which was published exclusively in the trade, "Secret Origins" alongside a bunch of reprints. Apparently it was used as a reference by David Goyer and Christopher Nolan for Batman Begins.

Anyway, that's not why I scanned in the page. I wanted to draw your attention to this panel...

That's Thomas Wayne rescuing young Bruce from a cave full of bats. It could be accidental, but I think Thomas looks like Joker here.

Purple coat. Green hair. No?

Scans from The Man Who Falls, by Denny O'Neill and Dick Giordano, colours by Tom McCraw. 1989

Baaaaaaane!

Big Dave F has been posting pictures of himself dressed as Bane on Facebook...

What can you say?

He's going to Kapow in this costume.

I fucking love Dave.

Help Batman fight bicycle theft!

Click the image to big up The Bat Bike

Ad scaned from Green Lantern Emerald Dawn #3, February 1990.

A couple of quick reviews

Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #1

Time travelling Batman fights cavemen. Best comic I've read in yonks! I love it so much, I've read it three times. It's perfect. Bruce Wayne as some bare-chested Charlton Heston type figure. The nods to Kubrik's 2001. Vandal Savage as pimped up caveman sloping off to his wigwam with a couple of neanderthal hos. Stone age Robin! This is Grant Morrison on top, top pop-culture-referencing form. It's Chris Sprouse laying down the fine-lined chiseled jaws and heaving pecs. It's fat sequential beats and beautiful splash pages. It's GOLD I tell you, GOLD!

The Flash #2

Geoff Johns and Scott Kollins' run on The Flash is one of my all-time favourites, so it pleases me to say that, two issues into this newly numbered book, the ingredients that made that run so good all seem to be in place here. I'd probably have been happier if Wally West had kept the costume, but the return of Barry Allen isn't that much of a drag. At the end of the day, you get a geezer bombing about in the red suit fighting baddies and saving people from collapsing buildings and you get it in a cartoony, kinetically charged style that suits the character down to the ground. Credit to Francis Manapaul for that, he's a very different artist to Kollins, but he shares the ability to put movement and energy down on the page. That's something that was clearly missing from the turgid over-rendered art that we got in Flash: Rebirth. I don't dislike Ethan van Sciver's stuff, but I didn't like what he did on Rebirth, it was just too grand, too static. The same could be said for the writing. I had no idea what was going on in Rebirth. With this new series, everything seems to have been boiled down to basics: Flash running about fighting The Rogues. KERCHINNG! It's great.

Dick Giordano

Here's a scan of Batman#509...

It's a fairly crappy comic that kicks off the Knightsend saga in which Bruce Wayne goes all ninja on some fella who's taken over the Bat Mantle after Bane snapped Bruce's spine. Summat like that. I can't remember. It doesn't matter.

Anyway, I picked this issue up for 25p at one of the Royal National marts. Wouldn't normally have bothered, but it's signed by writer Doug Moench and all-round comic book legend Dick Giordano who died today. There's a cracking obit up at Comic Book Resources. Proper legend, and there aren't too many of those left now.

R.I.P.

The Dark (K)night returns

The night is filled with fever dreams of grappling hooks and X-Ray vision scans of Joker's henchmen. Something sucks the stale air and hisses. Just the cat. Don't worry. Don't worry. Back to sleep. Day comes. Not enough rest. Too soon the pains start across my triceps and chest. I keep forgetting how much harder everything has become. I almost tread on a piece of Lego on my way to the bathroom. Spot it just in time. Lucky. Lucky old man.

This has to stop, I have a toddler to look after. There he is, smiling. Good soldier. He wants breakfast. So do I. In my gut the creature writhes and snarls and tells me what I need... Batman:Arkham Asylum. NO! Rice Krispies! Yes, Rice. Krispies. Not thinking, I open the cupboard, crockery falls out. Hits me like a freight train. The plates hold. Lucky again. Twice now.

The day passes. The family sleeps. I've come alive again. The night is mine again. On goes the Xbox. Damn your corrupt save, with its flashing exclamation mark. Damn it. It's too late. Should be in bed. Need to rest. Not now! Not tonight. I'm back in the game! Bane attacks. He charges blind. A quick one to the nerve cluster in his deltoid. It doesn't hurt him. But no force on earth could help him move his left arm now.

2am. Something tells me to stop. STOP IT! I don't listen to it. A wolf howls. I know how he feels. It ends tonight, Joker!

with apologies to Frank Miller.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

This...

...is pain.

Batman and The Punisher

Hello! Apologies for the lack of activity. After saying I probably wouldn't be playing it much, I've been sacrificing every spare moment of time I have at the altar of Batman: Arkham Asylum on the Xbox. What can I say? I'm not much of a gamer, but the combination of a well crafted superhero story with involving mechanics has truly hooked me - I'm even watching the cut scenes for heaven's sake!

I realise that it's been out for yonks, and that anyone who is interested in this sort of thing will have already bought it, so there's not much point in me giving Arkham a proper review; suffice to say it's primarily a stealth game, but there are elements of adventure, beat-'em-up and platform thrown in. Boss battles are great fun and, importantly for fans of Batman, the villains are all true to the comics. The story is written by Paul Dini, and it's actually REALLY good. It'd make a decent comic or movie, and it definitely makes an excellent game.

So there you go, that's what I've been doing. In the moments before I close my eyes and see neon trailed batarangs streaking across my eyelids though, I've also been reading a few comics. The best? Easy peasy! Punisher #14. I can't believe that The Punisher is my favourite comic at the moment. Honestly, I have no attachment to the character, never have done. But this? This is the perfect Marvel comic. Predictably, I like it for precisely the same reasons that hardcore Punisher fans seem to hate it, namely that it's absolutely ridiculous. I could never get on with the grim and gritty hyper violence of Punisher, but now that he's turned into Frankenstein's monster and teamed up with The Legion of Monsters to fight a Basil Cronus type baddie and an army of monster-hunting samurai, I'm in my element!

Not that this book is just about silliness. The latest issue is fun times infinity to the power of sensational, but it's also a damn fine examination of what drives a man to lose his mind and become a psychopath hell-bent on revenge. We're not talking Frank Castle here either, no. Punisher #14 is an origin story for the villain of the current arc, Robert Hellsgaard. What's beautiful about it, is the way in which his story mirrors that of Frank's. He sees his family killed by monsters, (just as Frank sees his killed by the mob), and devotes the rest of his life to killing them. In other words, he IS Frank - or at least he's motivated by exactly the same emotions as Frank. Great stuff. Made all the better by guest artist Dan Brereton who riffs on the old Warren horror stories and monster mags of the 70s to provide a set of amazing visuals. 100% the best Marvel comic I've read in years. A++.

Seeing Things

The cover to Batman and Robin #3...

Flip it...
Anyone else see The Joker?

Two to read

Read a mountain of comics yesterday. Mediocrity abounded. Two nice single issues though: Batman and Robin #1 and Chew #1.

By now I'm sure you've read a gazillion reviews of Batman and Robin so I won't blather on for too long about it. Suffice to say that it's a really nice Batman comic. Being a Grant Morrison joint I was expecting to have to don my thinking cap and fire up the ol' Wikipedia, but no this was as straightforward a start to a story as you can get. I didn't read any of The Battle for the Cowl muck, but I can see that Dick Grayson is now Batman and that Damian wassisname (Bruce Wayne's son or summink) has taken his place as Robin. There's a nice little dynamic going on between the two of them with Robin the more serious of the two. Anyway, it works well. There were some good character defining moments such as Damian's treatment of Alfred as a menial rather than, you know...ALFRED! The new villains were suitably wacky - loved Mr Toad (POOP! POOP!) And, of course, Frank Quietly's art is always a delight. Smashing stuff.

Chew isn't a superhero book as such, but the lead character does have the most original and possibly yuckiest superpower I've seen in a comic for yonks. Written by John Layman and drawn by Rob Guillory, this is a cop book with a difference. You know that psychic cop in Heroes? Fat Fellah, bad actor? Well Tony Chu, (the lead in Chew), is a bit like him, except that he does his psychic detective work by chomping on human flesh. Urggh! Yeah, he gets glimpses of stuff from the food he eats. Thus he doesn't like eating burgers because he sees cows being slaughtered, but he does like chewing off serial killer's faces because he gets a full MO and a list of their victims by doing so. Yup chums, it's a gross idea - but it works! Not least because Layman garnishes his story with a sprinkling of dry, black humour. He's also chosen an artist who has added to the lighthearted feel of what could have been a very dark book with a cartoony (sorry I hate that word, but it's the only one that fits) style. It's a really enjoyable package and I recommend it to you.

Batman's pleaser

At last, I'm able to give the steady stream of folk arriving at this site via Google searches for pics of Batman's cock what they want...

Photo shows a sticker on the side of a newstand on Cambridge Circus, London. Bit blurry, but I think you can make it out.

For everyone who complains that Grant Morrison comics are too difficult to understand...

...go read this seven-year old's review of Batman RIP and hang your dumb heads in shame!

LLC recommends Detective comics #845

Detective Comics #845 makes me sad, not because it's a shitty comic, quite the reverse, it's an EXCELLENT comic; a stand alone issue that encapsulates everything good about Paul Dini's run on the title.

Why the long face then? Well, the fact is, that the enjoyment I got out of reading it only makes me more pissed off that the next issue sees Detective begin another interminable looking tie-in with Grant Morrison's Batman title. Not only will this multi-parter mean very little to those of us who have no interest in Morrison's book, it will also likely herald a change in tone and pace on Detective.

You'd think that DC would have learnt their lesson after the tedious Ra's al Ghul crossover rendered Detective unreadable for a few issues earlier this year. Alas not. Shame really, you only need to look at #845 to see that Dini is doing just fine on his own.

Tec #845 is an outstanding little murder mystery, full of cute character observations and interactions. A book where, in the best traditions of Batman, the action takes place at night, a book where Batman himself is at the centre of the action, and, above all, a book where Batman gets a chance to be a detective. That's what makes these little Dini tales so good. Truly he is the man who has put the Detective back in Detective Comics

The story has Batman hunting a ritualistic serial killer. He's aided in his investigative work by a supposedly amateur group of internet sleuths - The Heirs of Dupin. Marvellously these IM chatting detectives turn out to be a bunch of DC's most inquiring minds including Detective Chimp, The Riddler and (I think) Barbara Gordon. It's a great idea, which is brilliantly executed in a six page sequence that sees Bats and Detective Chimp competing against the Riddler in anonymity.

The Riddler is a central figure in the issue. Dini has reinvented him over the course of his run, casting him as an ex-con trying to go straight by using his famed powers of deduction to set himself up as a detective. That he chooses to use his new found profession as an excuse to prove that he's a more capable sleuth than Batman suggests that he isn't quite the reformed character he claims to be.

Dini's Batman certainly seems unwilling to accept that his old foe has had a change of heart, interestingly (and perhaps subconsciously) he even appears set on driving the Riddler back to a life of crime through his constant questioning of the former villain's motives. The scenes involving Batman and Riddler are carefully written studies in thinly veiled hostility then. They work because they move the story along while telling us plenty about the two protagonists. It's all very neat, and all very different to Grant Morrison's approach to the character. I like it that way.

Tellingly the one scene in the comic that jars slightly is the two page conversation between Batman and Catwoman. Dini does his best to work it into the story by having Batman ask Catwoman for her thoughts on the murders which he is investigating, but Catwoman's lack of interest in the case and references to events taking place in Morrison's Batman book suggest that she has only been introduced here with an eye on the forthcoming crossover. Sadly I won't be around to find out. I read one issue of the Ra's al Ghul tie-in before dropping Detective for the remainder of that story. I won't even bother with the Batman RIP crossover. Instead I'll return when Dini is once more allowed to resume writing his own detective stories. I'm only sad that I'll have to wait a few months for that to happen.

Nightwear of the rich and famous

It's kind of passe to dwell on Batman and Robin's latent homosexuality, although you know...


ahem, yes, anyway, putting the obvious aside it is interesting to note that Golden age Batman and Robin slept in their costumes, something which they share with bronze age Doom...


But not their Golden age Marvel counterparts Cap and Bucky...


or indeed Laurel and Hardy...

Bat Theft Auto

I want Grand Theft Auto IV as much as the next emotionally retarded thirty-something, but I'm damned if I'm going to spend a fortune on a PS3 or X-Box just to play one game.

Still, in honour of the latest chapter in the World's most hyped video game here's Golden Age Batman "borrowing" a car to run down and rough up a drunk driver...






Batman "borrowed" quite a few cars in the golden age. The Proof is all HERE

Get Lost Galactus

This is just too, too good...

No work today!

Bad music, buses and Batman

What is it with these mobile phone mp3 players that kids have these days? Getting all those files on a phone is clever, but when it sounds like a cheap transistor what's the fucking point?

If they really wanted to appreciate their shitty rap and saccharin soul they'd get some headphones because these glorified walkie talkies they insist on carting around make a noise like wasps on a snare drum.

I've decided that the only possible reason the little oiks persist with their pissing machines is to make reasonable people on public transport lose their minds. If I'm right then their plan may be working.

Their continued presence on my bus to work has forced me to start wearing ear plugs just so I can concentrate on my reading. Even then the tick, tick, tack of their awful music seeps through. Gahhhh!

It takes a particularly good book or comic to focus my mind in the presence of these twerps, so it says a lot for Batman: Detective that I've managed to read the whole of the new trade while surrounded by the sound of braying mongoloids and their bleeping retrotrannies.


Written (with the exception of one story) by Paul Dini, Detective collects issues 821 through 826 of Detective comics. Like All Star Superman these are stand alone tales which are probably more suited to the monthly format than this collected version.

Dini understands that a comic called Detective should be about a detective and while there are plenty of great moments where Bats goes to town on the bad guys (he pushes a hood under a train within three pages of the first issue) the real strength of this Batman is as a sleuth.

Dini isn't afraid to ditch the spandex and have Bruce Wayne do the investigative work either. It says a lot for his writing that the scenes where Wayne is piecing together clues are as good as those where Batman is taking down the bad guys.

Those bad guys are done really well by the way. Any decent Batman book is going to be built around the classic rogues gallery and Dini knows it. He did a great job on them in the animated series and he isn't slow in introducing many of the old villains here either. There are some nice new takes on the Penguin and the Riddler both of whom are trying to go straight (it's clear that neither of them is going to make it) as well as a very funny Joker story which owes plenty to Grand Theft Auto.

The fill in issue by Royal McGraw is excellent, while the art is superb throughout. Not surprisingly then Detective kicks the much hyped All Star Batman in the balls. Even when that comic does eventually reappear I'm not going to pick it up, there's no point really not when Detective is doing Batman so well on a REGULAR basis.

Look at the Joker's huge cock...

April Fool!

I scanned these surreal panels from DC Showcase Batman Volume One. They originally appeared in Batman #174: "The Joker's Last Laugh".

The giant chicken appears in just three panels, its origin is never revealed.