The Goddamn Batman Strikes Again

So, one of my early posts was a brief description of All Star Batman and Robin, Frank Miller's horrible non-continuity train wreck of a comic. Well, issue 10 came out yesterday, and has been recalled due to issues with the censoring of some of the over-the-top language.

First, for those keeping track, issue 1 came out summer 2005. Here we are Sept. 2008 with issue 10. Hmmm...3 years for 10 issues? It was supposed to be bi-monthly. Ya, this series pretty much sucks in every way.

Anyway, about the censoring. Previous issues had some of the words blanked. Things like: Fuck, Shit, Cunt, etc. and this issue was no different. However, the underlying ink of the offending word reflects in a different way than the black box printed over it, making the word stand out. This has led to DC to issue a recall. You can read about it here and here, but here's a quick re-post of one of the offending areas:

Fuck me that little cunt stole my board!

Fuck you twice, dickwad, you let a fucking little piece of jailbait ass steal your wheels...

Yup, that seems like Miller nowadays, why'd they give him a Batman book again?

The Dark Knight

I went out and saw The Dark Knight last night. Packed theatre on a Tuesday night. As I've said, this thing is making mad cash. I have to say, it was very good. Very very good. Perhaps a tad long, but I didn't particularly mind. There wasn't wasted time in any case.

It had a stronger feel of Batman than the last movie too. The reason of course is that the last movie was playing out his origins. Now that he's here, he's Batman. The example of this is his interaction with the police force and Gordon in particular. He shows up suddenly at crime scenes, conducts his investigation, and disappears. Very much like the comics. The bulky suit, which I slightly disliked from Batman Begins, gets replaced with a slightly more streamlined version (which I still don't love, but it's a minor point). The fight scenes were different, less jumpy, allowing the viewer to see more. I fully understand the tight, fast, and almost invisible fights of Batman Begins, it worked perfectly for illustrating his Ninja training and style. That being said, the fights were more impressive this time around.

Aaron Eckhart made an excellent Harvey Dent, and Twoface. His fall was well done and painful.

Heath Ledger did a very good job as the Joker. He was scary, powerful, and insane. I don't quite think Oscar sure-thing as some people are saying. I don't want to belittle his performance (which was excellent), but I believe that had he not died, fewer people would be talking Oscars, especially fewer suggesting it before the movie was even released and having not seen screeners themselves.

But, an excellent movie, with excellent jobs done all round. I highly recommend.

Big Batman Bucks

Oh man, I made so much fake money this weekend. As I've mentioned before, I play a game called Hollywood Stock Exchange. Well, this weekend Batman The Dark Knight opened, and it broke several box office records, beating Star Wars Ep. 3's one day record and Spiderman 3's weekend record (155 mil. vs Spidy's 151). In HSX land, I bought it at $222/share, going into the weekend it closed at $333 and today with the weekend records, it adjusted to $434. I maxed out my shares, now I'm rolling in the fake HSX dollars! Awesome!

That and the fact that I'm really looking forward to seeing this film, as I love Batman, and loved Batman Begins. It should be good, but I avoided it this weekend as I figured the lines would be somewhat intense.

The Goddamn Batman

I love this image. True awesomeness. Thanks to Alex for pointing this out to me. Ah, Batman. More Goddamn Batman pictures here.

For those who don't know, the line, "I'm the goddamn Batman!" has been floating around the net for a couple of years now, ever since it's introduction in the new series "All Star Batman and Robin".
For a quick history:

The "All Star" titles were sort of DC's answer to Marvel's extremely successful "Ultimate" line such as Ultimate Spiderman, Ultimate X-Men and The Ultimates (which is essentially Ultimate Avengers and is a truly excellently written series).
The Ultimate titles were re-imagined stories
told with a modern-day perspective and such. They were not restricted to continuity of previous comic events, or even by character details. They keep true to the essence of the story, but try to make it fresh and new-reader friendly.

The DC All Star titles are similarly fresh stories and out of continuity events. All Star Batman is written by Frank Miller, the man who gave us Sin City, 300 and several Batman stories: the excellent Batman: Year One and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, and the horrible Dark Knight Strikes Again. It is a retelling of Batman and Robin's meeting, with a twist. "Twist" means that it is an over the top exercise in crack.

Not only does it have gems like the goddamn batman line, but the combination of Miller as writer, and Jim Lee for art, two of the slowest and most behind schedule people in the industry , meant that after releasing issue #1 in the summer of 2005, we're only reaching issue #9 next month! Only a single issue came out in all of 2006!!! Not that it matters because, like I said, the series is a acid trip of bad writing.

I-Mockery does a much better job illustrating how bad the series is than I could. It's a good read.